After touring the museum, the AlienZoo crew embarks on scandalous videogame play at a launderette.
2/12/2000
Written by Wiggz...also known as the AlienZoo prohibitor of dullness.
In its cover story on the 50th anniversary of the Roswell Incident, Time magazine described Roswell as the Graceland of UFO culture. I don.t think it.s such a bad comparison. Like Elvis Presley.s sprawling mansion, the International UFO Museum and Reporting Center (IUFOMRC) is a living shrine to what has long passed, a pop culture Mecca for believers.
The Roswell landmark may not be adorned by a pink Cadillac and sequined stage costumes, but it does have a silver saucer crashed into the side of its façade, as well as Harold, the parachute-testing dummy . a mock tribute to the be-all, end-all .explanation. the Air Force gave in 1997, that the long-denied alien bodies found at Roswell were really dummies. The Air Force didn.t begin using dummies for testing until 1949. As if!
In its earnest totality, IUFOMRC is a rare and wonderful place, cared for by dozens of loving Roswellian volunteers. It was founded in the fall of 1991 by three upstanding Roswellians: Walter Haut, the public information officer who wrote and circulated the press release regarding the crash; Glenn Dennis, who received the call from the Air Force base, which asked for three children.s coffins; and Max Littell, a successful local shopping-center developer (At 83, he still has an office on the 10th floor of the Bank of America building.). As the story goes, Dennis and Haut wanted to start a museum, so they called upon Littell, who knew the area.s real estate business inside and out.
As you enter the IUFOMRC . housed in a movie theater that was converted into a museum in late 1996 . you.ll be greeted by a kind human elder who, standing behind the front desk, will eagerly ask you to sign the museum.s guest book. Do not take this momentous occasion lightly; the museum is very proud of its 188,000 annual visitors, and won.t take no for answer in its quest to add to the tally.
Harold.s friend Junior
After scribing your universal identifier passcode into the great ufological roll call, stealthily saunter down the hall toward the charred alien body exhibit. This was the body used in the PAUL DAVIDS film for Showtime, "Roswell." Davids gifted the entirety of the display to the museum. (You rule, Paul!) The body . which Haut refers to as Junior . represents one of the aliens that crashed west of Roswell, who was taken into the Roswell Army Air Force base for examination.
"I think it.s a real crucial part of this museum," Haut says. "It.s made a pretty darn good display piece."
Even though he wrote the press release announcing a spaceship.s arrival, perhaps surprisingly, Haut disputes the presence of aliens on Earth.
"I don.t think many people, myself included, have seen any aliens," Haut says. "I have a hard time stretching my imagination to believe all the tales of the number of people that have been taken aboard extraterrestrial vehicles, and flown around, and then brought back to Earth. Maybe some of them have been. I have a big question mark in my mind. I don.t need to be negative about it. But I would need more information, more things that would back up their comments."
After gliding around the corner, to your right, you.ll find The Roswell Timeline, an exhibit that, no matter how little you know about what happened in 1947, will give you a sense of the museum.s reason for being. Rancher Max Brazel found debris at the Foster Ranch on July 5 of that year; Maj. Jesse Marcel walked the debris field with Brazel and brought metal scraps back to base, making headline news. Marcel was eventually made a scapegoat, as the finding was dismissed as a weather balloon. Neither Brazel nor Marcel could have known that alien bodies had been found at another site, presumably the Ragsdale site (23 miles to the south).
Most of the items on display in the museum are in flat, paper-on-cardboard format. There.s a lot to read: Articles are posted everywhere. Then there.s the blown-up photograph of the letter General Roger Ramey received . at the official press conference in Fort Worth . with the words: "victims forwarded," "Fort Worth," "disk," and "safe talk."
Further in, mid-century radio broadcasting equipment gives a sense of what Roswell.s radio station used to broadcast the chilling UFO crash newscast. A wall-sized map of the world illuminates the locations of some of the world.s most well-researched UFO sightings; this is not a complete list, but the effect is great: UFOs are seen all over the world.
"One purpose of the museum is continuing research," says Carol Syska, who was named museum.s director last May. "We.re not just here to show you what happened in the past. We.re here to show you what is going on now. There.s more to the story than Roswell."
The museum also presents a monthly series of lectures. Upcoming talks will be delivered by some of ufology.s heavy hitters: Jim Hickman of Skywatch International, Colm Kelleher, Ph.D. of the National Institute for Discovery Sciences, and Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).
As you wend your way out of the exhibition hall, past Miller Johnson.s striking crash mural, and reenter the lobby, meander to your left, down the wheelchair ramp. What you.ll find the research center.s library of books, tapes, and documents . totaling 56,000 items . which any UFO scholar would covet. Because of its stature and renown, the museum receives documents and personal accounts from all over the world. The library demonstrates the museum.s research orientation. It.s not simply selling trinkets.
.We do have people coming forth now with different items, not necessarily about the Roswell Incident,. Littell explains. .They.ll say, .I.ve never told this to anybody before, because I didn.t want them to think that I.ve lost my marbles. But I.ll tell you...
Littell continues: .We always listen very gently. They seem to feel relieved that they can finally talk about it to someone who doesn.t belittle them..
Some of the rarest items are the rare, out-of-print books protected by glass cages; these are at least 50 years old. The books and videos that line the walls aren.t everything that's there, however. Littell led me into an adjoining room, where a collection of six file cabinets house thousands of papers that museum personnel still haven.t had time to catalog.
Next door, a hallway gallery displays paintings and rare article clippings collected by George Fawcett. You can.t miss the canvas that depicts three saucers ominously cruising over a New Mexico barn, or the another that shows a beamship emitting a Niagara of steam-like plasma on the desert floor.
The research center.s back-wall mural, painted by Roswell High School students, has a really wicked alien-head cloud in the background. This can.t be missed.
The museum wants to grow. Littell says it.s turning down exhibits, because it doesn.t have enough space. IUFOMRC owns a 25-acre plot to the west of Roswell, where it hopes to build a $10 million site, which would have a second-floor observatory.
.We feel it.s the only way we can go. You never stand still . you either go up or go down,. Littell says. .We.re continually needing more and more room. But it.s not available here..
Syska says her museum is writing the book on UFO museums; there is no precedent for what her organization is trying to achieve. While the Roswell Incident is its starting point, in the future, it will encompass all of ufology. Meantime, the list of witnesses coming forth to talk about Roswell continues to grow.
High-speed Internet access!
IUFOMC High-speed Internet access, right next to the cardboard model of the new museum planned for IUFOMC, is something to be tried. .Cool. High-speed Internet access!. I chirped, reading the sign on the podium, knowing that this was probably a 13k connection. .A dollar a five minutes,. I added, mispokenly.
.A dollar a five minutes?. Blobbert (pronounced Blob-bert) admonished sarcastically.
.Yes, a dollar for five minutes,. I said, smarting from his verbal barb.
Although the terminal has a dreadfully slow connection, it.s nice to have, representing the only public Internet station we saw in all our travels through Roswell. We congratulate the museum for having something like this on the premises. Yet, if you plan to check your AlienZoo e-mail there, make sure you have five bucks. worth of singles handy.
Lots to get at the gift shop
The museum.s gift shop rocks. You just won.t find a more impressive collection of UFO merchandise anywhere. From keychains to garden gnomes to doormats, the place has it all. Save some extra cash for stocking up on hard-to-find books and videos. We.ll explore the store.s inventory in greater detail next week, when we.ll discuss stores like Alien Zone, Starchild, and Roswell Southwest Alien.
Good eats, enigmatic tablevinyl
After roaming through the IUFOMRC for a couple of hours, you may be a little hungry. For dinner, one of several places you could try is the Cattleman.s Steak House, at 2010 S. Main. The food there is good, the prices reasonable. A steakhouse for sure, the menu features the 24-ounce Cowboy T-Bone ($18), and the six-ounce filet mignon ($14). Zookeeper had the rib eye and a shrimp cocktail. I had the taco plate, and it was yummy. The salad bar was fresh. The bread that came with the meals was whole grain. Condiments delivered included ketchup and sour cream. The coffee cream came in hermetically sealed paper triangles. It was like GoGurt.
The restaurant.s décor has a hunting lodge kind of a feel, although my idea of a hunting lodge is not very accurate. Bull.s horns on the wall, wood paneling, and brick around the fireplace lend an ambiance of rustic charm. But what really gives it all away is the tapestry on the far wall . the college dormroom Elvis Presley-velvet, knit-between-the-dots crochet wall-hanging of two quail getting chased by a rooster. The wagon wheel chandeliers that support the electric lantern lamps. Zookeeper describes the restaurant.s environs as follows: .The paintings on the walls range the gamut of western cowboy-cowgirl rustic themes . cows, cows, more cows, a lot of cows here. A lot of mirrors there, too..
Although a commonplace of the American landscape, Cattleman.s style of vinyl tablecloth gives me pause. Is vinyl really cloth? At what degree of plasticity, if you will, does cloth cease to be cloth? So, if vinyl is not really cloth, Cattleman.s table coverings are in reality tablevinyl. I.m not sure what got me thinking about this.
As a side note, Roswell has four Sonic Drive-In restaurants. That.s one for every 12,500 persons. Phoenix has 30 Sonics, or one for every 100,000 persons.
Launderette fun . . . and scandal!
If you.re not inclined to spend the rest of your evening at UFO Space Storage . a public-storage place . or the Alcorn Academy of Dance (Did someone say Alcor?), you can guide your mothership over to 2106 S. Main, home of L&W Quality Coin-Operated Laundromat for a scandalous ride on the kiddies. choo-choo. Although the train.s engine room is a little cramped, your humble narrator still thinks the ride is worth the quarter. The train rocks. And so does the scandalously kitsch video games with greasy joysticks that make your hands smell like a cross between chocolate milk and a wrench. I totally blew up too many times playing Sega Afterburner, but I still got 5 million points, good enough for a scandalous 17th place. Blobbert gobbled his way through Ms. Pac-Man, one of his favorite games ever. .I.ve never had spectators watch me play a video game,. he said, as he smashed his way into Clyde . 40,000 scandalous points short of a first place. Blobbert could.ve taken first, I know it.
As you stylishly jet out of L&W's parking lot, you absolutely must drive over the curb. Scandal! Then take note of the Tastee Freez (scandalous spelling!), the Burger King with the scandalously slanted fiberglass outdoor table umbrellas, and the Church.s Chicken at McGaffey and Main.
No doubt, the conversation you.ll have will approximate the one we had:
| Blobbert: So how many gals did you see today? Wiggz: You mean, that were, like, hot? Blobbert: Yeah. Wiggz: Uh, like, two. Maybe. Blobbert: I saw, like& Wiggz: Hey, there.s a cop car coming. Zookeeper: No, it.s a firetruck. Wiggz: There.s a firetruck coming from & Blobbert: The cop.s to our left. Wiggz: From right to left. Blobbert: No. The cop is literally to our left. Wiggz: The cop is& Blobbert: Directly west of us. Wiggz: Next to us, to the left. Blobbert: With disco lights a-blarin.. Wiggz: He doesn.t have any disco lights a-blarin.. Blobbert: I didn.t say a-blaring. I said & preparin.. Wiggz: Yeah. So what did you say about Malcolm McLaren? Blobbert: I said that we rented the Clockwork Orange DVD, but we didn.t have a DVD player to watch it with. So, instead, we had to settle for a VHS copy of Tank Girl. [Dramatic pause.] Oh, I.m getting my McLaren.s mixed up. |
Indeed, Blobbert mixed up Malcolm McLaren with Malcolm McDowell. And somehow it all started with a scandalous mention of Church.s Chicken.