My Secret Family Near the Alien Crash Site

This month the CIA came clean about Area 51, thus confirming what myself and thousands of Coast to Coast AM listeners have already known for decades. (Coast to Coast AM is my favorite radio show—it’s like the BBC for people who believe in Bigfoot encounters. A terrific program!) My fascination with Area 51 goes straight back to childhood. My family even made a trip to Roswell, NM because of it.

Area 51 (a base which actually exists, purportedly to test spy planes) is mythologized in UFO lore as the repository for crashed alien spacecrafts. The foremost example in the canon is the Roswell Crash. In 1947 something plummeted from the sky in Roswell, New Mexico. Initially the Roswell Army Air Field’s public officer reported that the military had recovered a “flying disk.” Later that day a much higher-ranking Air Force general reported that, no, it had actually been a weather balloon. Not a flying saucer.

Hence several decades of conspiracy theories about the government having aliens in jars.

For the record, I believe the balloon story. Around that same time the military was making high-altitude weather balloons with microphones slung underneath, to spy on Soviet atomic bomb testing. One balloon probably crashed in Roswell, but we couldn’t very well say, “Hey Russians—not only are we floating surveillance equipment over Siberia, it’s not even very good surveillance equipment. One hit a ranch! They’re huge—we never manage to slam boats or submarines into ranches, but our balloon steers like a drunken pirate.”

So (by my reasoning) the Air Force said the craziest thing imaginable: A flying saucer had crashed in New Mexico. It sounded so implausibly absurd that Russian spies would not immediately conclude we were inflating aluminum bubbles to stalk them with. Brilliant!

Then, quite unexpectedly, all of our people started freaking out about aliens crash-landing in Roswell. What if these Martians took our jobs fruit picking, for instance? What if their crafts had better gas mileage and put General Motors out of business? So a dusty general said, “Ugh, fine, just tell them all it’s a weather balloon. That sounds like a thing that’s real and not made up.” And the government has had to deal with its initial space man fib ever since. People still think the flying saucer wreckage is housed at Area 51.

My family made a pilgrimage to the UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico during my childhood. My father intended to take us to Carlsbad Caverns, to look at stalactites and swat at bats, which he had initially wanted to do for his honeymoon.

Mom and I discovered that Roswell, New Mexico, was just close enough to Carlsbad Caverns as to be an irritating but do-able side excursion for Dad to drive us to. So we all drove to Roswell and checked out the UFO Museum, which includes a replica of an alien autopsy you can look at, as well as a fairly eclectic gift shop.

At the time they had a grainy film featuring an “eye witness” of the Roswell Crash, who confirmed that he and his girlfriend were in the back of his pickup having sex when a giant flying saucer came screaming out of the sky. He was wearing a University of Oklahoma windbreaker in this video, and we were all very proud of our state when we got back in the car afterwards.

Anyway, here’s the interesting bit: all around Roswell we kept seeing bumper stickers with my dad’s name running for the state legislature. Dad had actually served in the Oklahoma state legislature, but not New Mexico, where we currently were. It was very strange.

We stopped by a gas station on the way out to buy junk food and t-shirts with pictures of aliens on them, and we asked about whoever this local politician with my dad’s name was. It turns out he was “just some guy” running for the legislature. But, according to the gas station attendant, he looked an awful lot like my father!

At this point it’s worth noting that both my father and this unknown New Mexico politician shared the same name as my grandfather. And Grandpa Heaton was of far more dubious character and mischievous personal history than any of the children he sired.

This is a roundabout way of saying that, for years, I believed there was secret bastard wing of Heatons living in Roswell, New Mexico.

I still do.