Sometimes, I do real work
Most of the time, the work of putting a book together – regardless of how challenging it can sometimes be – is fun. Talking to people with interesting stories, reading other histories, writing: it’s all pleasant going.
But every now and then, I have to do real work.
Recently, I spent hours poring through newspaper archives kept at the Carroll County Heritage Center in Berryville. These aren’t physical newspapers, which would have long since crumbled. Neither are they digitized, searchable files that can be easily browsed.
These are on microfilm.
Now, many readers today might only vaguely know that this has something to do with Gen Xers and Boomers. So, for their sake, let me explain.
Microfilm is something like a film negative – oh, wait.
Microfilm is this roll of clear plastic with images of newspaper pages shrunk down to, like, an inch high. You hand-thread the film through some little thingies on this special projector with a bright light that projects the images onto a screen. You turn two crank handles to move forward and backward.
It’s all very steampunk.
Anyway, I was hazy on the details for a few events in the Seventies and Eighties. Thus, fidgeting with the steampunk newspaper gizmo.
I’ll tell you about one of those events in honor of the Ozark UFO Conference being held next weekend in Eureka Springs.
One night in December 1977, something weird happened. OK, yes, this is Eureka Springs, something weird happens most nights. What I mean is something weird even for here.
The Eureka Springs Times-Echo newspaper reported that dozens of people reported the incident to authorities and radio stations. Witnesses “saw something out of the ordinary in the air between the hours of nine and ten o’clock last Thursday night,” the reporter wrote.
A gigantic, diamond-shaped craft with red and blue lights floated over the area from Beaver Lake to Green Forest. Some people heard a humming noise, while others said it had the ability to stop and hover.
“I thought maybe I was seeing things as I went down by the Kraft plant where I had seen state trooper Paul Neisal parked earlier,” Berryville police officer Jim Dwyer is quoted as saying. “I asked him if he was seeing the same thing I was and he assured me he had been watching it.”
The unidentified flying object finished its sightseeing trip after about an hour and left the area. The incident was never explained.
Like I said, real work.