When I was a child I would listen as my father would talk to his friends, he talked about various things, mostly things that seemed very grown up interesting and exciting. He talked about work, and jobs, and bosses. He talked about caves, and animals, as he was a copper miner for many years. Sometimes he talked about trains. Sometimes he talked about sex, relationships, and money. He'd discuss the various odds and ends of an adult life that a child imagines to be far too fascinating to comprehend or experience. Myself as a child, I found it to difficult to believe that I might ever experience any of those things.

I heard him tell this story on several occasions. The night he saw a UFO somewhere in Ohio. From birth I was overly fascinated with space. The first book I remember reading was the Golden Big Book Of Astronomy, that featured exquisite pictures of the Solar System, various galaxies, nebulas, comets, meteors, black-holes, and some really fascinating work-ups of the beginning of the universe after the Big Bang. I relished anything I could find about astronomy, and wanted for a very long time to become an astronomer.

My fascination with space as not entirely scientific, though, and I believed that my father had seen an U.F.O. It was very easy to believe in such a thing as a very young child, listening to your Dad tell these stories to friends over beer, and various other things during social occasions. You can believe anything a grown-up says, because they are grown-up.

My father began his own business in the late 80’s, which required, among other things, getting up very early in the morning to drive around West Virginia. I had very little time to spend with my Dad, and so, when I was invited to ride along with him on days out of school, I would of course jump at the opportunity, even though it meant getting up at 2:30 in the morning.

I would wake up, surrounded by the dark, and pull on some pants. I would grab my blankie and a pillow, and head to the truck, where I would climb into the high front cab, and promptly fall asleep inside, shivering in the morning cold, and waiting for my father to get under way. I was about eight when he started his business and it was one of my first times out with him, in the late fall, just as it was beginning to be very chill. I think I had eaten an apple fritter, which my Grandmother used to make fresh for my Dad.

At the time we were living in a holler, as they were called. A holler is really just any back rode into a valley in West Virginia, and we lived at the top of the rode on the side of the mountain, Suzy Holler was the name. We drove off down the hill around 3 a.m. and started off on the almost three hour drive to Charleston where my father would then drive around selling sandwiches, soda and chips, before returning home in the late afternoon. I was a kid, and for me it was all fun and games.

That morning was particularly bright, and crisp. The stars were sparkling. In WV there are very few lights on the roads, especially in the hollers and the valleys, so the sky was always a vast milky sweep of stars, like I have seen very rarely since then. At times I would lay out on the hill with my blankie wrapped around me, and gaze up all night, or until my Grandmother dragged me back in to go to sleep.

On this night I was half-awake, half-asleep, really, but we had just started out so I as looking out of the window of the cab. I listened to my father breathing next to me. The radio was on, playing low music, and I was watching the stars, as we drove on the embankment, the wide rocky Gauley River, just below. I looked up at the stars passing through the window, passing through the reflection of my big brown eyes, and across the sky I watched silent and stunned as I saw a wink, blip, bleep, wink, blip, of orange moving across the sky, parallel with my father and me. It was moving in a perfectly straight line, like an orange dash mark across the sky, it made no sound, there were no great sparking flashing lights.

I watched until it disappeared, which was rather quickly, wink, blip, bleep, wink blip, gone. Vanished, no more. It did not fall down, it did not hit the mountains, it was just silent and gone. I turned to my father and asked if he had seen it, but he had seen nothing. He suggested it must have been a comet, or a meteor, but I've seen both since then and have yet to see a meteor or shooting star move like that.

When we returned home that afternoon, tired and a bit dirty from being in front of the truck most of the day, or otherwise on the road, I of course ran off to tell my brothers and sisters about my day with my father. At some point I remembered my flashing lights and related the story to them. They did not believe that I had seen anything of import. I've yet to find many people who do believe that I saw anything that day. I remember that morning very clearly, one of the few peaceful memories from my rather troubled childhood, and I must say, I've yet to find anything that explains what I saw.

My father never doubted me that I saw something. Perhaps because he, too, had seen something he simply could not explain, and that was impossible to explain to others. You can talk about U.F.O's, and aliens, and recount the various strange tales of your life, and yet, there are always nay sayers, and those who prefer proof they can touch, rather than the proof of one's convictions.

I believe in myself, and I believe in my father. I saw something that night that I simply could not explain. I've since seen only two other unusual flying objects that I could not really describe or fathom, but for the most part, the most effecting sighting was that first sighting. I might ask of myself "Do I believe in extraterrestrial life?" and my answer has always been the same. I'm willing to believe in anything that can be imagined the imagination is powerful enough to create anything, even things that may never have been and never will be again. I believe in myself, and that is strange enough.

And, there is the little girl part of me that believes in my father, and there is very little in the universe that can shake the power of that conviction, no matter how old, or distant I grow from my imagination or my memories.