Winter memories, strange sky sights

Paul Fugleberg / Among Other Things

That column showing a picture of the snowy winter of '48 and '48 is still sparking memories of snows of yesteryear.

Carol Sherick sent along this photo taken after a snowstorm during the winter or '42 and '43. It was taken outside the present locations of the Bargain Barn and Leader office. You'll note the present Beacon Tire landmark light in the background. That light, incidentally, served to call for police. Before the Polson police car had a radio, if the police were needed the caller would dial the operator and she would turn the light on atop the beacon. The policeman would contact the operator to get the message.

It wasn't 911 but it worked, albeit somewhat slower.

Kitty Pedersen mentions another sidelight to bad winters, probably the same '47-'48. From southern California, she writes, "the then brand new City of Polson LaFrance fire truck (now owned by Eric and in the Polson-Flathead Historic Museum) was used to pump water from the lake into the city water pipes when the pipes froze or broke. Eric saw a picture of the fire truck doing that in an antique fire engine magazine a couple of years ago."

Strange sky sights

The unusual events in the skies earlier this month — a disintegrating meteorite, an attempt to shoot down a failed U.S. satellite, and the lunar eclipse — brought to mind a sighting of a UFO or whatever it was on Thursday, July 21, 1966.

A couple of our kids and some neighborhood kids were playing in the back yard. I happened to be out there with my camera — for what reason, I don't recall now.

Suddenly a silent, speeding, spinning, round, pulsating light appeared out of the north/northwest traveling in a straight line to the southeast. It crossed over the mountains in less than a minute. Too low and too fast for a satellite, too high and too big for a conventional airplane. No sound, either.

All the kids in the yard saw the light, as did my wife as she looked through the kitchen window.

I managed to take a picture it. Panning — moving the camera with the object — didn't help much because the shutter speed was set at only 1/25th of a second and the lens opening was 5.6. Result was just a bright light of a jagged, indistinguishable shape. What the eye saw, however, was a round object, spinning like a top.

What was it? I haven't the foggiest notion. Haven't see anything like it since. While not a believer in flying saucers, I've been less skeptical about some reports of unidentified flying objects.

Manmade saucer

The History Channel's UFO Files series last week mentioned the 1952 saucer flap near Great Falls Air Force Base (now Malmstrom AFB). I remember that one — never saw one but there was a lot of talk in the area about UFOs. At the time I was a Link Trainer instructor, and sometimes rode along when pilots were given instrument flying checks.

Once, after the check pilot finished testing the Korean Recall pilot, he said, "let's go make some flying saucer spots on the radar sets."

And he took that four-engine C-54 down "on the deck," below the scope of radar, and flew toward a radar base in the Opheim area. As we got nearer the base, the pilot brought the plane up in a circling climb. Suddenly the blip appeared on the radar screen. He said the startled radar operators were "chattering like a bunch of monkeys" over the radio.

Then he said, "OK, let's go home," and took the C-54 down beneath the radar and headed back to Great Falls.