Back in the 1960s, an incident occurred that might be of interest to the aficionados of space travel. Now, Walker County with its county seat, Jasper, is northwest of Birmingham and is primarily known for having been the home of Taluah Bankhead’s family. Actually by the ’60s, Walker County had become the site of played-out coal mines, a fleeing population, and shrinking towns.
No doubt the reader will remember that, during those years, Alabama was infiltrated by the media, both foreign and domestic, covering the racial problems and incidents. Strangely enough, these people didn’t cover an event that took place in Walker County near the Strangelove Coal Mine. The reason now muted about is that the Kennedys and Johnson had enough on their plates what with the goings-on in Birmingham to pay any attention to Walker County. The solution to the problem was that the F.B.I., C.I.A, and any number of other acronymic governmental organizations, put the kibosh on any news coming out of Walker County. At least this was the explanation I heard on my next trip back home. Remember that all those people who had emigrated from Walker County still had kith and kin living there who kept them posted on the news. My information trickled down from these sources.
One night at about four, there was a very loud noise up near the moldering remains of the Strangelove Coal Mine, which was located at the head of Strangelove Hollow. Down the creek about a mile is the town of Sweet Home, whose men had worked at the mine. Actually, it is more a hamlet than a town. The people there were knocked out of their deep dreams of peace by the noise. As they could neither see a fire nor hear anything, they decided to go back to bed. They probably didn’t call the Law because those hills and hollows were peppered with moonshine stills.
The next morning, some of the men from Sweet Home drove up to the source of the noise. There lying along side of the mine-till was what looked like a stainless steel railroad passenger car but 1½ times as long and with no windows. Walking around was a bunch of humanoid creatures. The biggest difference was the color their skin…red. Not flag-red or sunburn-red but hues varying from maroon to claret. They were dressed in something somewhere between a Speedo and skivvies. Later, the men discovered the aliens had several evolutionary adaptations. These were for living in the ferocious wind and sand storms of their planet. The most notable was a transparent secondary eyelid beneath the first. Also, they had little flaps over their ears, which they could open and close at will. Their feet were a minimum of six inches wide. The aliens’ nasal hair could be described only as magnificent. In fact, it looked like a tail of a jack rabbit.
But, to get back to my story. The creatures from the silver thing approached the Alabamians with their hands stretched out and palms up…not in surrender but in greeting. Their headman stepped forward and, in a passable English, asked, “How far to the Mojave Desert?” The natives explained it was a far piece culturally, geographically, and meterologically. The aliens said that they were from the fourth planet from the sun and were on an expedition to colonize the Mojave. This navigational error killed that canard of visitors from other planets having technology superior to our own.
Of course, the rocket had been followed by the men inside Cheyenne Mountain down in Colorado Springs. After the rocket had hit near Sweet Home, Alabama, the Security establishment just knew that, with all the other more fruitful targets available, this rocket had no hostile intentions. Nevertheless, the Army at Ft. Benning, the several rocket types at Huntsville, the Air Force in Montgomery, plus several plane-loads of experts in Washington were notified, and probably even the Navy in Pensacola. By the time that first-comers of these contingents had arrived, Southern hospitality had already come into play. Some of the men from Sweet Home had gone home to collect styrofoam cups, ice, and lots of moonshine.
Now, that liquor might gag you at first, but later it loosens the tongue mightily. Soon, the Martian tongues were just flapping. They told not only all but also a little bit more.
About forty years before, one of their nuclear power plants had blown up, scattering radioactive dust from hell to breakfast all over their planet. Twenty years later, they had discovered that a third of the boys born since then were Gay as blue-suede shoes. Conditions had worsened since then…worsened to the extent that the Martians wanted to export a least some of their Gay brothers. Of course, the leaders weren’t so blunt. They had let it be known that “they wanted to share the benefits of their civilization with more benighted planets. That all the colonists were Gay was merely a statistical aberration. The rocket had been the first of a planned flotilla.” After this explanation, Simon Brewster, never known for his reticence, asked, “Do you mean to say that you all are a bunch of queer Martians? God knows that we’ve got enough of your sort here but not in Walker County. They all live in Birmingham.”
The first of the government forces armed to the teeth had arrived. The tanks and some of the artillery were still en route. Evidently the military were going to put up a Godzilla- defense. Also, one of the aliens was ailing. No problem. The Army had sent not only a medical evacuation company but also a postmortem examination team. While the patient was wasting away, others were coming down sick. Everything possible was being done to save them, if not for humanity, at least for science. Anthropologists were madly recording anything the dying men could tell about life on Mars. By sundown, each and every one of the Gay Martians had gone to a better world. Why, no one knew. Later an M.D., a specialist in body fluids in Denver, theorized that the Martians had evolved during the many millennia to live in their arid Mars and just had not been able to survive all that humidity in Walker County.
By dawn the next day, all the representatives of the government had slipped away taking the remains of the space ship and those of the Martians to be distributed amongst laboratories up North. That morning, agents of the government assembled the citizens of Sweet Home and promised them fat checks if they never talked about what they had seen the previous day. But, they should’ve checked the barn: the horse was already long gone. Nevertheless, that’s why there are more per-capita wide-screen TVs, un-patched overalls, and late-model pick-ups in Sweet Home than anywhere in the nation.
Warning! You should remember that this information I heard only fourth hand and maybe even fifth. While I never saw these events, I have recorded accurately what I heard.
© 24 Nov 2013
About the Author
Although I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18the, 2012.
Although I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression. No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused by that era. No matter we survived. I am talking about my sister, brother, and I. There are two things that set me apart from people. From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost any subject. Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.
After the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver. Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar. Through our early life we traveled extensively in the mountain West. Carl is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian. Our being from nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience. We went so many times that we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming. Now those happy travels are only memories.
I was amongst the first members of the memoir writing class. While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feedback. Also just trying to improve your writing helps no end.
Carl is now in a nursing home, I don’t drive any more. We totter on.
