# 15 - UFO Summer

The summer of 1967 was pretty exciting around Himni. There were frequent UFO sightings and everyone wanted in on the action.

The reports came in on a frequent basis. They were hard to dismiss. Miss Landon the English/Spanish Teacher at the High School and her friend Miss Francis an Elementary School teacher, saw one hover along side their car while driving through Gusher. Later, after a skating party at the roller rink in Vernal, they were driving a couple of carloads of Indian kids home to Randlett. Those in Miss Francis' car observed a UFO hovering over those in Miss Landon's car. These were not drunks cat fishing on the river, these were respectable, church going, educated, young women.

Vida Martin and his kids saw one hovering over their cottonwoods while they were choring one night. I spoke to one of those kids just last week and after 38 years, he still stands by his story. "It didn't make a sound, just shined this bluish spotlight on us, then flew away real fast!" he told me.

Garn Mooney was in the Omner Valley Stake Presidency at the time. He reported seeing them on numerous occasions. He held the theory that it was the Lost Ten Tribes scouting things out in anticipation of their imminent return from the center of the Hollow Earth. He had books backing up his theory and, though shy of preaching his theory from the pulpit, he spoke of it often from behind the counter in his hardware store.

I was about to turn seventeen. I was awkward around girls. I was self conscious because of my acne. My view of life and living was distorted as a fun house mirror. In short, my adolescent hormones had kicked in - finally. It wasn't pleasant. I spent lots of night time hours laying out on the back lawn looking for UFOs and praying one would come abduct me and save me from all this.

To this day I find myself weighing the events of that summer in the balance of my mind. On the one hand, I feel compelled to give credence to the respectable folks who claimed to have seen one. Most of them saw it on repeated occasions. On the other hand, I had spent countless hours out watching for UFOs and never saw anything even suspicious.

I had about concluded that they all saw something, but that it wasn't likely to have been anything from outer space or the center of the earth. Then one day not ten years ago I was driving down west of Randlett. I intended to take an old back road over to Independence when I encountered a 12 foot chainlink fence, topped with coils of razor wire. It was posted with Federal no trespassing signs and enclosed about 400 acres. No one seems to know what's in there. Nobody ever sees people going in or out. No agency, that I can find, claims jurisdiction over it. It's like we have our own Area 51 right here in the Uintah Basin.

One night I was out on the back lawn watching for unusual phenomena. It was a cool, quiet evening in late June of 1967. Mom turned on the porch light and called me to come to the phone. It was Rob Hanke. "Get down here quick!" was all he said. I jumped in my 1956 Chevy Belair and headed for his house. I found him out back by the barn. It was pitch dark and Rob was using just a feeble flash light. He had an air of conspiracy about him. This was not unusual. Leaning up against the barn was a long orchard ladder. He handed me a wad of thin plastic and said, "Here, take this end up to the roof and hold it!" I grabbed whatever it was and headed right up. Obviously, there was no time to waste.

When I got positioned, I heard the sound of a fan or something. As Rob reached for the flashlight I could see that I was holding some sort of plastic bag, about fifteen feet long and three feet in diameter. Rob was inflating the bag. Once that was done, I was nearly blinded by the sudden flash of a road flare.

"Don't let it snag on the shingles!" he whispered, as the bag started to tighten and lift.

"Let her lift off, but keep her away from the barn."

As Rob's homemade hotair balloon ascended past me, I got a better look. Suspended from the bag, was an aluminum snow saucer, concave side down. Fitted on top of the saucer was a nice little rack to hold a burning flare, fixed in a vertical position. Suspended from three wires, below the saucer, was a second flare, which Rob lit as he released his creation. I couldn't believe how quickly it rose into the air.

There wasn't much breeze, but the balloon was slowly drifting off to the West. We jumped into the Chevy and set out to follow it. Rob figured the flares would burn for about 45 minutes. It looked really cool up there. Two tiny red lights, one reflecting eerily off the bottom of the saucer. There was a ghostly glow from the bag too. Staying back, we followed it across the valley for about a half hour. It was headed for Cogburn's Knob up by the cemetery. That was a favorite parking place and had been pretty busy that summer with the added interest of possibly sighting flying saucers.

As we approached the cemetery we fell in with a long line of cars who were apparently "doing the same thing we were." We looked like a late night funeral cortege. Rob and I looked less guilty than some of the kids who'd arrived before the excitement began. The balloon crashed near the top of the knob. There was a crowd of about 50 folks gathered near the Cemetery gate. We were kind of milling around, wondering what to do next. Then, with a crunch of gravel, President Garn Mooney arrived. He jumped out of his Cadilac and took charge.

"I've had experience with these things," he declared.
He instructed us all to, "Wait here while I hike up and make contact!"

It was an awkward night all the way around the crowd. Parking and spectators don't mix. Neither do the gospel and speculation. President Mooney never really said much about UFOs after that.