The marriage remains troubled, but the divorce hardly seems imminent, primarily because neither the "other" man/men or woman/women are palpable by name.
I refer, of course, to the Socorro, New Mexico UFO case of April, 1964, involving patrolman Lonnie Zamora and other possible witnesses, fellow police officers, U.S. Army and Air Force investigators, Dr. J. Allen Hynek himself, civilian UFO investigators and a cast of untold multitudes when all was said and done, or undone.
The RRR Group, seemingly intent in the long haul upon giving the old heave-ho to the Socorro incident once and for all, now approaches history with a new bend -- that, this time, the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by university students. For the evolving details, go to (and particularly watch for reader comments following the story) Frank Warren's UFO CHRONICLES Web site using the link in the margin, or click here:
and in his search engine at the top type in the word, Socorro.
On this occasion the RRR ice men cometh with interesting documentation via respected researcher Anthony Bragalia, but no names of those (allegedly) directly responsible for pulling off one hell of a prank. A balloon? Hmm -- weren't the small figures (now supposed prankster university students) observed by officer Zamora noted to disappear before it took off with a roar? So now we have everybody not only presumably escaping (in a balloon?) somehow, but the balloon had the curious ability to fly against the wind and be seen by other witnesses who continued to believe a UFO is a UFO is a UFO. And. . .how about that desert dynamite shack at the scene, would anybody in their brilliantly right hoaxing mind attempt to pull the cactus wool over a patrolman's eyes by staging the event near a potentially explosive source?
The questions linger, the Socorro skeptics and proponents rock on and little has changed. And, oh, for laughs here, once again I'm throwing in my 1965 letter from the Air Force regarding the matter. USAF spokesman Maj. Maston Jacks references Zamora's UFO as a "vehicle," but cautions us not to worry because, unidentified or unidentifiable vehicle though it may be, it wasn't a tin Lizzy driven by the usual extraterrestrial scofflaws.
In an odd way, and I do appreciate Mr. Bragalia for bringing his work to the forefront, I'm hoping that the prank solution holds up, lest we endure yet another explanation, perhaps a mad scientist's theory that Zamora's roughly egg-shaped object really WAS an egg, a gift from the residents of Alpha Centauri -- a giant extraterrestrial chicken egg piloted by vacationing Centaurians that turned hazardously rotten after a long, long journey and exploded in the desert heat, sending its remnants into the wild blue. Remember, too, the old movie, "20 Million Miles to Earth." Eggs can be both mysterious and deadly. Take heed, RRR Group, this theory awaits your attention. Next time.
So, just what happened in Socorro on that April day, a day I remember well as a 15-year-old lying outside in the yard, gazing upward while listening to a transistor radio crackling with a succession of news snippets regarding a UFO incident far away from my home in New York State? Important questions remain, and they aren't going away just because some folks wave their skeptical wand over a document, intent that the end is near. Neither turkey vultures nor Judge Judy would bother picking over this potential ado about nothing. Names, gentlemen, names and their personal how-to lessons are of the essence, thank you.
