ROSWELL, N.M. --"I want a one-way ticket," says a woman at the roadside fireworks stand outside Moriarty, N.M. She's speaking about hitching a ride on a UFO at Roswell, 95 miles to the southeast. "I don't want to come back!"

Moriarty, she tells me, is the "pinto bean capital of the world," and says that there are plenty of things to do in town, including blowing up Gulf War-strength firecrackers on July 4. For a moment, I'm tempted to stroll across the 100-degree highway to the Motel 6, get a room for a week, eat nothing but beans and blow up M-1000 explosives.

But no. I'm due at Roswell to observe the 50th anniversary of the alleged 1947 UFO crash, the granddaddy, as we've all learned from "The X-Files," of all government cover-ups. Besieged by UFO nutbags from all over the world, the week-long festival, which began Tuesday, is doubling Roswell's population of 50,000. The local Chamber of Commerce is billing it as the Woodstock of Flying Saucers, and a new Holiday Inn has been built just for the occasion.

Towns like this do their best to play the cards they've been dealt. Moriarty's ball team is called the Pintos. Truth or Consequences, N.M., named after the old TV game show, has a Ralph Edwards Park, in honor of its host. But Roswell has them all beat. Ground zero for advanced Western civilization's current cultural obsession, it has an International UFO Museum & Research Center, a competing UFO Enigma Museum, two separate UFO crash sites and a debris site. Now, it has tens of thousands of hard-core aficionados devoted to strange lights, unsubstantiated rumors, ominous acronyms like MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), black helicopters, mutilated cattle, probed abductees and Gillian Anderson. All in all, the makings of a very profitable summer.

The road signs indicate we're nearing Roswell. "Crash here for best prime rib in the galaxy." "Tastee Freez food is out of this world." "The aliens have landed at Quilt Talk." A local TV station's studio foyer announces, "Take me to your news leader."

We check in at the Chamber of Commerce building for press credentials. The trade show room is setting up for the onslaught of books, videos and the hundred gazillion separate products featuring the alien head logo, the smiley face of the '90s. One table sells individual tickets to the various symposia of UFO supporters and detractors, bicycle races, pancake eating contests, films, plays and tours of the crash site. An Alien Espresso stand sells drinks. A few children scurry past in alien costumes. In the Chamber of Commerce lobby is a large burial vault from the Wilbert company with stylish brochures resting on top of the polished bronze tomb. The message is clear: Call us when your abducted loved one is found stiff in the desert, disemboweled and sucked clean of ovaries.

The main speaker at Tuesday's press conference is Robert O. Dean, sharply dressed in sportcoat, tie and slacks, his hair pulled back in a gray ponytail. Dean is a retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. who was attached in the 1960s to SHAPE, the military arm of NATO. He says he was once shown a NATO Top Secret document that admitted NATO's knowledge of UFOs and extraterrestrials, and now lectures on government cover-ups. Press nerds take notes and munch from the complimentary buffet. Dean tells us that the kids walking around in alien costumes are fine and add color to the proceedings, but that we shouldn't laugh. The issue is real.

"There are many young people out here," he says to the room, "who are going to win Pulitzers about this. If you dig deep enough, and don't believe the government BULLSHIT." Five days to go. Plenty of time to win a Pulitzer.
July 2, 1997

Jack Boulware is a columnist for S.F. Weekly.