Excerpt #13 from the long-awaited book that Chuck Blore has almost finished writing ...

www.chuckblore.com

OKAY, OKAY, I WROTE THE BOOK

“I swear to God. Everybody in this town was listening to us.” I was almost singing those words to Herb Golombeck, GM of KELP Radio and TV.

Herb and I were having lunch with the Kelp Sales Manager, Art ... uh ... something. I can never remember the names of Sales managers — sounds like a typical PD, right?— Anyway, I couldn't stop talking about the flying saucers, the sunburned airmen who saw them first, our beaming the invitation to the aliens to use our frequency and the static which we thought for a moment was their acceptance and then all the BS with the Interplanetary Space Patrol Commander.

“When do we get the next book (the audience measurements)?” Art asked Herb.

Herb put on his best ‘The GM always knows everything look’ and said, “Well, the ratings are actually going on right now. So that’s good. But we’re not going to see the numbers till two months from now when all the fuss about the UFOs is old news. So that’s not so good.” Most GMs are wise like that.

“I wonder how we could get a sneak peek?” Art said, wishing to himself..

“Yeah” I added, “Like a preview of coming attractions.” OhmyGawd! I was agreeing with a sales manager. That really scared me. I remember I couldn't finish my lunch.

Back at the office, Herb picked up the phone and called Hooper. (The most viable rating service at the time was The Hooper Rating, or The Hooper Audience Measurement Index.) Herb was told he could get a “Pull out.” For an additional fee, before the numbers were compiled, the Hooper researchers could go into the El Paso ratings material and flush out the numbers for particular days. (Properly I suppose, the term would be “flesh out’ but with the numbers we were expecting “flush out” seems more appropriate.) Like most GMs, Herb was not a particularly profligate soul. When the answer to his “How much?” question made his jaw drop, I suspected we would wait for the regular publication date. “If the numbers are anything like we imagine they might be,” Herb said to Art Whats-his-name, “What do you think you can do?”

Art jumped on it, “Chuck says the whole town was listening to us. If that’s only half right, we’ll be sold out for the next three months.” Herb ordered the Pull Out.

A couple of days later we got a call from Hooper with a preview of the preview. “Not only have I never seen a 72 share before, I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”

A 72! I swear, even though we were located on the city dump, the entire station was dancing. I didn’t know it then but that 72 would soon change my life.

A few days later there were reports of another UFO sighting in New Mexico.

A good PD knows his first obligation to the public is to milk whatever story they happen to be hooked on for as long as possible.

I asked our News Director, Ted Payne, to run over to New Mexico and check out the new sighting. Having become friends with one of the airmen who had seen the UFOs — and suffered severe sun burn-like injuries as a result — Ted thought it might be good to take him along to add credence(?) to whatever reports he might be making. I had Ted voice a promo, using as his background sound the same static which El Paso had come to recognize (I hoped) as the sound the space creatures responded to initially. We ran it every half hour.

The airman reminded Ted that there had been a sighting in New Mexico the night before his first encounter and suggested there might be some kind of a pattern to the UFO visits. If that was so, he thought it would be a better idea to go to where he had first seen them — in the desert sky near El Paso. Or to be more accurate, considering his sunburn was the result of having been bathed in an intensely bright light from the UFOs, where they had first seen him.

I thought that was great. We could take the mobile news unit and report directly from the scene. I say, we, because I had now determined that I should go along to witness whatever remarkable events that might occur — in the desert sky near El Paso.

We also changed the promo because now it was the best possible kind of breaking news ... it was local! Whatever remarkable events might occur, they would occur — in the desert sky near El Paso.

The airman remembered that it had been between 11:30 and 12:00 when his little skirmish with the unknown occurred. And as we drove into the desert leaving the city lights behind, I remember thinking that 11:30 must be the absolute darkest time of the night. And, the desolate desert, the darkest place in the universe.

About 20 minutes into the blackness our brave young airman whispered, “I think it was here.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I just got this weird feeling.”

“We can build on that,” said Ted, our accomplished journalist. He stopped the car and automatically turned off the headlights. We got out. We got back in. “Why don’t you leave the lights on?” I suggested, “Then we’ll always know where the car is, in case ...”

“Yeah. Yeah, good idea.” said Ted. He turned the headlights back on.
“Good idea.” echoed the airman.

Ted looked at him and said, “Did you guys leave the lights on that night?”

“Well, we had no choice. When those things flew over us, our lights went out, the radio went off and the engine went dead. All at once.” He was reliving this thing and you could tell he was uncomfortable.

“Is that when they turned the light on you?” I noticed Ted was making notes. Good newsman.

“No. That’s when we ran.”

“You ran? Where’d you go?”

“I don’t know.” The young airman wanted to help but he was really uptight. “Out there somewhere. We just ran.”

“Come on guys.” Ted was starting to walk into that black night. So I said, “You know, you guys. We don’t have to duplicate this thing exactly.” I was not really handling my part with bravado. “We might as well wait in the car and if those ...”

Our young airman friend had joined Ted, they were disappearing and I suddenly felt very alone. “Hey! Hey c’mon guys, wait for me!”

We walked into the darker and darker desert, all of us keeping an eye on the lights of our car waiting on that desolate highway. The car lights were like a leash which none of us wanted to go beyond.

Ted decided it was time to broadcast something. We’d been promoting it all day, and even though there wasn’t much to say ... anything would be better, and far more dramatic, than nothing. That is, if his portable remote could reach the car and the car had juice enough to relay it to the station. “Ted Payne calling Kelp. Testing, Testing.”

“We gotcha Ted.”

“Loud and clear?”

“Well, not really loud and not really very clear.”

“Sometimes that can add real drama to a piece.” said Ted. “Chuck’s here with me and he says we ought to go for it” Ted was looking at me while he was saying what he thought I should have said if I’d had sense enough to say it. I gave him a “What the hell. Give it a shot” look as the station announcer was saying, “5 ... 4 ... 3... 2 ... 1 “
All of the above happened pretty much like I have described but Ted’s opening words I remember exactly ... “Here we are. Not knowing where we are. Waiting. Not knowing what we’re waiting for...”

That’s when the red light on his portable remote blinked off. We looked toward where the car was and saw ... nothing. No lights.

“That’s exactly what happened before. Right before the lights ...” It was so dark I could barely see but I knew from the sound of the voice it was the young airman speaking, “Oh shit,” he said.

“Oh shit.” I think that was Ted.

“Yeah. Oh shit.” I think that was me.

(...to be continued)