Summer

An equation is right when it becomes simple.

—Albert Einstein

It was a warm summer night, long ago—1951 to be exact. It was the kind of night that was so still, you could hear your heart pounding in your chest, and so hot, it almost took your breath away. I stood quietly and listened to the crickets chirping to one another with their usual litany of sounds, and I found myself sweating from the June Sacramento heat. My arms felt sticky and wet like I had just stepped out of a sauna. The place was Antelope, California, a sleepy little farming community about fifteen miles from Sacramento. I was six years old and spending the summer on my grandparents' ten-acre farm.

The serenity and peacefulness of the farm drew me in, even at that early age. There was something about being outside with nature that seemed to direct my life. My grandparents raised some cattle and had milk cows, chickens, pigs, a couple of horses, and hundreds of turkeys. There were large almond and walnut orchards and many fruit trees. My grandmother, who I called Nonnie, also had a vegetable and flower garden. Sissy and Puggy, their two Pekinese dogs, were my friends while I was there, and I loved playing with them.

Down the road from the farm was the train station. It was really a tiny general store owned by Ed and Lucielle Foote, who also ran the railroad station. I loved to hear the freight trains rolling through Antelope, especially in the middle of the night. I would think of the hobos who rode the trains and wonder what kind of life it would be to just ride the rails. It sounded like fun. I remember thinking that tomorrow I would ride down to the train station with my grandpa to get a Grapette soda and talk to the hobos when the train stopped at the station. The hobos usually rode in the open boxcars, and they enjoyed talking to me, although it made my grandpa and Ed pretty nervous. I did not understand then about the ways of the world. I was fearless, as nothing in my six years of living had ever scared me. But now I was brought back from my thoughts by a sound near the pump house. The time was three in the morning. Little did I know when I followed the sound that night, something so phenomenal was about to occur that it would change the course of my life forever.

Before getting to that, though, let's go back in time to the early 1950s. World War II had been over for just a short time, and the country was starting to recover from the hardships that had been placed on people during the war. It was a simple, more gentle time. But in post World War II Sacramento, times were hard. In most American families, dads went to work each day and moms stayed home and raised the children. In my case, both of my parents had to work, so I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. Also, my mom was pregnant with my brother, who would be born on July 12 of that year.

Farming was still a productive way of life as you moved from the cities into the country. We lived down by the Sacramento River then, in a town named Broderick. We lived there until I was five years old, when my parents were able to afford the house payment on a little house in one of the suburbs of Sacramento. Rock 'n' roll had just been introduced to the current generation of tweens and teens, and our collective parents and grandparents thought we were going to hell in a handbasket. People who could afford it were booking flights on the new fledgling airlines, and some began learning how to fly small two-seater aircraft. My uncle had his pilot's license and his own airplane, and he would take me flying sometimes. I loved soaring over the rooftops and across the terrain that was mostly country and mountains.

Television had just been invented, and only families with means could afford to have one. No one in our family had one yet, and we would not get one for several years. I spent a lot of time in the mobile library, checking out mostly science fiction novels. I was already an avid reader at six years old. I loved to read; it took me away to faraway places. Also, there was no space program yet.

You may remember that in 1947, Orson Welles broadcast The War of the Worlds on the radio. The story was about Martians invading Earth and taking over the planet. Even though it was announced before the broadcast and during the broadcast several times that it was not real, people believed it was really happening. Panic ensued, and many cities in the United States experienced chaos. Because it was unfamiliar to most people, except in science fiction novels, the idea of beings from another planet was terrifying.

Since flying had been introduced for recreational travel, the aeronautical industry began to grow. Returning soldiers were accepted to college by way of the GI Bill, which paid soldiers for their college education. Many majored in engineering and aeronautics, and they found an expanding and prosperous industry to work in when they graduated. From this industry, our space program grew.

Also in 1947, over a town in southern New Mexico, an incident occurred that would change the course of history in the United States and our planet—an incident few people even heard of until many years later. The town was Roswell, and I was only two years old at the time.

I do not know if it has ever been thoroughly established whether there was one spacecraft or two, but it has been established that there was a crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft on the desert floor on July 2, 1947, although the official explanation at first was a downed weather balloon. Later in the mid-1990s, when people started actively investigating the incident, the military said that it was not an extraterrestrial craft but experimental dummies that the army had launched for testing. Their report is that the alleged ET bodies were really these dummies. Of course, most people in the United States do not believe that report.

Since that time, the army has admitted that there was a crash of a flying saucer that night. It has been speculated that there was one spacecraft that got hit by lightning during a terrible storm. Others speculate that two spacecraft collided with each other because the lightning had damaged their propulsion systems and they could not maneuver. Either story is possible. At any rate, debris was strewn over several miles in two places about twenty or so miles apart.

There were also ET bodies found with the wreckage. It has been alleged that one of the ETs was alive and was captured. He was taken to Roswell Army Airfield and then transferred to Wright Field, which today is Wright Patterson Air Force Base. This was a more secret base, and the story says that this extraterrestrial being was kept alive there for several years and they learned a great deal of information from him.

At first, the army's press release said there was a downed spacecraft. However when ET bodies were discovered, the reporting public affairs officer was ordered to retract his statement and give the weather balloon story. In 1947, it seemed plausible to the public that the army was doing secret experiments using weather balloons. That explanation does not work today, however, as too many people have studied the event and do not believe the army's version of what happened.

Since there was an almost immediate blackout of all reports relating to this incident, my family in Sacramento, California, never said anything about it, at least not around me. The article was printed in the Sacramento Bee on July 3, 1947, but then was almost immediately retracted. I know my parents saw the article because they always read the paper. I assume they ignored it after the retraction came in. The story was written off by most as just the army trying to hide something they were doing in the desert that they did not want the public to know about. However, in military circles, the cover-up began. It was stated by the military at that time, if the majority of people in the United States believed that the broadcast of The War of the Worlds was real and it had frightened people so badly that some even committed suicide, the population would never be able to handle a real extraterrestrial event. But don't tell that to a young girl of six who was about to start an extraordinary chapter in her life.

Meeting Bob

You are part of the whole, you belong to existence. Don't let attachment to a part prevent you from entering into the greater whole.

—Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Let's go back now to the summer of 1951. I usually did not go to my grandparents' farm to stay until late July or early August, but since my mother was going to be giving birth to my brother, Steve, in a couple of weeks, my parents felt it would be better if I were not home during those first weeks. As it turns out, that was really lucky for me.

Antelope was a small farming community that in the 1950s was considered "out in the country." In today's world, it is merely an extended suburb of North Sacramento, as the city has spread out into the country. Because they were only about forty-five minutes away, my parents would come out every Sunday for fried chicken dinner and a family get-together. When I was really lucky, my aunt Gayle, who I still refer to as Giggy, and my uncle Gene would come to Sunday dinner. They lived in the San Francisco Bay area, so for them, it was at least a two-hour drive. I loved my summers, and I always wished they would never end.

There were no freeways then, only two-lane country roads. Once a person was five minutes from downtown Sacramento, the landscape changed drastically. On this particular day, I was really enjoying the ride there. My parents had a 1948 Chevy. Because no one had air-conditioning anywhere, all of the windows were rolled down on this hot June day.

This particular June morning was unusually beautiful. The sky was cerulean blue with a few white clouds, which seemed to be hanging from some unseen magnet from above. I was fascinated by their shapes and how they seemed to be telling a story. Even at age six, I was captivated by their beauty. As we continued our ride into the countryside, I became mesmerized by its quiet beckoning. It drew me in as though there were some puppet master out there tugging at my heart strings and pulling me toward it. I could not help myself. In the country was where I wanted to be.

Since it was a hot day, the car windows were rolled down. I loved the feeling of the air as it blew in and cooled my face and mussed up my hair. The pungent smell of the mustard grass tickled my nose and sometimes made me sneeze. When this happened, I laughed and then went on with my quiet observations. Usually I would begin singing, for I loved the sound that music made. I guess it seemed to go together with the countryside, and it always made me feel good. The road paralleled the railroad tracks, and I always hoped to see a freight train because I loved trains and was fascinated with the hobos who rode the empty boxcars from town to town. I was rarely disappointed. I also loved windmills, which seemed to decorate every farm for miles. If I closed my eyes and listened really closely, I could hear the whisper of the wind brushing through the blades, sharing wonderful secrets with me.

About twenty minutes into the drive, I was completely relaxed and captivated by the outdoors. I would imagine myself riding along on a beautiful Palomino pony and my hair blowing out behind me in sync with the pony's mane and tail. It was such a feeling of freedom. On this particular day, I was pretending to be on my pony when something in the clear blue sky caught my attention. The smell of the freshly mown hay wafted into my nostrils. It tickled the hairs in my nose as I breathed deeply to get the full strength of the smell and looked out the window. Later, that smell would come to have a special meaning to me.

As I watched it, the object I was observing seemed to be following alongside our car. I had seen airplanes before, and I knew this was not an airplane. This object was shiny and round and seemed to float. There was no sound coming from it at all. It also had the ability to stop in place and hold its position for a time before moving again. As the sun shone off this object, it acted like the metal siding on my grandpa's turkey sheds. The sun caused a sharp ray of light to hit my eyes, and I had to turn away.

I interrupted the conversation between my mom and dad. "Mom, what is that up in the sky?" At first she did not seem to hear me, as she was singing along with the band on the radio, so I asked her again and lightly kicked the seat where she was sitting.

This got her attention, and she turned around and said, "Don't kick the seat!"

"What is that in the sky?" I asked again.

As she turned to look, the object seemed to come a little closer to our car. "Oh, it is just an airplane," she said.

"No it's not," I shot back.

"Of course it is," she retorted. "What else would be up there?"

Feeling put off by her comment, I went back to watching the object. Soon we were coming to the road where we turned to go into Antelope. As I looked up into the sky once more, the object seemed to sense that I wanted to watch it further. I felt like saying something to my mom, but I thought I'd better keep my mouth shut. I remember shrugging and sighing with disbelief. At six years old, I had to take my mom's word for it. She was my source of information at that time, so I said, "Okay," and continued to watch it for about ten more minutes.

I knew my mother was mistaken, but I could not figure out why. I just instinctively knew. Strangely, my stomach felt a little queasy as I stared at this silver object. As I watched, I started to feel dizzy, almost as though I was being drawn up there in some unknown way. I started feeling very emotional inside. I remember feelings of intense caring and love. There was a longing in my heart that said I wanted to go with them, whoever they were. I was only slightly aware that my parents had become completely quiet and were facing straight ahead, looking out the car's windshield. It seemed to me that we were still driving, but at that age, I would not have any other experience to compare it to. Our minds will fill in the gaps of what seems to make sense, so I have always assumed we did not stop. Looking back now, all these years later, I am not so sure. After a few more minutes, the object was gone and things got back to normal in the car.

As we turned left off of the main road heading out of Sacramento, we crossed railroad tracks. Upon crossing the tracks, we immediately turned right onto a country road that paralleled the main road and the railroad tracks. I could see the little country store up on the right of the road at the corner, where the street turned to the left and continued. If you turned right, you would be at the country store. The store also served as the train station, where people could board the one passenger train that came through once a day and where the proprietor, Ed Foote, would hand the mail bag off to the engineer of the freight train that came by each day and left a bag of mail for the farmers and ranchers of Antelope. I liked Ed and Lucielle Foote because they would let me roam around the place, watching the trains and talking to the hobos who rode the rails.