Close Encounters

I was channel surfing through the usual nonsense on the TeeVee the other night when I stopped at the Science Channel.  They had something called "Close Encounters" playing, and I could tell from the listings that there were several half-hour episodes waiting in line.  The first one was about Japanese airline pilots "encountering" strange lights somewhere over the pacific, and the other episodes had similar story lines, true, all true, as seen by competent eyewitnesses, all.   I put the whole thing on pause, got up and refreshed my brandy, got back into my seat and punched the button which would record all the upcoming episodes and turned the lights down low, because ohmygawd I love this stuff.  I've loved "UFO" stories every since I was a teenager.  I would scour the library for books on "close encounters," and was particularly fond of books by people who claimed to have been taken aboard one of these exotic crafts from another world.  My favorite was one by George Adamski, who not only claimed he had been invited for a ride-along, he had taken pictures.  And even though the pictures he included in his book looked like pictures of a lamp shade taken with a Brownie camera (see the creatures in the window?) I tended to wish it was all true.  And then there was Roswell, and all the sightings ever since, all over the world.  Pretty compelling stuff, actually, when you read it all at once.

Which brings me to a point, sort of.  We as human beings tend to want to believe all kinds of stuff we find mysterious and exciting, because, well, they're mysterious and exciting.  Some people believe in ghosts, for example, which the skeptical scientific mind rejects simply because, in the long run, their existence is ridiculous.  The imagination is a powerful thing, indeed.  As I get older I become more skeptical of unscientific theories.  Except for UFO's.  I know they exist.

I helped make several of them.

My long time friend Jerry Paulsen is my co-conspirator in all this, and I'm not in the least bit hesitant to place most of the blame on him.  Although while I'm sure Paulsen hasn't an evil bone in his body, I do know I thank Whomever-may-be-in-control for allowing us both to survive his shenanigans, and the "BaDass Balloon" was only a mild example of what I'm talking about.  First of all, I'm ashamed (not really) to admit there were drugs and alcohol involved in most everything Jerry and I did those three or four years we roommated together.  We called it "BaDass," a French word we invented  from the English word "Idiots," and the word itself was convenient enough to which we could blame our antics upon.  It was all Cheech and Chong and Firesign Theater, combined with our own exquisite bullshit.  There's enough silliness connected with "BaDass," that a book could be written, and should be written, and if we live long enough, might be.  Stay tuned, one day I may tell you the whole story.  But I digress.  The "BaDass Balloon" was an invention of Jerry's, I think, although I suspect he learned it from some other degenerate and was just passing it along.

It consisted of two thin strips of balsa wood, about fifteen inches long each.  We would take these thin strips and form a cross, or an "X" with them, and poke a small straight pin through the middle to hold them lightly together.  Now the hard part.  Someone had to get a laundry bag, a laundry bag you get back from a laundry. One of those really thin bags that the laundry people put over your shirts when you got them back.  And you'd have to get a box of a dozen small birthday candles.  And a couple of Bic lighters.  And some really good ganja from Dave's apartment next door; Dave, whose nickname was "Stoner."  And a sixer of Bud, if you're thirsty.  Ohgawd, it's all coming back to me now.

At any rate, the best one we ever did was at Mike's party in Springfield, at his house about a mile east from the enormous Weyerhaeuser Plant in east Springfield.  It was a good party, in the mid '70's, the drugs were above average, the tequila was flowing, and the "BaDass Balloon" had become legendary enough to have been requested by those in the know.  It had just gotten dark on a misty fall night, when we began our preparations.  We assembled the "X," with larger-than-usual balsa strips, and placed over 20 large birthday candles on it, and Jerry had obtained a larger, double-size laundry coat bag.   We placed the then assembled balsa strips gently into the open end of the laundry bag and affixed it with several more small straight pins.  I held the top of the bag, having to stand on my tip-toes to do so, and Jerry and a couple helpers started lighting the candles.

I could feel its power as it began to fill up with heat from the candles.  I was worried that the heat would actually begin to burn the laundry bag, and I yelled, "it wants to go NOW," and we all moved as a unit to the open air.  The slight misting of rain had stopped, but the air was cold, with a slight wind moving to the west.  We got to the open space, and I let go of the top of the bag.  Now just Jerry held the "X" at the bottom.  He gently lifted his hand and let go, and the "UFO" took flight.  It went up quickly.  Faster than any of the other "UFO'S" we'd ever launched.  It rose into the night sky against a backdrop of stars and black clouds, and slowly drifted westwardly, over the eerie steam clouds of the Weyerhaueser plant, and kept ascending.  Up, up, and mysteriously burning in the cold night air.  The glow from the candles reflected off the large laundry bag, and made the whole thing look very unearthly.  A true UFO.  It traveled west, toward the Willamette River and Eugene, with a purpose only it knew, and rose silently as it went.  It's glow was mesmerizing, something that once you saw, you could never look away.  For a moment, I thought of George Adamski and his friendly aliens, beckoning him aboard their wonderful spacecraft, and I was a kid again.  Here's to you, George, and all the aliens we know who are "out there," waving.

The entire party was out on the lawn that night, in the misting rain of Springfield, Oregon.  We all stared upward at the departing space craft, and no one spoke, except for a occasional "wow."  We watched as the glow in the sky suddenly flared, as the candles eventually burned down and set the balsa wood on fire, and then the magical flash of the laundry bag gently exploding with dripping ecstasy into the night.  Jerry and I turned to each other and hugged.  

It was, after all, BaDass.  And it would always be so.