Not An Actual Alien

Annmarie Throckmorton, M.A.

Mar 12, 2021

Sometime in the last half of the 20th century, when I was traveling cross-country, I drove two days off of my route to see Roswell, New Mexico. I thought that I would not see much and I was not mistaken. Whatever had happened there seemed long gone, leaving behind only a determined tourist trap for alien enthusiasts, with lots of alien themed curiosity shops and kitschy statues of green aliens. I guess that the town folks had decided that the gray aliens who were actually reported to have crashed on a nearby farm were too dull to fully promote their products. I asked two elderly ladies in a shop if an alien craft and alien bodies had been recovered in the area in 1947 (two years before I was born.) They drew closer to each other and went round-eyed with well-practiced apprehension, "Oh, yes, yes."

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