Damn-near Indestructible...

As I have mentioned before, my folks grew up around the Cedarvale, Roswell, Corona NM area. My dad’s family lived up in a small mountain in that region called Pinos Wells Mountain. There was a small village with that same name located in the land just before reaching that mountain. A friend of the family, who has been ranching, now owns that land. Much of the population has moved away.

Back when he owned the property, my dad’s side of the family would hold family reunions at the base of Pinos Wells Mountain. We would gather, usually at the end of the summer, and have a great time. I got to meet cousins, uncles and aunts that I would probably never have known existed. We would camp out at the mountain under the stars. It was there that I got to hear of some of the first-hand experiences by other members of my family.

I remember vividly one such night, as I came up on the campfire, my dad was playing guitar along with his brothers. My uncle Mamp was on mandolin and one of my cousins was on fiddle. They were talking about some metal that they had seen “back in the day”. My dad was struck by how the metal was damn-near indestructible. You couldn’t burn it, bend it or tear it, but it looked just like the foil from a package of cigarettes.

Uncle Mamp came up with the idea of the metal probably not being from this planet, and all of my relatives agreed. Then they told me about a cousin who revolved between being sheriff and chief of police in a small NM town. Apparently, during a term when he was sheriff, he took a photograph of 5 or 6 UFOs in formation flying over the town. Everybody there said that they had seen the photo and it clearly showed the crafts. They also said that it was so clear that the Air Force came and took the photo and the negative. Unfortunately this cousin was not in attendance that year. I filed the information away and would ask this cousin when I saw him next.

It would be 20+ years before I saw him again. It was at a town reunion for Cedarvale, NM. He and his wife showed up and he sought me out to see if I followed in my father’s footsteps

musically.

As we were tuning up, I mentioned this photo. He got a strange

look on his face, then looked straight at me and said, “ Why Wade, that never happened. You know that those things don’t exist.” I said I didn’t know any such thing, and that every relative said that he had the photo, that they had physically seen it, and that the local Air Force base came and confiscated it.

His eyes darkened and he repeated, “Those things don’t exist.”

He passed away later that year from prostate cancer.

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