March 25, 2005 – The Journey to Roswell

March 25, 2005 – The Journey to Roswell

It’s Sunday July 26, 1999 and my wife “I” and I crawl out of bed at our condo in the Ft Marcy Inn in Santa Fe about mid-morning as I recall. The drive from Needles, California to Santa Fe, the day before had taken its toll. There is a feeling about a city like Santa Fe. It’s the same feeling I have about El Paso. It’s a place with its feet firmly in the past. I feel as if I’m living at some time in the past when I’m in most any Southwestern city. It’s strong in Santa Fe, perhaps because the city flaunts its early 20th century look and feel. If you replaced all the cars in the city with Model T’s you would be back in that era. What brings you into the modern world is radio and television beaming sights and sounds about what’s happening in major capital in the U.S. and abroad.

The first Sunday in Santa Fe, I enjoy that sense of venturing back in time. My wife “I” and I are walking from our Condo down to the city center. The feeling I get being in this place reminds me of being six years old again and my father has just brought my grandmother and me up from Mississippi to El Paso and I see the desert, the mountains, the buildings that look like something out of the old west. I was impressed as a six-year old. And today, it impresses me still but now because I’m venturing back in time revisiting the world I remembered as a young child. The other trappings of Santa Fe are the Indians making a living selling their wares to tourists on the sidewalks surrounding the plaza sitting in front of the Palace of the Governors. It’s a city block of green imprisoned on all sides by shops selling art—R.C. Gorman original works and prints abound, and souvenir shops selling every imaginable trinket to entice the tourist: howling coyotes with neckerchiefs, moccasins, the Indian god Cocopeli—the mythical musician and magician of Anasazi, Zuni, Hopi and Navajo Indians, knives, tee shirts, and jewelry—the one trinket my wife “I” cannot resist. We buy a Cocopeli and a ring in one of the stores then resume our slow amble around the Plaza allowing the stream of tourist making the same sojourn to carry us along.

After a leisurely time around the plaza, we catch some breakfast and make our way to the outlet shopping mall we passed on the way into town, trading travel by foot for travel by car. I buy a pair of ASICS running shoes, the only kind that fit my feet. I’ll break them in running the Paseo de Peralta, the circular road ringing the capital and city center in the days we’re in town. Once we have our fill of shopping we retire to the condo and spend the rest of the day reading. I’m beginning Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens, by James Davidson.

The following Monday, “I” and I decided to drive to Roswell. We were once, both into UFO lore, reading just about all the books that had good UFO stories including Incident at Exeter and The Interrupted Journey by John G. Fuller and Passport to Magonia: On Ufos, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds by Jacques Vallee. We had never been to the UFO Mecca and our journey to Roswell would make that a reality. It’s not a short trip, 192 miles from city center to city center and it would take a good four hours as we would learn after leaving Santa Fe heading south on US-285, a long two-lane black top that sporadically widened into four lanes or into a passing lane for one side or the other along its length. Four hours later, we arrived in Roswell, a sleepy farming and ranching community that time seems to have left behind in the 1950s.

We find the International Museum and Research Center at 104 N Main Street—Main Street is US-285 through Roswell. It’s an interesting place filled with nearly every conceivable piece of UFO memorabilia, as well as displays and information about the Roswell Incident. The story is that a rancher named W.W. "Mack" Brazel found metal debris that appeared to be the wreckage of an UFO. The U.S. Air Force was called in and shortly after arriving the local Air Force Information Officer issued a press release stating that the wreckage of a crashed disc had been recovered. The release was almost immediately retracted but the damage had been done. The world had been told that a UFO had crashed in Roswell, something the local believed occurred. However, most of the witnesses who saw the debris and the bodies of aliens reported to be recovered at the crash site are no longer around to testify as to what they really saw.

The visit was anticlimactic, as it neither made us more convinced one way of the other regarding the validity of the incident. But like sites of religious revelations, Roswell has become the place all true believers come to. No longer true believers we had come. We left after a lunch of burgers and fries and spent another four hours getting back to Santa Fe, where Southwestern art and cuisine replaces myths as a draw. After resting for an hour or two after our return journey, we partook of the cuisine and called it a day.