Roosevelt County ready for alien landing

Leaving or coming back into Portales in the dark is a little bit out of this world these days.

It feels like you’re in some sort of futuristic or sci-fi movie as you pass through the dark prairie night with dozens of red lights flashing in unison. Any minute Mad Max might appear in front of you in his souped up Interceptor.

Once upon a time, on a dark night, you could’ve blindfolded someone then dropped them off in a pasture in Roosevelt County and unless they had lived in the area all their life and had a good set of bearings they just might have headed the wrong way back to town. I’ve seen it happen.

These days, if you can get past the feeling you’re on a bad acid trip, all you have to know is where all the wind farms are located and you’ve got a flashing road map.

It got me to wondering about the peril we’ve placed ourselves in by putting up those huge blinking beacons. That’s right folks, I’m pretty sure from outerspace Roosevelt County is starting to look a lot like an alien runway.

With wind tower beacons on each side of U.S. 70 and Portales at the end of the runway, it’s only a matter of time before little green men from Mars are landing their space ships in Rotary Park

I’m not sure what the Dean of Science Fiction, Portales’ own late, great Jack Williamson would have made of this dilemma, but James T. Kirk would be moving his phaser rifle from “stun” to “kill.”

The best thing we’ve got going for us is the F-111 posted at the end of the alien runway ready for battle. All we need to do is find a few surplus photon torpedoes to mount on the airplane and we’ll be ready to defend Goober Gulch and Mother Earth at large.

In an interesting side note, years ago while working as managing editor at the local newspaper, I devised the perfect April Fools gag to run on the cover. I took a photo of that infamous jet plane that sits on Portales’ main thoroughfare and Photoshopped the plane out of the picture just leaving the concrete base. I had concocted the best story about aliens stealing the plane. A surly editor up the food chain scowled at me over the phone and said, “We don’t do April Fool stories.”

Now I fear my April Fool fantasy might actually become reality if we don’t act quickly. This problem is bigger than Portales and I propose that we immediately have Trump’s cabinet get in touch with the Russians. We’ll need all the help we can get when flying saucers start landing in peanut patches and dairy cows are teleported onboard other-worldly spacecraft for devious experimentation.

If we can win the coming war with these creatures from a distant galaxy — if we can survive — it is quite likely we could supplant Roswell as the alien capital of eastern New Mexico.

Na-nu, na-nu my neighbors.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: [email protected]