At the ripe old age of 14 I had a paper route that required me to get the Sunday papers out by 5:00 AM. I lived in San Antonio on the NW edge of town and my route took me into the very edge of town. At about 4:00 AM I was in the slow process of getting myself, Cushman Scooter and about 150 lbs of Sunday papers up a steep hill. The old 8 HP engine didn’t have the guts to make more than 5 MPH up that hill. About half way up the hill everything in site got so bright I thought someone was welding with a gazillion megawatt arc welder behind me. It scared me so bad that I let go of the throttle and came to a complete stop within a split second, everything around me was so bright I lost control of one of my bodily functions which created an electrical circuit between me and the spark plug of the now idling 8 HP engine. I was so scared that the 14-20 K volts didn’t hardly phase me, but did leave a lasting impression. The light came from behind me and seemed to last a lifetime, but it was probably only 30 seconds or so, I turned around just in time to see a white ball of light with a bluish green tail, I had no more than turned to see it when everything went dark again. Then I heard an “object” hit the ground not more than 20 feet from me in an open field. It took me about 3 minutes to collect my thoughts then I hit the throttle and beat it out of there as fast as I could and finished the route making a few mistakes here and there.
After my Dad woke up, I told him what I had seen, he said that whatever it was it could be “RADIOACTIVE”, the big “R” word. Now in those days, the late 50’s and early 60’s that was something I could relate to, due to all the drills at school. See the flash, get under the desk (lotta good that would have done). I was kinda surprised that my Dad had the wisdom to come up with that, but it seemed that he was getting smarter in direct proportion to my increase in age. Once he said that, I was in agreement 100% and decided to not even go near the place again..
I guess that was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. About 5 years ago I finally got a lesson about the meteorites and their value on the Discovery Channel. I put 2 and 2 together and got 4.75 so, I figured what I saw that morning was a witnessed fall and was probably worth all the gold that the Templer’s carried to Oak Island. I still live in San Antonio so I hurried back to the “site”. I’m sure that that once you started reading this you knew that I didn’t get rich and didn’t have a Meteorite named after me..
The “site” was covered with a 5 story office building and the parking lot was solid asphalt. And in addition to that the “lay” of the land looked they must have dug down pretty deep so, I guess they took the overburden to a land fill and who only knows where.
Well, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it, I have learned to deal with being poor and humble. I don’t know what I would have done with all that money at that age, I would have probably spent it on wine, women, song and wasted the rest..
I have been wishing one would fall through my roof, I wouldn’t even worry about getting the insurance company to fix the hole like the guy in New Zealand, at least I think that’s where it happened. Oh Lord, just give me one more chance and give my XLT the ability to beep loud if I come near one here in the GREAT STATE OF TEXAS..
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