True Stories From My Childhood

When I was around five years old, we lived on a very long, straight street. All the backyards faced onto a country club golf course. We weren't allowed to play on their property, but we had an enormous vista of rolling hills, greens, and stands of trees. It was beautiful.

One day, my Mom was in the back yard hanging laundry on the line. I can still see her, forty years later, as she puts up the wash. The sky was that perfect clear blue of an early summer day, before the haze builds up. Only a couple of clouds dotted the sky. I was standing in the back door, watching Mom at work, when I heard this low thrumming noise coming from the sky!

I looked up and there it was -- an enormous UFO! It was hovering right over my Mom. They were going to kidnap her!

How my five year old mind knew this, I don't remember any more. This huge silver object just floating there, that ominous low noise still going. Why didn't Mom hear it? Why wasn't she coming inside?

I started hollering at her, "Mom! C'mon in! Mom! Hurry!!" She ignored me. I started screaming and she told me to quit it.

By now hot tears were pouring down my face and I was screaming as loud as I could, deathly afraid I was going to see my Mom being taken by space aliens. Why didn't she run? Didn't she love us? "Mom!! MOOOOOM!" My little heart was breaking as my lungs burned from the effort. "MOM!!" I can still see it right now -- beautiful grassy vista, trees, Mom and the laundry line, blue sky, puffy clouds and the vast silvery UFO. It's burned into my mind's eye forever.

She told me to go inside and shut up. Why, why? I looked up and saw the silver ship still hanging up there, but slowly drifting away, the thrumming getting fainter as it did. I could make out blue markings on the side, which I couldn't read, but can still see in my memory.

G-O-O-D-Y-E-A-R.