Chapter 31
Chapter 31
The X Files
Back in 1980, I had a 25-year-old friend named Kerry who was employed as a mechanical engineer. As well, I had a 38-year old girlfriend named Melanie. Now while the relationship with Mel appeared to be corrupt, it too served a purpose on the path of least resistance. While most kids with my type of upbringing are prone to be vulnerable to some of the negative forces of the world, Melanie’s family adopted me as one of their own. On what amounts to hundreds of occasions, I was a chauffeur and / or buss driver for her children. I guess it was kind of a karmic thing, I was participating in what appeared to be an “almost” normal family.
Melanie was one of these people that just operated on a different frequency. I saw her talking to a friend once, hold out her finger, and a dragon fly just land on it. It appeared to be a pet of hers. She also had a heard of box turtles in her back yard that she had snatched from the jaws of death as they slowly waddled across busy streets. Before mowing her lawn she would open a can of dog food, and tap the can with a spoon. It was like a scene from a horror movie, all the turtles would come to the porch to eat, well out of harms way while she mowed.
Melanie had two kids that she would jump through the whoops for as well. The kids never missed a practice or were they ever left behind when it came to the latest equipment for their sport of choice. She was a good mother. We all remain friends today.
The Device
As it goes, I had me another vision. We were going to build a fake UFO. In technology, it would be far beneath what Kerry was used to dealing with, but it worked.
We assembled our alien craft using a cardboard box, two 6-volt batteries, a Q-beam spotlight, a flash from a camera, and the rotating red beacon off a kid’s fireman helmet. We needed a huge weather balloon and a 120 cubic foot tank of helium as well. Kerry and I sat down and calculated out the size of the balloon we needed and how much helium would lift the 8 pound package. For control, we had what seemed to be an endless collection of radio transmitters and servos from all of my failed attempts to fly radio-controlled airplanes. It seems that dyslexia and radio-controlled airplanes don’t mix well, either.
Kerry and I went to work, using aluminum foil for contact points on the remote servos and setting up all of the control actuators. We hooked the batteries up in a series circuit for 12 volts to run the spotlight. We broke the switch out of the kid’s fireman helmet and mounted the beacon on the bottom of the box. A hole was cut in the side of the box for our camera flash, and it was time for a systems check. To quote my all-time hero and fellow balloon enthusiast, Lawn Chair Larry would proclaim, “All systems are nominal.” (Larry ascended to 16,000 feet in a lawn chair tied to approximately 42 weather balloons.)
We drove somewhere in the depths of downtown Houston to get both the balloon and the tank of helium. The tank fit perfectly, lying in the back of my 200-mile-to-the-quart–of-oil 1971 aluminum block Vega.
While the UFO was under construction, the helium came in handy under my new CB handle, the Munchkin. We had a CB war going on between the Channel 14’rs ( our team) and the Channel 3’rs. I needed an alias, and the helium provided just that. You may not believe this. but some people on the CB radio out there wanted to hurt me.
Kerry and I put the finishing touches on our project, and the perfect night arrived. The overcast sky was at about 1,000 feet, with no wind but cool temperatures. With that kind of cloud cover, it was a dark night on the stretch of road we’d selected. We took our huge weather balloon and tied to the back of another comrade’s car. We transported the package to a field next to Highway 518 in Friendswood. A simple systems check, and we were ready for launch. We anchored it in a field with about 300 feet of fishing line.
I should note that the transport from the garage to the field was quite interesting. Being new at this, none of us thought to wait until we got to the field to fill the balloon with helium, a minor detail to be noted for future launches.
Kerry, Mel, and I pulled to the side of Highway 518 north of 2351 and parked where we had anchored our baby. We stood beside our car looking up while the Q-beam spotlight was shining down. We could control all the lights at will. One car stopped with us, then another. Before long, about 30 cars were parked on the side of Highway 518 looking at this UFO. We’d make it shine the spotlight, stop, flash, and rotate the beacon. It would do whatever we needed it to do. It was actually functioning as designed. This type of functionality aloft was new to me, and I liked it.
At one point so many cars were stopped we shut it off for a while. It was getting too much attention. But the highlight of the night came when a guy in a pick-up parked next to us and walked over with a battery-powered spotlight of his own. He aimed it up at the UFO, and we responded back with a single flash. He started flashing his spotlight, and we signaled back with ours. So I’m standing there talking to this guy with the radio control unit under my jacket when he says to me, “I think I’m communicating with it.”
With as straight a face as possible, I replied, “Yeah, I think you are, too.”
Eventually we had a huge crowd and so many spotlights were pointing up that the balloon was visible, and the gig was up. The guy that thought he was communicating with it exclaimed, “It’s a damn balloon.”
I said to him, “You mean this is all a joke?” I pretended to me mad, and we drove away. I guess the whole event lasted about 45 minutes.
(The above material is registered and copyright protected, 2007, James Heffernan)
UFO Video Below, You Can Believe It
