Flying Saucers--Serious Business
Apparently, there might be quite a few around today who HAVEN'T heard.
When the extended family gets together for game night, one of the favorites is "Balderdash". For those unfamiliar with it, there's a deck of cards which list obscure people, movie titles, laws, words, etc. If you can correctly identify the person, place or thing, you write that down. If you can't identify it, you make up what sounds like a plausible answer and write that down instead. All the answers--the players', and the right one on the card--are then read, and everyone votes on which one they think is the right answer. If you actually had the right answer, you get points for that, and if you didn't have the right answer, you get points for the number of people who voted for yours as being the right answer.
I was somewhat astounded during one particular round to hear the name Kenneth Arnold read out as the "obscure person". Obscure? The man was world famous! As we all know (or, as I thought we all knew), Arnold was a private pilot from Idaho who traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest making sales and service calls for his own fire and safety equipment company. On June 24, 1947, while flying near Mt. Rainier in Washington, he spotted nine objects in the sky which he variously described as being shaped like "pie pans" or "pie plates", "large flat disks", or....(drum roll, please) "...saucers". The press latched onto that last one with a vengeance, the term "flying saucers" became a household word, and the modern UFO flap was off and running. Or flying. Or exhibiting non-ballistic motion.
My family was amazed that I knew this. They were even more amazed (well, they at least engaged in even more eye-rolling than usual) that I thought I should get extra points because my answer was more correct than the one on the game card. It identified Kenneth Arnold as the first man to sight a UFO, which, of course is, pure balderdash (sorry, couldn't resist).
As everyone knows (or, again, as I would have thought everyone knew), people have been spotting UFOs since before the prophet Ezekiel put pen to papyrus (or twig to clay tablet or whatever word processing technology they were using back in ol' Zeke's day) to make note of it. Depending on your definition of "modern", Arnold wasn't even the first modern man to see a UFO. Throughout WW II pilots saw balls of light flying formation with their aircraft; our guys dubbed them "Foo Fighters" and were convinced they were some secret weapon the Germans and Japanese were working on, while German and Japanese pilots were just as sure they were ours. And, only a little further back in recorded history, there was the rash of mysterious airship sightings at the turn of the Nineteenth Century and on into the early years of the Twentieth. As I correctly noted on my answer sheet, Arnold was the man whose description of what he saw gave birth to the term "flying saucer"--a term which, if it didn't do much one way or the other for SETI, it sure as Mars has two moons (and sure as Anne Francis's had two celestial orbs that could really pressurize a space suit) went a long way toward making the Fifties and early Sixties THE Golden Age of really great sci fi monster movies and TV shows.
Some may note an apparent anachronism in my depiction of the event, and will point out that Project Blue Book was not initiated until 1952, and even it's first predecessor, Project Sign, was not cranked up until the end of 1947, well after the flap caused by Arnold's sighting and the subsequent press coverage was really flying high. Astute observers may even observe--correctly--that the United States Air Force itself didn't even exist when Arnold had his encounter; at the time, it was still the United States Army Air Forces and would not officially become a separate service until almost three months later, on September 18, 1947.
However, I should warn you in the strongest possible terms that thinking the book she is holding is an anachronism is exactly what THEY want you to think! Those of us "in the know" know that this is proof positive that aliens are among us, using knowledge that makes Einstein's theories look like kindergarten stuff to warp space and time to their will. How else, I ask you, could our little Queen of Outer Space here have known in June of 1947 that there was going to be a USAF and that it was going to have a Project Blue Book, if she hadn't already been to 1952 (and, no doubt, well beyond), and come back?
Or, in the immortal words of The Amazing Criswell, "Can you prove that it didn't happen?"
Comments and faves
finsbry (26 months ago | reply)
LOL LOL LOL!! That was the best of the best ever, Sir Basil. Not only did I not know the gentleman in question, I knew nothing of his sighting saucers, or that the terms resulted from his description.
Nor did I know that Anne Francis's orbs would heat up a space suit, though I did think she was ablaze as Honey West.
I want to play this game--I wouldn't get one answer correct, but what fun making stuff up!
finsbry added this photo to their favorites. (26 months ago)
Sir Basil Birchbottom (26 months ago | reply)
Glad you liked it, finsbry, and I think you would like the game, too. You can really be creative with it. And, if you get tired of playing it for real, you can just start seeing who can make up the most outrageous answers possible, and give each other points for creativity (or insanity, or perversity). And, yes, Anne Francis was pretty much a scorcher in any role!
Sir Basil Birchbottom (26 months ago | reply)
Thanks, GORDO-8--your kind words always appreciated, and in this case even more so. I've read that my hero Dan DeCarlo (of Betty and Veronica fame, not to mention their older "sisters", who had been 'round the block a time or two in the girlie mag cartoons of the Fifties and Sixties) was one of those very guys that painted pinup babes on bomber noses in England during the war. I'm flattered to be included in that class! As for the UFOs, I never missed an issue of SAGA magazine until it went out of business--always a great UFO or Bigfoot story (or something similar) in every issue, plus a four or five page photo layout of Raquel Welch or Joey Heatherton or Ewa Aulin or some other currently hot Hollywood Hottie in bikinis and evening gowns and short-shorts.
myvintagevogue added this photo to her favorites. (25 months ago)
r8r (25 months ago | reply)
come to think of it, why not include Ezekiel in a future installment, perhaps with some Biblical-looking aliens? I'm sure they wouldn't mind sharing the stage with one of your cutiepies!
Sir Basil Birchbottom (25 months ago | reply)
Hmmm.... I 'll have to give that some thought, r8r. Not sure what Biblical aliens might look like (Christian Right Fundamentalists, maybe...?), but my cutiepies could be the angels--Victoria's Secret style angels, maybe, but angels. Of course, we're looking at a forecast for severe thunderstorms all night long and into tomorrow here in OK, so maybe I ought to contemplate this later, during a period of reduced potential for being struck by a lightning bolt!
skintone added this photo to her favorites. (17 months ago)