Now, the ordinary will never do for an extraordinary Scottie. To my mind it’s got to be ‘super-sized’ or it’s not sized right at all. Call it “the big head” or whatever you like, Scottiness is all about attitude and that means the ordinary just won’t satisfy a canine sense-of-self that’s out of this world.

I suppose that’s why New Mexico suits me so well ‘cause it’s anything but ordinary! In fact, “out of this world,” you might say, is New Mexico’s second name. I mean, folks who don’t know this place is in the United States know we’re the land of aliens and UFOs and close encounters of the spooky-weird-kind, and that’s just the sort of extraordinariness to get my Caledonian adrenalin going!

To those of you new to this blog and to Great Scots Magazine, I’m Albie, the ‘queen-diva’ of the GSM domain. I’m Queen Lativa and Uma Thurman all rolled into one classy, brassy hocky-socky-ho-know-it-all Scottie. I don’t have the slightest hesitation to take on a bucking horse’s flying hooves if that horse has the audacity to come uninvited into my world, and a strange cat or squirrel or skunk or bird—well, let’s just say they all have to check with me before invading my space.  Size, you see, is an attitude to this queen, and mine is ‘super-sized’!

So you can imagine how my interest piqued at the notion of out-of-this-world aliens lurking around making galactic pitstops almost in my backyard. And that, dear reader, is what I recently went to investigate just outside of the town of Socorro, NM., scarcely 40 miles south of my home.

Now, sniffing out what’s fact from what’s whacked is a fulltime job in the UFO-charged climate of New Mexico. Dad says we’re known around the world for the famous “Roswell Incident” in July, 1947, when it is claimed two, possibly three saucer-shaped crafts crashed and as many as eight beings three- to 4-feet tall with large heads and big black eyes were recovered. One of those aliens, some UFO enthusiasts insist, survived for a year in captivity in Nevada’s super secret, deep underground, Military Base at Area 51.

And the “Roswell Incident” is only starters. The Aztec, NM., incident happened the next year in 1948, when a 100-foot, saucer-shaped craft reportedly crashed northeast of Aztec, killing 14-16 beings. Later, as if on a galactic reconnaisance mission, the town awoke to a fly-over of 75 to 100 disk-shaped objects flying low and slow without a whisper as if searching for their lost comrades. Dad read it was all investigated out the wazoo, but the military later took hard lines against witnesses informing all they hadn’t seen anything and newspapers that wrote up the story mysteriously disappeared from local libraries.

Wow! What’s not to like about this place, where on a good day you’ve got real-time Men In Black jazzed on green chili walking main street?

And then there’s Dulce (pronounced, “dool-say”), in northern New Mexico, which Dad says some claim is location of a super-secret joint military-extraterrestrial genetic laboratory. According to physicist Paul Bennewitz, an Albuquerque UFO spotter, the alien visitors he’s been photographing in the skies over Albuquerque since the 1970s told him they have an agreement with the military to exchange technology for use of our land. Turns out, Dulce, NM., in UFO circles, is second in importance only to Nevada’s Area 51.

Now, I must say I’m skeptical of much of the UFO-talk I hear. After all, every canine knows humans don’t have all their senses. Dad’s right when he jokes, “Heaven only knowses the noselessness of man!” But that’s no joke. To this keen observer it means—how shall I say this without being too cheeky—humans are handicapped when it comes to discerning reality.

That being said, there’s one UFO story you probably have not heard about which took place practically in my backyard, and of all the out-of-this-world mystery tales that circulate in my neck of the woods, this one gets this Scottie’s attention. Since it’s just down the road from our place, we packed up for a day trip to go investigate. Here’s what we found out.

It happened almost exactly 45 years ago on April 25th, 1964, on the southern outskirts of Socorro, NM., a quiet little place few ever heard of. In those days, Socorro did have Shirley’s Drive-In, where my Mom says she remembers the best burgers and chocolate shakes in the world.

Now, the word on Shirley’s bodacious shakes may have gone galactic because at 5:50 p.m. on the 25th of April two very unusual visitors buzzed Socorro—and changed lives forever.

Tourists from Colorado driving a green 1955 Cadillac were the first to see an oval-shaped, metallic object flash over their car so low it clipped the car’s radio antenna, then disappeared below their line of vision in the rough terrain west of the highway.

Dad says the events that occurred during the next few minutes were analyzed and investigated promptly by the FBI and top brass in the military, including a representative for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), and then further analyzed by UFO enthusiasts pro and con over the past 40 years to the fractions of seconds.

Socorro police officer, Lonnie Zamora, was following a speeding car on the south end of town when he heard a roaring noise and saw a blue flame coming down in the southwest about a half-mile away. Knowing there was dynamite stored at a mill in that vicinity he feared the shed had exploded. He made a quick turn onto a rough dirt track which led to the shed and when he topped a low ridge he saw a strange, white, metal object in a gully below.

At first sight he thought it was a car flipped over. Then he saw the object was egg-shaped, standing on four leg-like extensions. There were two small figures standing near the large object wearing what he later described as white coveralls, and they were quite startled by his approach.

As Zamora drove closer, he radioed the sheriff’s office, reporting a possible accident, and requested that State Police Sergeant Samuel Chavez be dispatched to the scene.

Crossing a dip in the landscape, Zamora momentarily lost sight of the object, and when he got back onto the ridge he was only about 50 feet away, close enough to see curious insignia markings on the object’s side. The two tiny figures were gone.

Zamora slammed on his brakes and swung out of his police car, and as he moved toward the object on foot he heard two heavy metal slams like the closing of the hatch on an army tank.

Suddenly, a bright blue flame burst from the bottom of the object less than 50 feet in front of him discharging a roar so deafening he instinctively threw himself to the ground.

Frightened, he scrambled on all fours to get behind his car, then ran a distance of about 25 feet before looking back. The craft rose as the roar continued, and Zamora, expecting an explosion, ran another 25 feet. Then the roar stopped and the flame disappeared and the object began moving away in a straight line.

Zamora dashed back to his squad car and by police radio tried to describe to the dispatcher what he was seeing. After the object traveled for about a mile at an elevation of about 20 feet, it shot upward and finally disappeared between two peaks to the southwest.

State Police Sergeant Chavez soon arrived at the scene as well as officer Ted Jordan who brought a polaroid camera and they accompanied a visibly shaken Zamora down into the arroyo where a large greasewood bush was incinerated and the sand in the burned area was melted into glass. They photographed four depressions in the soil in a quadrangular pattern around the bush, and later FBI investigation found tiny “shoeprints” in the soil.

Scarcely more than an hour later (7:00 p.m.), FBI agent J. Arthur Byrnes was at the police station in Socorro, and minutes later Captain Richard T. Holder, Commander at White Sands Missile Range Stallion Site, located about 100 miles south of Socorro, arrived in town.

Next day the story was officially released to the press and reporters descended on Socorro, and within days national UFO experts flocked into town. The big guns including James and Carol Lorenzen, civilian researchers and authors of important published UFO sightings; Dr. J. Allen Hynek, professor of astronomy at Northwestern University and Air Force UFO consultant; and Ray Stanford, representative for the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, the military’s definitive investigation into UFOs.

It was Stanford and policeman Zamora who found the most startling evidence. At the spot of the northeast landing gear imprint at the site, Standord carefully dug out of the ground a piece of fractured rock on which were small bits of shiny metal, distinct specks and curled slivers, which had been gouged onto the ragged surface of the stone.

Stanford called NICAP headquarters in Washington, DC. Arrangements were made for the stone to be analyzed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Dad says Stanford hand-delivered the precious find to the Spacecraft Systems Branch of Goddard where the metal particles were removed and extensively analyzed.

A week later, Department Chief of the Spacecraft Systems Branch, Dr. Henry Frankel, phoned both Stanford and Richard Hall, of NICAP, to say the test results were astonishing. The metal was an unknown alloy, primarily zinc and iron, and of unknown manufacture anywhere in the world.

Dad says that’s when the story gets spooky. Within days, Frankel was taken off the Socorro rock sample study, and soon NASA issued a formal document stating the particles on Stanford’s stone were nothing more than silica, a very common element.

To tell you the truth, this Scottie investigator is not sure what to make of the Socorro incident. We found the old washboard, dirt road Zamora drove to the infamous arroyo and a kind stranger walked us to the landing site. Gus and Willie and I gave the place a thorough sniff-test and Dad took pictures. We even looked up the address of retired officer Lonnie Zamora and drove by his modest home and interviewed a man who served under him in the local National Guard.

Call it a hoax if you want to, but Lonnie Zamora paid a price for his sighting. Despite Zamora’s standing in the community as an ideal, small town law officer trained to observe details and to have excellent recall, he was portrayed by the media as a fool. He no longer gives interviews about what he saw 45 years ago. “He won’t talk about it,” his fellow National Guardsman told us.

As I sat on a small rock cairn at the site, I thought about Lonnie Zamora, about the military, and about the universe, wondering if there is intelligent life beyond earth.

A minister at a Baptist church near the site had it all figured out. “Man is made in God’s image,” he told Dad rather defensively, “and nothing is greater than God. So there’s nothing out there greater than man.”

When I reflect on what that minister said, and upon the madness now going on in that part of the world humans call “the Holy Land,” I’m embarrassed for those who are certain man is the only being made in God’s image. And I think I know why UFO visitors in 1964 seemed in a hurry to search elsewhere for intelligent life in the universe.

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine (originally published in GSM, May/June 2004)