With the passing of popular Mobile television and radio personality Rennie Brabner I lost a opportunity to tell him something that I thought he would have enjoyed knowing about. As much as I had intended to email him and tell him about all the chaos he cause on one of our camping trips I never got around to it, which I regret. In fact I didn't know that he had broke the story that caused all the chaos at the camp that night. It must had been the 40th anniversary of the event when I heard him talking about breaking the story back in October of 1973.
The story was about the abduction of two men in Pascagoula, Miss. by a UFO. Just over a month later this report would have a great effect on one of our camping trips. I guess my main point here is that if you are going to tell or do something to someone like we all say, do it now, don't wait like I did with this story. I've told the story before but here it is so everyone will know what I'm talking about.
With the weather turning colder and football season coming to a close a lot of us begin to think about hunting and camping for the upcoming hunting season. One of the advantages of living in this area is the opportunities for hunting and fishing in this area. I've been on a several memorable camping trips but some are more memorable than others.
One very memorable trip happen back in the early 1970's. This happened just a couple of weeks after what became known as the Pascagoula UFO abduction which at the time was all over the world news. Several of us from Century and Flomaton loaded up and went down to the Apalachicola National Forest for a week long squirrel hunting and camping trip. The trip down to the lake where we camped was good and we got to the campground and got everything in order. There was probably close to two dozen of us in the group, some in campers and some in tents. I was in a tent about fifteen feet behind a camper with two other men.
About this time, I was getting pretty serious about competitive target shooting with handguns, as was another friend who was in the tent with us. At the time the best source of light was the Coleman lantern that used Coleman fuel or as a subsitute unleaded gasoline, or what was popularly known at the time as white gas.
The major problem with these lanterns was that as they used up their fuel the pressure in the fuel tank would drop causing the light to fluctuate between dim and bright. This was still a few years before unleaded gas became the standard. We had been at the campground for a couple of nights and had talked about the UFO incident in Pascagoula a little while sitting around the campfire.
Now this was a public campground and being the first week of squirrel season there were several other campers in the campground besides us, and some of the others were not far from where we setup. We sit around the campfire for a few hours after dark, probably mentioned the incident in Pascagoula and went on to bed. Sometime after midnight we were woke up by someone shouting “y'all look.” After the man had shouted this several times, it naturally got our full attention. Then he changed to shouting “y'all look, y'all look, you don't see it do you.”
This went on what what seemed like a week and a half but was probably only a minute and a half or two minutes at the most. Then suddenly the situation took on a serious note when the man said, “it's coming this way.”
Then the situation took even a more serious turn when the man said, “it's coming to get us and is going to take us away.” Well, me and the man on the right side of the tent couldn't see what “it” was because all we could see was the back of the camper in front of us. We decided that “it” might get us and take us somewhere, but if we could we were going to give it a severe case of lead poisoning, as we cocked our pistols.
After what seem like a month, but was probably less than five minutes total another man in the camper realized what the man was looking at and told him, “you have woke this whole campground up to watch a Coleman lantern go out.” As soon as we knew it was a Coleman lantern about to get us, the third man in the tent turned his flashlight on and started looking around. We ask him what he was looking for and he said, “I was just wondering how many people are in this tent, I only knew of two of y'all in here, but when he said it was coming to get us, I heard four pistols being thumb cocked, and I just wanted to know if we had extra people in here I didn't know about.”
We told him the second pistol was a in case pistol, to be used in case what ever it was kept coming toward us after emptying the first one. Over all it was a good camping trip, we had a good time and good food and fellowship around the campfire at night and in the morning.
On a quick side note from a story last week, our balloon race around the world continues, the balloon from Brewton Middle School last reported earlier today as it came through eastern China and over Taiwan. It took a more southern track on it's second trip around the world where there are far fewer, stations for it to report through. The speed was just under 100 MPH and the attitude is holding steady at around 41,500 feet. We think the first trip could be a world speed record since on this trip the balloons are just passing China where on the first trip by this time they were both back over the United States.
The Alger Sullivan Historical Society meets the third Tuesday of the month at the Leach House Museum in Century at the corner of 4th street and Jefferson Avenue, come join us and consider becoming a member.
