An impression of the first New Mexico UFO Conference held in Rio Rancho, New Mexico on October 4, 2014. Written by an anonymous screenwriter from Gallup, New Mexico: QUOTE: My first conference and the main speaker was late. Not just by a few minutes. The scheduled speaker was due at five and it was six. At six twenty, the speculation as to his whereabouts began to be voiced over the microphone. Mr. Hayakawa, one of the conference organizers, announced that the fee to rent the hall could not be extended, but the audience was welcome to move to the tiny Quonset hut behind the community center. Women and men suddenly rose in groups of two and threes to exit through the side door, despite the fact that two speakers had been brought back to the stage to field questions from the audience. More than once I overheard, “Have you heard Travis tell his story? He’s the real deal.” So I waited. In the interim, David Marler, a member of The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), and Norio Hayakawa, a long-time resident of Rio Rancho, founder of the Civilian Intelligence Network and ufology author, took turns at the microphone thanking the audience for their patience and expressing their regrets that Travis Walton had not shown. A ripple of excitement ran through the crowd when Mr. Hayakawa announced that Travis had called and he was “down the road at the McDonalds.” Thirty minutes later, the speculation still in its hushed stages, an unnamed spokesman took the microphone and expressed his regrets openly on stage that Travis “still wasn’t here.” One fellow shouted, “Maybe we should go down to McDonalds.” The crowd laughed. A quick demographic: Scanning the group, I noted most were over the age of forty years of age. The mix of women to men was equal. If the cars in the parking lot were a hint at their economic diversity, then a sprinkle of brand new vehicles mixed with a few junkers, and every make, model, and age of car in between, revealed they were an economically diverse cross section of the population. And yet, I want to stress that in some sense this was no ordinary group. Despite their willingness to express themselves openly, not one person in the audience took up the obvious negative overtones of their organizers. (*I think he was alluding to the fact that all the speakers except for the last speaker, Travis Walton, had a rather skeptical attitude about UFOs and aliens). They either sat in chairs chattering pleasantly in groups or made their way in small bands through the side door to the tiny Quonset hut. Women with children stopped to allow the kids to slide and swing in the park between the two buildings. They stood and chatted in the failing light. In the play area, a Pawnee Indian, for that’s how he introduced himself, with striking shoulder length jet black hair and white-white teeth came over and asked if this was the first time I’d ever heard Travis speak. His companion, a retired teacher, had taken his turn earlier in the day at the microphone to recount his personal abduction experience and to make reference to his subsequent book. The teacher had spoken in the interim when the audience had been called upon, impromptu, by the conference leaders to provide entertainment while we waited for Travis to arrive from McDonalds. A mother wandered over, “Have you ever heard Travis tell his story?” Once again, I shook my head no. “When he gets to the part about what they were doing to him, he lowers his head like he can’t stand to relive it.” The drifting woman wandered on. “Have you seen the movie?” the Pawnee asked smiling. I admitted I had not. “You must see the movie,” the teacher added, “even if some parts of it are Hollywood.” In the increasing darkness amid the children’s laughter, we chatted while we waited. Mr. Hayakawa anxiously made his way through the crowd outside the hut several times. When it was pitch dark, I decided to wander into the hut and find a seat. It was jam packed. Half of the crowd sat in the available chairs and the other half stood. Grandmother’s leaned against walls, elderly men with canes stood swaying, mothers held sleepy children in arms or on laps. I leaned on a short table which sat right inside the door. When absolutely no one else could fit into the cramped space, a woman pushed a rolling chair in through the small door to a young man supporting himself on metal crutches. Nine people literally had to step outside to allow the chair in. The fire marshal would have loved it. A face appeared thrust between elbows in the door, “He’s here!” Excited voices puffed above smiles and nods, Travis had made it! A short thin man in a cheap white dress shirt, polyester dress pants held up at the waist by a three-inch thick well-worn black belt, wove his way into the center of the room. His hair, eyebrows and mustache were dyed to what must have once been their youthful color. But the dye was too orange and too dark, so it stood out unnaturally against his pale skin. He’d had some cosmetic work done around his eyes as there were no wrinkles on his face, although his wrinkled hands raised to accept and to return the crowd’s greetings. He was well into his sixties. “I apologize.” His voice was tempered, genuine. “I should have known that Arizona was an hour’s difference than New Mexico.” He stepped behind a napkin covered table which sat wedged at the front of the room. Someone had hand lettered his name on an eight by ten sheet of copy paper and taped it onto the napkins. Travis still had the shape and movements of a teenager, a gangly youth, and his lack of arrogance was obvious in his mannerisms. He bowed his head with each gesture of welcome offered by anyone in the crowd. The solicitousness didn’t embarrass him, but made him reflect, turn his attentions inward. It was obvious he didn’t consider himself in any way superior. “Should I just take questions? Since I’m so late?” He apologized again, a rambling, looking at his shoes apology. A man in a wheelchair, newly arrived and parked in the doorway, called out “Just tell us your story,” in a clear voice. The crowd agreed wholeheartedly. Travis lowered his head as he recounted his experience. His voice wasn’t monotone, nor was it exaggerated. He spoke in a matter of fact way. He looked not at the table, nor did he look into the crowd, but unfixed, his eyes moved back and forth as he recounted the details to the event in his life which had brought him here to Albuquerque. No one in the audience spoke. The hush was real. The listening genuine. Children had long since fallen asleep on their mother’s laps. Innocence filled the room. We listened like children who sat hidden under a dining room table after a holiday meal, when the turkey platter or ham plate has been removed from the center of the table, and an elder in a rare moment of reflection and satiation recalls their long heroic dead. We listened. Our singular focus…this man…this latecomer…Travis Walton, a lumberjack by trade, a common man with an uncommon tale. Travis wasn’t just the main speaker at the conference. Instead, standing before them in all the reality that television, radio, and the internet couldn’t replicate, was one of their own. An elder recounting his trial, his passage through fire, and he stood to tell without Hollywood embellishment… his unvarnished truth. As unbelievable, frightening, and horrendous, his truth might be, he told it for their benefit. Without pause. Without arrogance. Gifting them access to this, his very personal, albeit, singular journey. (UNQUOTE) *Norio Hayakawa
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 01:53:18 +0000
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