Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

That time of year again.

Last weekend—Saturday July 27 2019 I returned to the Kecksburg UFO & Old Fashioned Festival. This time in the company of friends to enjoy the even more than just going to investigate for the purpose of writing another article and with a differently twist—we arrived at dusk which was something like opening the door into an entirely different world than my previous visits that occurred in daylight hours.

It started off with a visit to a friend and coworker—Mrs G & family who live in Kecksburg near the crest of the hill after passing through the tiny hamlet that draws this annual fanfare surrounding the alleged crash of a UFO—meteor / alien spacecraft / Russian satellite or space probe that came down in the woods in the nearby hills on December 9, 1965. It just occurred to me recently that that was the birthdate of my Uncle Budd—12/9/1933 who was a young man at the time and he told me he actually saw the object as it was streaking in out of the western sky! I was only 3 years old then and probably at my first family home: an apartment on Falls Church Virginia as it was still a few weeks before the annual Christmas vacation visit to my grandparents who lived in the house here where I currently reside. Everyone was hanging out after a cookout and the decision was made to ride down to the festival.

It was close enough to walk as I did on one of my previous visits but it was getting dark and safety concerns regarding traffic and possible drunks coming or going to the event made driving the safer choice.

We found a parking spot across the road from the bridge over the small creek that goes though the hamlet and walked in that way. This time there were a few new additions or things I didn’t notice before such as a rather impressive mockup of a flying saucer with running lights and the while 9 yards! Which I cannot help but think back to past articles when I referred to the UFO phenomenon as something like the cargo cults of Pacific Islanders who built mock ups of air planes to lure back the American military forces that temporarily sojourned on their islands during the push toward the Japanese homeland in World War II.

On our way to visit the mockup of the object that the army hauled out of the woods back in 1965 that Mrs G refers to as "The Acorn " passed by a live band playing. And I paused to photograph a display of full sized Bigfoot or Sasquatch hominids carved by a local artisan.

Bigfoot is often said to be affiliated with UFO activity and I guess maybe they could be some kind of early terrestrial hominid recruited and trained by extraterrestrials to serve as scouts on the ground or aliens themselves. So goes the gospel. Or maybe android drones like Isaac Arthur suggested as a method by which aliens might attempt to covertly observe us in his recent video on "Invasive Aliens"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rBFubEKHR7A

 that fittingly came out that week just a few days before the start of the festival. He should have attended and do a presentation at the event—though I don’t know how warmly he’d be received if he expressed his skepticism in regard to the idea of alien visitations happening every second Tuesday—like the late Carl Sagan put it. And his tendency to favor the Rare Earth hypothesis might be as upsetting as the unlikelihood of day trips to extrasolar planets zipping around the stars in the Millennium Falcon or Starship Enterprise as I often say. And it was  Mr Arthur who introduced that concept to my vocabulary!

 
After posing for a group shot in front of the acorn I went into the UFO store to look at the wares and some of the interesting patrons who had come.

Including a sighting of a real live Minbari from this hit TV series of the 1990s: Babylon 5! Possibly  Ambassador Delenn but more likely a hard core fan dressed up in a fairly decent costume and makeup. For some reason this person fascinated me—and I’m not really into bald headed female humanoid aliens with funny head dresses that look like seashells—but I wish I had gotten a better picture than this one and another fuzzy one later outside afterward. Mrs G offered to take my picture with her and suggested it this girl probably liked the attention she gets walking around dressed up so weird. But I kind of felt weird about it so I passed.

Had an $8 steak hoagie from Aumers and hung out to listen to the band for a short while before departing. It was a pretty decent event and worth visiting again and again because there will always be something different to see every year. Maybe I’ll get lucky and George Noory; the host of Coast to Coast AM—which I dubbed "Tinfoil Theater" will be there. Despite my skepticism in regard to UFO and other paranormal stuff—I always enjoyed his show which came on late nights on the old talk station that I used to listen to Quinn & Rose , Glenn Beck and Michael Savage. He came on late night right after Jerry Doyle and ran through morning. Unfortunately this whole lineup got shifted to a crappy AM station that got walked on by a Spanish language station in the evening when I guess they turn down their transmitter to save money? You pretty much had to strain to hear him or Jerry Doyle and the advertisers who bought air time were obviously getting short changed!

Until next year…

Additional photos and end notes:

The UFO store is always a walk down memory lane for old Science Fiction film and toy store memorabilia.

And the UFO enthusiast culture.

There will be another conference this fall in Greensburg PA on UFOs and other paranormal phenomena.

End note: got a little more detailed description from my Uncle this afternoon on his eye witnessing of the object that fell that night as it was incoming. He says it came in over Mount Pleasant and then made an abrupt turn over the hilltop above my place for Kecksburg. That sounds like something with maneuvering capability though a meteor that is burning up on entry into the atmosphere or a falling satellite or other man made object coming back from space could be perturbed by material spalling off of it during descent.

There are are too many eyewitnesses still around to totally dismiss the event. It would be helpful if the government would just come out and tell exactly what they hauled out of the woods under a veil of secrecy. It can’t be any more embarrassing or incriminating than some of the other things they’ve had to admit over the years. Like the exposures of military personnel to radiation in the atomic tests of the Cold War era or infecting the Tuskegee Airmen with syphilis.

At least we hope not.