Flying saucers: Serious business?

  Written by Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune on Saturday, May 29, 2021

Flying saucers were very big news when I was growing up in the years following World War II. 

I see that UFOs (unidentified flying objects) are back in the news. U.S. Navy pilots filmed them in 2019 but the Navy kept the encounters under wraps until recently, according to The New York Times. Now, the Pentagon is going to release a full report next month.

 

Well, if you saw it in The Times it must be true.

 

I have a long history with unidentified flying objects, more commonly known in my ever-lengthening lifetime as flying saucers. They were very big news when I was growing up in the years following World War II. Flying saucers were being spotted zooming through the heavens all over the place, including here in the Northland. This paper even ran a photo of a couple of them hovering over Moose Lake, which turned out to be faked, much to editors’ embarrassment.

 

One clear summer night about then, when my family was vacationing at a lake cabin in northern Wisconsin, my father, older brother and I were standing in the yard just after sunset when suddenly either my father or brother exclaimed something like, “Lookit that,” pointing skyward. Something flashed across the firmament right over the lake. They both saw it.

 

The object disappeared so quickly I missed it. But there’s no question they saw something. My father was not given to embracing fantastic notions of the supernatural or extraterrestrial, but the incident resulted in increased interest in flying saucers in my family. Interest, but not really belief.

 

The only flying saucer I ever saw was in a movie, “The Thing from Another World,” which usually was billed simply as “The Thing.” It was so frightening to me I regressed in my psychological/emotional development at that stage in my life. I was about 10 and had been used to staying home alone in the evening when others in the family were out.

 

No staying home alone after “The Thing” lumbered into my life aboard a flying saucer imbedded in the Arctic ice, dynamited out by U.S. Air Force personnel at a remote, snow-swept base, where it proceeded to attack all living things, killing and drinking the blood of sled dogs and going after humans. Yikes. Plus, it was impervious to things like gunfire because it was vegetable, not animal. Oh the horror.

 

I got so scared I started to go to church with my mother, organist and music director of our church, in the evenings to gatherings like the weekly Prayer Meeting in the church parlors. She played an upright piano (of course the piano was upright — it was in church) for hymn singing between extemporaneous praying by the audience, and lengthy readings from the Good Book.

 

It was attended mainly by about a dozen elderly men and a few wives whose idea of a roaring good time might be sitting around re-reading Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians. One time a guy read lengthily from the begats, which describe who’s related to whom in the good Old Testament. I think the preacher might even have holy rolled his eyes at that.

 

I was the lone child there but I didn’t care. It beat staying home alone worrying about The Thing coming to my house and drinking my blood.

 

Of course I grew out of it, but news of flying saucers always gets my attention and reminds me of “The Thing from Another World” and how it scared the living daylights out of me as a kid. (There’s a better word than “daylights” but this is a family newspaper.)

 

Segue now to the 1960s when I was working at this newspaper as a general assignment reporter. The nice thing about general assignment was that you would get involved in different things every shift. I worked nights and could end up covering everything from boring government meetings like those of the city Charter Commission (at least nobody read the begats) to dashing off to a house fire to get the scoop first hand for the morning’s readers.

 

So one evening the city editor assigned me to cover a speech on flying saucers (we covered a lot of speeches) by an astronomer who had been invited to visit Duluth by Frank Halstead, the who was in charge off the old Darling Observatory at 910 W. Third Street, west of downtown. Halstead was a respected astronomer.

 

Well, the guest astronomer appeared before a respectable crowd in a downtown hall and started out with what sounded like a serious speech on  unidentified flying objects, but soon he changed his demeanor to more resemble a gospel preacher, invoking the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel and his vision of wheels rolling in the heavens.

 

Many people might remember the song, “Ezekiel Saw a Wheel A-Rollin’ Way in the Middle of the Air.” The so-called astronomer was talking about THAT Ezekiel and claiming the wheels Ezekiel saw were actually our flying saucers. And God was sending them back today as a warning to sinners and prophesying the coming End Times starring The Beast. Whew. Well, at least it wasn’t The Thing.

 

I was flummoxed about what to do. It sounded crazy but I didn’t want to return to the paper without a story. Nevertheless, I felt I couldn’t put that nonsense in the paper. I’d noticed that Halstead was inexplicably absent from the speech, so I telephoned him. He’d had dinner with the speaker and realized he was a religious zealot and not a serious astronomer at all.

 

I didn’t write a story.

 

Finally, years later, recalling my family’s encounter with the UFOs over the northern Wisconsin lake, for Christmas I gave my brother a book titled “Flying Saucers: Serious Business.” He immediately said he wanted to return it unread.

 

“I thought you liked flying saucers,” I remonstrated.

 

“I don’t like them THAT much,” he said.

 

Amen.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

Why I won’t run with the bulls in Pamplona...

Running of the bulls in Pamplona (Source: Wikipedia)

By Jim Heffernan

I’ve missed the running of the bulls in Pamplona again this week. That’d be Pamplona, Spain, where each year during one of their many festivals they steer a bunch of angry pointy-horned steers into the streets to chase a passel of people — all males it looks like in photos — who prove their manhood — this all started before Viagra — by running like mad before the angry bulls, in extreme danger of getting gored or trampled or both.

Were you to count the words in the preceding sentence (I don’t dare) you would immediately discern the writing is very un-Hemingwayesque. I refer to famous author Ernest “Papa” Hemingway, known for his terse writing and short sentences and affection for all things bull — bullfighting, bulls running loose in Pamplona, but probably not Papal bulls.

He might tersely write something like: “The bulls ran in Pamplona again. The day was hot, and the radio-listening nuns crossed themselves imploring divine protection for the men running with the bulls.” See? Short and snappy.

I have never wanted to run with the bulls in Pamplona. It sounds romantic when Hemingway describes it, but I’d be, to revive a pejorative from my youth, “chicken.” (There is a vast difference between a chicken and a bull, although both make pretty good eating unless you’re a lactose ovarian vegetarian.)

I doubt that Hemingway himself ran before the herd, although you never know. He led an adventurous life before he shot himself in 1961, at age 61. He was the kind of man who could wear a beret and there’d be no questions asked. Also a neck scarf in summer.

Hemingway at the Festival of San Fermin (source: sanfermin.com)

There was a time in my life, in my English lit studies in college, when I was very “into” Hemingway. In fact, I was taking an American lit class that included some of his writings — “The Gambler, the Nun and the Radio” — around the time he committed suicide. The professor was quite moved. We all were.

But no running before the Pamplona bulls for me, even in those carefree days of my youth. Earlier, as a child, I’d seen a boy about my age get gored by a bull in the forgotten Disney movie “Song of the South.” It made me so fearful around bulls that I refused to wear my red cowboy shirt when visiting the farm of a family friend.

Bulls hate the color red and attack it on sight, it’s been claimed. (At that same college, a political science professor described our congressman as “so red any self-respecting bull would charge him on sight.” I don’t want to use the congressman’s name, but we have a certain bridge named after him. Not Oliver.)

So in spite of my admiration of everything Hemingway at the time, there’d be no running with the Pamplona bulls for me. Heck, as a bullophobe child I was also afraid of turtles (turtlepobia). Not afraid of being trampled by turtles, mind you, but of having one bite off a finger or toe while swimming. If you have ever had dealings with a mature (how old? 100? 110?) snapping turtle you know what I mean. They are not as cute as painted turtles but they make a tasty soup.

As long as I’m confessing my early fears, I might as well mention also that I was deathly afraid of vegetable-based human blood drinking space aliens like the one in the movie “The Thing.” 

Happily, I am no longer particularly afraid of turtles or Mr. Thing, but tangling with a bull in Pamplona still does not appeal to me. Besides, the sun is setting on my time in life for such adventures, praying nuns or no praying nuns.

Of course, “The Sun Also Rises.” 

James Arness: Dodge City lawman came from outer space...

By Jim Heffernan

James Arness is dead and I’m not feeling very good myself. Oh, I’m fine. Some wag wrote that after Elvis died, and somehow I always think about it when I read of a celebrity’s death.

But James Arness did once cause me to feel very badly indeed.

Of course we all know the Minnesota-born actor as “Gunsmoke’s” Matt Dillon on TV, a role he played for some 20 years, for a long time the longest-running show ever on television (1955-’75 or thereabouts).

The actor died June 4 at age 88. He seemed indestructible in his prime. At 6 foot 7, he was a giant of a man whose image on the long-running western always displayed confidence and resolve. You couldn’t help but admire him. He was a stalwart Norwegian.

But a few years before he found his niche in the old west’s Dodge City, he came from outer space, in the title role in the movie “The Thing,” which was fully titled “The Thing From Another World,” and they weren’t talking about Norway or Minnesota.

It is as “The Thing” that I remember him best, even though his face was never shown and he didn’t speak. The movie came out in 1951 when I was about 11 years old – the age when you are getting ready to close out your childhood and start bracing for adolescence (heaven help you).

In those days I’d regularly go to Saturday movie matinees, preferably at Duluth’s old Lyceum Theater, where you could see double features for 9 cents if you were 12 or under. Other theaters charged 12 cents for that age group. Who had that kind of money?

Because I was getting so “grown up,” I had reached the stage where I had no qualms about being home alone at night, no babysitters necessary, if other family members went out. No problem.

I should point out that 1951 was smack dab in the middle of the post-World War II flying saucer era. Flying saucers were all over the news all the time, with fuzzy pictures in the newspapers of the discs flying in formation over various parts of the country, including Moose Lake. Crazy.

So, thought Hollywood producers, why not make a motion picture about a flying saucer? How about one that crashes in the Arctic, is discovered by U.S. military personnel stationed in a nearby remote outpost, who also discover there a giant human-like creature (about 6 foot 7, encased in a block of ice) but is not human at all; it comes from the vegetable family and feeds on the blood of humans and sled dogs – any mammal it can get its crusty hands on, like a Venus Fly Trap eats bugs. Oh yes, one handy thing about “The Thing”: If you cut off one of its appendages – in one scene an arm is amputated by a slamming door – the appendage GROWS BACK! Yikes. That cured me of vegetables, especially beets.

Meanwhile, back on the screen, the unlucky crew transports “The Thing” back to their base camp and inadvertently – yes, inadvertently -- melts down the ice block encasing him, releasing the monster to go about his business of plucking unsuspecting humans and other mammals from their appointed rounds and drinking their blood. Oh, the horror.

A friend and I sat petrified in our seats at the Lyceum, although my friend ended up on his knees on the floor, his head on the seat, covered by his jacket. We lasted until “The Thing” took to hanging blood-drained sled dogs from meat hooks as he lurked about the wintery encampment, and a mad scientist (you knew he was crazy by his goatee) inside insists that the group should make friends with this monster from outer space, thank you very much.

Whispering during a lull, my friend and I agreed we’d better get the heck out of there before the monster drained our blood (he already had, from our heads). Up the aisle we scampered, darting to the nearest exit sign and out into the bright Saturday afternoon sunshine of Superior Street, safe. Whew.

But I wasn’t really safe. The fright caused developmental regression in me. No longer would I stay home alone at night. Any foray into darkness was accompanied by the concern that “The Thing” was lurking behind every tree. I was, in short, afraid of my own shadow for months.

I didn’t see how the movie ended, having bolted for the street mid-way through. Many years later, as a consenting adult, I watched the entire movie on television, and finally saw how they killed poor James Arness (electrocution). By then I was no longer spooked by the movie. Real life is way scarier.

To read more about Arness and the phenomenon of The Thing and view the original 1951 movie trailer, check out this Baltimore Sun link HERE.

2012: A spaced-out odyssey...

Intimations of mortality on recollections from childhood…

By Jim Heffernan

“I get angry at the way people are being manipulated and frightened to make money. There is no ethical right to frighten children to make a buck.” – A NASA spokesman refuting recent claims that the end of the world will occur on Dec. 21, 2012. (New York Times, Nov. 17.)

Well now, who is not shocked…shocked…to hear that there are people who would try to make a buck by frightening children! Boy, how low can you go?

I only wish Walt Disney were still alive to face the music for all of the bucks he made frightening children. There are numerous examples in Disney movies, but to me the most frightening was the evil queen in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” who tries to do in sweet Snow White.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all,” the evil queen, with a widow’s peak to die for (did I say die?) and an ominous black cloak with a head-framing collar, says and then shrieks when told the fairest is poor, innocent Snow White. What child didn’t have a bad dream after that scene, and the one in which she offers good-hearted Snow White the poison apple? I shudder today.

For shame, Walt.

Speaking of making a buck frightening children, don’t forget that malevolent duo Abbott and Costello, unknown to today’s younger generations but when they showed up in the movie “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” when I was a kid there wasn’t a dry seat in the theater at the matinee. Way to go boys. Frightening children. Where did they get the ethical right to do that? And just to make a buck. A measly buck. My head shakes back and forth with disdain.

Then there were the Mummy, the Wolf Man and Dracula circulating through the movie theaters scaring the pants off of even older girls, and boys too, who heartily approved, but we won’t go there at this time.

I still quake when I see Bela Lugosi, everyone’s favorite vampire, Count Dracula, moving in on the neck of some fetching blonde asleep on a bed of roses, or flying around in the form of a bat, or opening up his casket after the sun goes down to go forth and suck the blood of unsuspecting victims. Yikes. How did the children of that era survive the shock and freight? And what for? To make a buck. Just to make a buck. It’s unconscionable.

I’m getting scared just writing this, but before I run and hide under the bed I must mention “The Thing” (The original “The Thing” of the early ‘1950s). To make a buck, the producers frightened me into regression of my personal development. I had reached the age when I could stay home alone at night when my parents were out, but after seeing “The Thing” – he came from outer space -- I needed babysitters again, if not diapers.

More likely, to avoid staying home alone, I’d accompany a parent to wherever they were going. I went to “Prayer Meeting” at our church with my mother just so I wouldn’t have to stay home alone and be murdered by The Thing for my blood. Like Count Dracula, The Thing thrived on blood; human, dog, any living creature he could get his massive, ugly hands on.

And what for? So some Hollywood studio could make a buck scaring children. For that I had to sit through adult prayer meetings and listen some skinny old bald guy who looked like Ichabod Crane (don’t get me started on the Headless Horseman in the movie “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”) read the Bible’s begats? The begats! Just to make a buck. Not the begats, “The Thing.”

Oh, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m becoming unmoored. These repressed memories have got me on edge. I’d better quit while I’m still behind.

But wait! Is that “The Creature From the Black Lagoon” in the pool? Everybody out of the pool! Pronto.

Some movies that changed my life...

by Jim Heffernan

Minnesota Public Radio this week (March 24) asked listeners to write their Web site describing movies that changed their lives. It made me stop and think about movies that changed my life in some way.

When I was a kid I loved movies. Went to them every week, sometimes twice a week – even two double features adding up to four movies on a single weekend. I didn’t give a hoot about baseball or other sports, spent a lot of classroom time dreaming (about movies), and my first thought upon waking up each morning was if I could go to a movie that day.

So, did any movies change my life? Some did, at different stages of my life, in different ways. At least some made a lasting – permanent – impression if not a drastic life change, like running off with the circus.

One truly scary movie changed my lifestyle when I was about 11. “The Thing” (the original version) was so frightening that I refused to stay home alone at night, after having progressed in life to the point where my parents could go out for the evening and not worry about sitters.

The idea of a seven-foot-tall space alien from a flying saucer found in Arctic ice, who was vegetable, not animal (or mammal), and who thrived on drinking human blood (also sled dog blood), scared the bejezuz out of me. It changed my life for a couple of years.

About that same time – around 1950-51 – I saw two other movies that had a profound impact on my life. I was stunned by the voice of Mario Lanza in “The Great Caruso,” and it planted the seeds for a lifelong love of (some) opera. It caused me to judge every male singing voice against that of Lanza, with most falling short.

The second movie from that era – I was about 11 years old – that changed my life was “Come Back Little Sheba,” based on the Broadway play. It was considered pretty steamy for its day, especially love scenes between actress Terry Moore and Richard Jaeckel that stirred me in ways that Randolph Scott kissing his horse or the frontier town schoolmarm had not. Of course the onslaught of adolescence confirmed the suspicions wrought by seeing “Come Back Little Sheba” at a time in life when the facts of life were still fiction, but fading fast.

I saw “Gone With the Wind” for the first time when I was in junior high, one of the many reissues of that 1939 classic. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it since. It set a standard for moviemaking against which I judged all other movies, so it changed my life that way.

Later in my life – college years – a couple of movies I’ll wager never get mentioned in listings such as these but which made a big impression on me at the time were the remake of “ The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” starring Glenn Ford, and “Tender Is the Night,” based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, with Jason Robards Jr. and Jennifer Jones. These are lush, romantic movies that at the time swept me into worlds of sophistication unknown to me. No one thinks they are worth seeing today, but I’d give them a look if they came on Turner Classic Movies. Boy, would I.

There are so many other movies that, if they don’t actually change your life, alter it because you never forget them. There are the usual suspects, “Casablanca” and “Citizen Kane” of course, and more recently “Animal House” and “Amadeus.” I’ll never get over the impact of seeing “Amadeus” for the first time –impact so strong I saw it again the very next night, this time with my then-teenage kids in tow. Who would mention “Animal House” and “Amadeus” in the same breath? I would.

Can’t leave without mentioning “The Seven Year Itch,” with Tom Ewell at the grand piano playing the Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto, Marilyn Monroe by his side, and murmuring to her, “I’m going to take you into my arms and I am going to kiss you, very quickly, and very, very hard.”

I can only say: Don’t try that at home.

Do you have a movie or movies that changed your life in some way? Blog it here. It’s fun.