Music courtesy of the X Files

I witnessed two anomalies in the early morning hours as a teenager in the mid to late 70s that were seared into my memory, both as bizarre and surreal as the other. They occurred a year or so apart near my hometown of Abilene, Kansas, one to the east, about 5 miles, the other to the west, maybe 10 miles. Oh, if I only had my iPhone then!

Unearthly Harvest?

In my junior year, I took a summer job with the alfalfa mills next to Eisenhower Center and Old Abilene Town. Most residents of Abilene were well aware of the alfalfa mills on the southeast side of town. Every year in the late spring through the summertime, the distinctive aroma of roasting freshly cut alfalfa would permeate throughout the town. The mill produced alfalfa pellets for livestock and the pet industry. I operated one of two of the massive yellow alfalfa cutters. These monsters were like an oversized combine, except they would also finely mince the alfalfa and shoot it into the bend directly behind the driver’s cab. We drove these behemoths all over the countryside, up and down dirt roads along old two-lane highways, cutting one field after another. By the time we cut the last field, the first was ready to be harvested again.

Harley sometimes drove the yellow semi trucks to pick up loads of alfalfa from the cutters, but this particular night, he was assigned to the second cutter while I, of course, would be operating the other. Harley was quite the character with a know-it-all type of personality. He must have been in his late 60s or early 70s and had a noticeable skin condition. With a weathered face, he was never clean-shaven, always a light gray stubble, and he had a flat top with white hair. His overalls looked as though they had seen plenty of wear but no soap, and they were perfect to accommodate his large protruding belly exposing his bright white skin. He had a raspy voice and occasionally asked me to hook him up with a girl; I'm not sure if he was actually serious. My standard answer was, “I’ll see what I can do, Harley!”

It was a humid, cloudless summer night with a breeze now and then, which served as temporary relief from the heat. We were cutting a field west of Chapman immediately below Indian Hill Cemetary down a narrow dirt lane at the first farmhouse on the south side of Highway 40 on the banks of the Smokey Hill River. We were cutting through our long twelve shift, 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., closing in on quitting time as we entered the early morning hours. Our cutters had become full, so we pulled over next to each other and turned off our engines and lights to begin the wait for the semi-truck to arrive to unload. As we sat inside the cabs of our cutters, Harley and I heard what sounded like a sledgehammer pounding on metal coming from across the river, maybe a 1/4 mile away. We both climbed down from our machines and stood in front of them, starring into the darkness in the direction of the loud clanging, questioning each other as to what in the world it might be on a weeknight in the early morning hours. Just as we finished talking, a bright light the size of a street light appeared just above a tree line across the river and began to move up and down. It then began to move back and forth along the tree line, sometimes dipping below the tree tops. It was the most bizarre thing that either of us had ever seen. I wasn't fearful, just astonished at what was happening. Now Harley, on the other hand, seemed to be on edge. I enjoyed pushing Harley’s buttons, so I put my hands next to my mouth to cast my voice and hollered, “Hey!” Harley instantly freaked and belted out at me, “Don’t do that, don't do that!” Eventually, the object faded away, and the tree line went silent. The morning sun lit up the field, and neither of us could explain the strange events we encountered. So what do you think? Was this an unearthly craft, a UFO, or did we inhale too much alfalfa dust? We both heard the bizarre metal clanks and saw a brightly lit object in flight dancing among the treetops. You decide.

Spent Beer

It had been approximately two years since the event in the alfalfa field, and I had just graduated high school. My future weighed heavily on my mind. Mom saw talent in my funny little drawings and urged me to pursue graphic design as a career choice so I enrolled at Salina Technical College which was the launching pad of my career. The Marines was the immediate career choice for one of my close friends Mike. He left for San Diego immediately after high school. I had another close friend that I had known since maybe sixth grade or so. His name was Matt but I nicknamed him Bird because he had a bit of a long nose like a beak and his last name sounded similar to a bird’s squawk, Burkhart, by slightly tweaking the pronunciation, to Baa-GART, along with belting it out quickly, stupid, I know, but I was good at it! Bird also had a long blonde crest that naturally parted slightly to the left of the center from a cowlick that stopped just over the brow. Bird was not offended at all by his nickname; he quite often played along with it and would blurt out his version of a bird squawk, “Ba-geek,” while in mid-sentence. He possessed a low-key, go-with-the-flow type of personality. He belonged to a flightless bird species, so to make it easy on himself, he chose to drive. It was a long beige 1965 or 64 Ford Galaxy with a white top. There was something about that strange-looking car that seemed to fit his persona perfectly. It was as if it was manufactured just for Bird! At the time, I drove a 1968 Chevy green Nova with a 350 engine, not nearly as long as Bird’s Ford Galaxy. It was in this car, the Nova, that we witnessed the anomaly. We had met up later that Friday night, bought some beer, and cruised the main drag, listening to my 8-track player blasting the tunes with the windows down. Hey, we were cool! We met up with some other friends at the Alco parking lot, so we headed to the pool hall just down the street on Buckeye and played several pool games. I’m boasting, but I was a pretty good pool player. I got a lot of practice playing with Mike, the friend who went into the Marines, and we used to play pool there quite often. It was getting close to midnight, and the bar was closing. Bird and I hopped in my car and headed south on Buckeye, one of the main drags. Then we turned onto Highway 40 toward Solomon, a small town about 10 miles to the west. We drove around in the country because we still had beer to drink and didn't want to be in town with it. The time crept up on us. It was somewhere around 3:00 in the morning. We were in an area of the country called Sands Springs, between Abilene and Solomon. Nature was calling, and it was time to offload spent beer, so I drove down a sanded road and pulled over. When we got out with each of our doors open, I noticed the distant, faint glow of the Abilene lights to the east and the light of a plane that seemed to be coming our direction. As we stood there doing our business gazing up at the stars I noticed the moving light that I thought was a plane closing in on us. Then within seconds, it was upon us, barely clearing the tree tops along the east side of the road. It was enormous, with several multiple-colored lights. It was difficult to make out the shape, however later, Bird said he thought it was triangular. As it crossed the road, a spotlight lit up, moving as if searching for something in the pasture. What’s really crazy is it glided by in complete silence, no sounds of propulsion whatsoever and we were just a few yards away. While this was happening, Bird and I stood on either side of the car, continuing to offload, questioning each other repeatedly, “What is that? What the hell is that?” When we finished, we hopped in the car and attempted to follow it as far as possible before disappearing into the night sky. I was so astonished at what I saw I even told my parents the next day. They were unhappy with the late hours, but they seemed very interested about what we saw, especially Dad. Was this a craft with aliens from a distant planet? I have no idea; who knows? What I am sure of is we most definitely saw an UFO!