Remarkable Sightings in Roswell

From Carlsbad, we headed north to Roswell. In addition to the notoriety Roswell has for being the site of the famous UFO incident in 1947, several people had told us that there are other very interesting museums there, so we decided it was worth at least a one day investigation. Not quite fully rested, and hearing forecasts for evening temperatures in the teens again, we decided to aim for another State Park, this time Bottomless Lakes. On the way, we passed through a number of small towns, and the larger Artesia. It seemed a pleasant enough place, and the center for the Pecan industry that covered acres and acres of land on either side of town. There were well established orchards (farms.? Pecanneries?) with rows and rows of tall spreading trees, and a number of areas that had recently been planted with new saplings. Exactly why here I don’t know…the right temperatures and rainfall…the infrastructure and market…family traditions? Anyway, it was nice to see an area that wasn’t ranch or desert or rock. We had taken our time leaving Carlsbad, so it was getting on in the afternoon when we approached Roswell. At first we planned to check out the Park first, by taking the back road through Dexter, but the sight and smell of large stock yards and feedlots kept us from making the turn off the highway for the shortcut to the lakes. So first we cruised town a bit, and saw aliens everywhere. Close Encounters, X-Files, E.T., and their relatives, all have made Roswell, and UFO’s, and visitors from space, quite an industry, and whole sections of the downtown were cashing in on the little green men. Colonel Sanders had an alien in his parking lot, the Wal-Mart had aliens painted on their building, everyone it seemed had been infected by the fever. Wondering what we had gotten ourselves into, but realizing we were miles away from the next suitable stopping point, we went back out of town on 380 east towards the park. Again Roswell had two definite residential areas; the upscale, modern american homes and lots, some adobe and truly south-western, some Victorian, some 60’s modern; and then your other side of the tracks, adobe and tin, trailers and cinderblock, dusty yards and barking dogs. The Latinos are fully integrated in this part of the world, Spanish is heard as often as English, shops and markets all have Mexican products and food, and the political posters show that the Latino vote is powerful, with the majority of people running for Sherriff, or judge, or other elected positions, being more often a Garcia than a Smith. But still, the working class, and the poor side of town, is predominantly Mexican.

Outside of town, we passed several large ranches, a number of businesses and RV parks taking advantage of lower real estate prices, and then a long hill up to a higher plateau of land. The country side was pretty barren and dry again, so we wondered about these lakes we were aiming towards. A side road led us several more miles back into nothing, and then another sign marked the entrance to the park. The park road dipped quickly down into a canyon and river bottom, that was much more sand than water. Oh my, what are we going to find, we thought, as we wound along the lowlands towards the campgrounds. We passed by several tiny little lakes (they’d be ponds back home) with people with fishing poles, and a few people dry camping (no power or water). Eventually we made it to the main area, and found a fairly large body of water, tucked under a high cliff, with a series of buildings and an observation tower along one side of the lake. At the gate, the camp ground host seemed a bit gruff, and even though most of the sites were empty, he wanted to assign us our spot, sight/site unseen. A few minutes of haggling resulted in him letting us choose our own location, as long as we didn’t take a “pull-through.” As if we really would want to park in the canyon between two big rigs. We circled the lot, found a quiet corner up on the hill, and decided it wasn’t all that bad after all. We did a bit of late afternoon laundry, and the hot, dry winds had everything dry in an hour. Dixie and I walked a bit, and we watched a beautiful sunset, the red bluffs lighting up nicely in the rays of the setting sun. We met some folks in an A-liner, some others in a Casita, a father / daughter traveling in a Scamp (fibreglass trailers are everywhere) and in general soon felt right at home. We had power, so when the mercury dropped again to well below freezing, we turned on the little electric heater, and had a comfortable and restful night’s sleep. The only slight disturbance was a low, permeating odor, sewage maybe, or sulphur springs perhaps. It wasn’t until the next day, when the wind again came from the south, that we realized we were smelling the stink of concentrated cattle, and impending death, wafting its way ten miles on the winds from the yards of Dexter.

The next morning we headed into town, and made our first stop at the large convention and tourist center. The folks in there couldn’t have been friendlier and more helpful. We learned that the RMAC (Roswell Museum and Art Center) was right next door, and one of four free museums in town. So while Donna took the first tour of the museum, I came back and settled in to a comfortable chair. Even though the signs said no dogs allowed, the ladies inside said, we make the rules here, and of course Dixie could come in. So plugged in and charging, I logged onto to their free WiFi, with Dixie sleeping on the cool tile floor. We also had our pictures taken that appeared on the Time Warp Alert, and all in all had a great time. But not as good as Donna. She came back beaming from the museum, and couldn’t say enough about the diversity of interesting pieces they had inside. Trading places, the dog slept on as I took my turns around the museum. And it was remarkable. Coincidently, ironically, or maybe appropriately, Roswell was the place where Robert Hutchings Goddard did much of his pioneering work in rocketry, and the preliminaries to space travel. Goddard was born in 1882, and as a teenager read H.G. Wells new work, “The War of the Worlds,” and soon became captivated by the thoughts of making a device that had the “possibility of ascending to Mars.” He followed his dreams and passion to Clark College, where he was a teacher and tinkerer and writer. A 1919 paper of his expounded his belief that a rocket could reach the moon, making him the center of public ridicule for his outlandish ideas. He received a large grant from the army to pursue his work on rocketry, but had little initial success. He then became less public in his work, and began delving into pioneering experiments with liquid oxygen and gasoline as the fuel. In 1926, he had his first successful launch, which spurred him on to trying larger, more explosive tests. The loud bangs in New England’s rural countryside made him unpopular with the neighbors, but attracted the attention of Charles Lindbergh. From there, he decided the wide open spaces and better weather around Roswell were more conducive to his work, so he headed out west and spent the last 15 years of his life working on the intricacies involved in controlled rocketry. Wernher von Braun referred to Goddard’s work as “the most amazing lone-wolf development program in the history of technology.” His final years were spent developing specialized rockets to assist heavily laden aircraft during takeoff. He died in 1945, and was laid to rest on the day Japan surrendered. The museum has an authentic recreation of his work shop at the Mescalero Ranch, and has a number of the artefacts and documents and photos of his work. Eventually, and mostly posthumously, he was awarded 214 patents, a one million dollar settlement from NASA for the use (and infringement) of his ideas, and finally a Congressional Medal for his pioneering work. It was a fascinating start, but only a small part of the museum.

The RMAC also was displaying “West of Beyond: The Rogers and Mary Ellen Aston Collection of the American West.” This was a beautifully displayed collection of articles, weapons, clothing, photographs, bits and pieces, from the Spanish, Mexican, Native American, Cowboy, and military presence in the Southwest. Cases and rooms were filled with beautiful pieces, and the scope and variety of the articles were boggling. Another room had a series of prints that were illustrations from books published over the past 100 years. There was an exhibition of Contemporary Desert Photography, and another of works by 20th century New Mexican artists. There were exhibits of work from their permanent collections, and also works by a number of local Artists in Residence. Ted Kuykendall, whose photographs were surreal and dark, and Luis Jimenez, who did both voluptuous pastel and pencil drawings, and amazing, large polychrome fiberglass sculptures, were recently deceased past resident artists, whose work was featured in large retrospective exhibits. Finally, there was the works of a fabric artist, Janice Jakielski, whose show was entitled “Far from Near, an exercise in tempered communication.” It was a collection of amazingly intricate cloth headpieces and bonnets and mufflers, interconnected symbolically or mechanically, and just wonderful to behold, and to hold and wear, as she invited gentle interaction with some of the pieces. All in all, Donna and I both left the museum, exhausted and overwhelmed with sensory overload. What a nice way to be stuffed, with no indigestion.

We were however, physically hungry by then, but unfortunately the two authentic restaurants that had been recommended were between lunch and dinner, so we settled for a family owned, but ultimately, very middle of the road, Mexican place. It was all right, but we left craving the real thing. Fortunately, our waitress was new to the place, but had worked for years at Popo’s, one of the places we had hoped to visit. She said they’re open from 11 til 2, then 4:30 on, and try the number one special, it’s the best. We returned to the lakes, and took a long walk on the nature trail. The Lakes are actually a series of seven filled sinkholes, that aren’t actually bottomless, but range from 23 to 90 feet deep. The largest, Lea Lake, that we were camped next to, is spring fed at a rate of 9 million gallons a day. Yes, it’s dry around here, but when there’s a chink in the aquifer’s armour, huge amounts of water can appear, seemingly out of nowhere. We had another quiet night, and decided to spend another day in Roswell, having lunch at Popo’s, visiting the highly recommended Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, and if time allowed, paying our dues at the International UFO Museum and Research Center.

As Meatloaf said, “Two out of three ain’t bad.” Popo’s was great. The service was fast, the décor in the old building was understated and simple, the tables and washrooms clean, and the food was wonderful. The number 1 special was an enchilada, a burrito, a green chilli rilleno, beans, rice, and salad, with a sopapillo for desert, all for $5.95. It was so good and filling, I had to eat some of Donna’s rice and beans, and we were just able to finish the one more sopapillo we ordered extra. Sopapillos are basically Mexican donuts, little pillows of dough, deep fried, and served with honey. Finger lickin’ good. After a bit of shopping at the Sally Ann (blue and purple gortex windbreaker and new polka dot bathing suit for $3.00 each (both for Donna, thank you very much), and a new shower curtain for the ladies washroom at the campground) we ventured down to the new home of Anderson Museum. It’s housed in a newly built large warehouse of a building, metal clad walls and roof, set under some lovely flowering trees. The utilitarian exterior was immediately overwhelmed by the creative wild art that was inside.

Roswell for the past 50 years has had a very active artist’s in residence program, with the workshops and annual stipend attracting numbers of artists every year. Hard economic times has led to the evaporation of the funds for stipends, but artists can still apply to be part of the program, and get their lodging and studio space provided. One of the quirky features of the museum was they had, scattered among the work, photographs of each years group of artists, shot and posed as they chose. The nineties featured a big ol harley hawg as the center piece of several shots, the sixties had family groups including gleefully naked, frolicking little children. There were photos of another couple, first as young artists in Paris in the thirties, then middle aged residents in the sixties, and finally happy, old geezers in current photos. The museum featured over 400 works by over 300 of the artists who had been part of the program, and it was again overwhelming. Yes, of course there were a number of things that seemed trite, or dated, or too cute, but for the most part, I found it inspiring and exciting to see how many different wonderful ways peoples’ ideas and visions had been manifested. In the past, modern art almost always left me cold, but that all changed one afternoon in Havana, when I explored the National museum there, and was mind blown by the quality and creativity of modern Cuban artists over the past 60 years. Whoa, so this is what it’s all bout. Artists expressing themselves in a way, and with a freedom, that wasn’t allowed in other forms. Although Roswell wasn’t quite up to Cuba’s standards, it held it’s own very nicely in presenting a myriad of work that constantly spoke loud and clear, hey look at me, and think about things a little differently, and try a new perspective for a change. Donna, being an artist in residence herself for two years in Twillingate, Newfoundland, was equally moved, and somewhat melancholy that she had been away from her art for so many years. Maybe this is the spark that will again ignite her creative flow, or keep her artfully playing with her camera and kitchen knives. The work that varied from golf bag sharks swimming high above you, to knitted sweaters and tapestries, to oil paintings, wood sculptures, collages and massive assemblages, was nicely set off by the piano playing of a young lad in one of the back galleries. He started with a Scott Joplin rag, later veered into a Bach cantata, and ended with a Paul Hornsby (?) and the Range number. When I finally found him, and went over and thanked him, he seemed a little embarrassed and surprised. It seems his piano at home is being repaired, and the museum was letting him practice there for the time being. So what I thought was intentional live music provided for our benefit, was actually just young john Doe, working on his chops. But it was still perfectly wonderful for the occasion.

After leaving there, we were both again feeling full and empty, but Donna convinced me that I should still go to the UFO Museum, housed in a large old movie theatre down town. You get little green oval tags to wear when inside, and several creative patrons had put them over the heads on the wheel chair access parking signs in the parking lot, so the aliens starting appearing even before I paid my five dollar entrance fee. Inside, I walked through the now rather tired displays of the events surrounding the 1947 incident. Made up of photos and newspaper articles, and signed testimonials, the main part of the museum presents convincing evidence that something very unusual crashed in the desert, and the eyewitness accounts that described alien beings, in a otherworldly vehicle, were immediately and emphatically quashed by the military authorities that rapidly took over the scene and remains. In spite of the government’s best efforts to hide what really happened, whatever it was, people still want to believe that UFO’s do exist, and we have been visited by intelligent life from outer space. Other displays, worthy of a good high school science fair, covered more walls with info about space craft, IFO’s, and related topics, and of course Scully and Muldar, and the X-Files made appearances on several posters, but in general, the five dollars we donated to each of the earlier free museums, seemed money better spent than the five dollars I had to pay to complete my Roswellian experience (or so I thought!).

We returned for one last night at Bottomless Lakes, and left a bit of laundry on the little red chair overnight. We forgot where we were, but the next morning we heard a small whirring sound, and quietly getting up, we found a little pink alien, outside his craft, bundled up in one of my socks. Telepathically, he told us he had been attracted by the red chair, but had run out of fuel, and landed here. We gave him a drop of honey in his fuel tank, which would last him for several nano years, and sent him on his way to further adventures. He wished us well on ours, and we all packed to get on the road again, with plans to someday return to this special place in the New Mexican desert.