I’ve been ranting so much over SCOTUS lately, I thought I put out something a little lighter… This is a story I wrote years ago that I recently reworked, partly to remove some of Carl’s NSFW commentary on life. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Connors Junior College in the early 1970s was an interesting place as there was a large number of returning Vietnam veterans enrolled at the institution. Carl was one of those.
I had started college at the University of Rhode Island. My main motivation at the time was to avoid the Vietnam draft. I did not have a clear picture as to my direction in life and thus was, at best, a very indifferent student. When my birthday came up with a very high number in the draft lottery, the probability being drafted approached zero. I dropped out of college. With no real skills I started working as a factory hand in an injection molding plant in Cranston, Rhode Island.
My father around this time had been transferred overseas with his job with an aerospace company, taking my mother and my three youngest brothers with him. This left me alone in Rhode Island. After nearly 18 months of living where I had no relatives, with most of my friends off to various colleges, I decided I needed to move to Oklahoma, where one brother had stayed behind and most of my mother’s family lived. I found a job working in the warehouse of an optical manufacturer located in Muskogee. It was after working there a year or so and barely making ends meet that my urge for education reached the tipping point of action.
The easiest and cheapest option was Connors Junior College, located about 20 miles south of Muskogee, Oklahoma. So I enrolled and begin taking night classes with the returning GIs. Many of the veterans were highly motivated, but there were more than a few that were in school solely for the check they were receiving. Oscar Wilde would not have thought them the most earnest of students. Since many of the teachers graded on the curve, their lack of earnestness did not bother me. There is something, however, about paying for your own education that brings out the earnest in you, and I was very earnest. It was my money and I earnestly wanted out of low wage jobs.
At the time I had a 65 Mustang, red with a white top and a stick shift. Boy, do I wish that I had that car now. I was driving the 40 miles round trip 2 or 3 times a week. Carl was in many of my classes and making the same trip. We agreed to swap driving to save a little money.
Carl was around my age, maybe a little older. He had a shock of blonde, very curly hair, long in the fashion of the day, a bit of a Roger Daltrey look. Carl was also living openly with a woman. Today, it is not big a deal, but in 1974 it still seemed a bit scandalous. While Carl was not the best of scholars, he was very earnest about his studies. If Carl had one preeminent trait, it was the earnest way he approached most things in life.
In our Speech class we had been tasked with giving a demonstration to the class. The theme was of our own choice. One of our classmates who worked in a butcher shop brought in a hind quarter of beef and demonstrated how to cut it up. There is something you will not soon forget. My contribution to this melee was how to repair a punctured bicycle inner tube. Carl brought in his weights. He demonstrated how to do several exercises with them. However, what really stuck in my mind was his explanation as to why he started lifting weights. He shared that it all stemmed from insecurity and a bad body image, amazing to me as it was not something I would have revealed to hardly anyone, let alone in front of a group. Carl was all about such things, probably due to the increased confidence that lifting weights gave him. Funny thing though is that Carl just concentrated on his upper body. From the waist up he was well toned with massive shoulders and arms. Then he had these skinny legs that did not look like they could support the weights he was lifting.
Besides being earnest Carl was also very excitable. We were driving north back to Muskogee one evening after classes. It was perhaps around nine o’clock, and in the fall, so it was dark. Off to the west we both noticed some lights. I did not think much about them initially as they seemed far away. I thought perhaps it was an airplane with landing lights on or maybe a helicopter with a search beacon.
Carl became focused on the lights, and would not stop watching them. The nearer we approached Muskogee the larger and more intense the lights seemed. Carl began to talk about the possibility of the lights being a space ship, a flying saucer, a UFO. I was very dismissive to him, basically telling him that he was nuts. I might have even suggested that he had dropped a weight on his head.
Carl could not stop looking at the lights. He became more and more excited, talking louder and faster. He started telling me that the lights were rotating. Carl’s excitement was contagious and I begin to focus on the lights myself, all the while trying to keep the Mustang between the lines. The longer I looked, the more it seemed the lights were indeed rotating. When I started to give in to the possibility that it might be an UFO, it absolutely fueled Carl’s agitation to a new level.
By then we were on the outskirts of Muskogee, the lights seemed nearly on top of us but headed off to the northwest. Carl began to bark out orders for me to turn here, and then there. I was putting my Mustang though its paces earnestly trying to catch the rotating lights. Suddenly Carl screamed, “Stop!” I slammed on the brakes, Carl jumped out of the car, leaving the passenger door open, and began racing down the street after the lights. I sat there a minute with my heart pounding, breathing hard. I just knew aliens were going to beam us directly into a vivisection room or annihilate us with an energy beam.
Somehow I managed the courage to get out of my car. After all, Carl was running down the street after a UFO. I could not abandon a friend to space monsters. Besides when would I ever get the opportunity to see little green men again? Suddenly it all came into focus. The alien spacecraft displayed a message I could read. The lights spelled out, “Vote for Joe Blow, County Commissioner.” It was a small plane trailing a phosphorescent sign through the night sky before the upcoming election.
Carl’s UFO evaporated along with my pride.
You have a talent of making a story come alive to the reader. This one made me smile!