06-27-2021, 04:20 PM
The problem with an account from over seventy years-ago, is that the many narratives transform the view of the overall
paradigm and the kernel becomes buried under the unconscious-bias that we're all guilty of.
For the average onlooker, the Roswell story involved an ignorant rancher finding some strange material on his land and
being a dutiful patriot, contacted his local sheriff that passed on the information to the Army.
After an alarming announcement that was quickly corrected, the Army says the dumb-assed cowboy couldn't tell a balloon
from a spaceship and we should all go back to ploughing the fields and sticking labels of tins.
Dates and locations are discarded in order to display the authoritative and calming the narrative that the world will keep
turning and if the silly notion of a men-from-Mars ever came true, then the military have got your back.
Restraining one's modern perception of our world and it works, looking into the 1947 story needs a steady line of sight and
an attention to how trust in those same powers wasn't as eroded as it is these days. Class is also a factor and the gulf between
the cultural levels of the time -certainly in a well-developed country like the USA, were viewed far different from the way we do
today.
The current global outlook has ironically blindfolded us to the simplicity of 'small-dom', the natural beat in a community where
wild imaginings are stunted for the sake of making a living. Hardheaded men and women getting on with their lives and letting
one day merge into the next because their focus were on the standard goals of a society, real family-orientated goals.
Anyway, within that trust of '47 and the sense of victory from a war, Roswell, New Mexico ticked under the desert sun and a small
story that was quickly forgotten. It took another thirty years before that mysterious tale was reawakened, but by then, our view on
the world had changed.
So with my best Joe Friday impression in my pocket, I'll try to keep to the facts.
Please forgive me for going over a little of what I may have already written.
.....................................................
From the previous writings, I noted that William 'Mac' Brazel found the bits of foil and unbreakable sticks on the Foster Ranch
on the accepted date of the June 14th 1947 -a Saturday. As often mentioned, Bill's sheep were too-scared to approach the area
and this was having an effect on their access to a waterhole.
This could be just due to the sunlight reflecting off silver foil and the breeze wafting the paper-thin material, a natural presumption
that Brazel could realise and appreciate. But since this could be a reality, why not just spend some time clearing away the material
and filling in the gouge that was supposed to be there? Maybe the debris field was wider than we may presume, some estimates
place it as three-quarters of a mile long and two to three hundred feet wide.
The gouge was said to start at the northern end of it and extend to four or five hundred feet toward the other end of the debris field.
It's in the lore that on 8th Juy, Mac reported his findings to Sheriff Wilcox of Roswell and from there, up to the Army Air force Base.
But if Brazel was dealing with his frightened sheep avoiding the area on the way to the watering-hole, why would he wait so long
to fix the problem?
After all, its just pieces of a weather-balloon.
The Wikipedia article states:
"On June 14, 1947, William Brazel, a foreman working on the J.B. Foster ranch, noticed clusters of debris approximately
30 miles (50 km) north of Roswell, New Mexico. This date—or "about three weeks" before July 8—appeared in later stories
featuring Brazel, but the initial press release from the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) said the find was "sometime last week",
suggesting Brazel found the debris in early July.
Brazel told the Roswell Daily Record that he and his son saw a "large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil,
a rather tough paper and sticks." He paid little attention to it but returned on July 4 with his son, wife and daughter to gather up
the material.
Some accounts have described Brazel as having gathered some of the material earlier, rolling it together and stashing it under
some brush.
The next day, Brazel heard reports about "flying discs" and wondered if that was what he had picked up.
On July 7, Brazel saw Sheriff Wilcox and "whispered kinda confidential like" that he may have found a flying disc.
Another account quotes Wilcox as saying Brazel reported the object on July 6..."
As it stands, the narrative seems to make sense.
Wreckage found and and after clearing up the mess with his family, Brazel hears that flying discs are the new craze and decides
to report the stuff he'd found to the authorities. For a month, the remains of an almost mundane weather-balloon -equipment
that often came down in that area, lay under a bush or at least out of the view of the scared sheep and treated in the manner
of something uninteresting.
Uninteresting and nobody was looking for it.
Then why drive the thirty miles to Roswell and tell Sheriff Wilcox you might have the remains of one of those discs stashed under
some bushes? Well, as his son suggested later in life, Mac Brazel may have been visiting the town to look for a replacement for
his jeep.
Again, the timing doesn't seem odd if we view the situation as being a casual mention to a Sheriff that he had a weather-balloon
on his land, but if Brazel believed it was fragments of a flying disc, what would cause the delay of an assumed important find?
Mac did produce some of the pieces to the Sheriff -a dodgy act, if the rancher was trying to trick Wilcox into believing the scraps
belonged to a other-worldly vehicle and solely based on the idea that the Sheriff had never seen a weather-balloon before.
Ignoring the drudgery of steering sheep away from the material for the sake of keeping them alive, the Wikipedia article states
that it wasn't until 4th July (Friday) -a day of celebration in the US and twenty days later from the standard initial discovery, that
Brazel's family travelled the over-one hundred miles from Tularosa to pick up the pieces of the supposed balloon.
Why the delay from the discovery -(14th June)? The family tidying-up the stuff -(4th July)?
Brazel's visit to the Sheriff's office (7th July)?
Well... let's change the narrative for a moment and attempt to reassemble the timeline so it would make more sense to a passerby.
The dates and the locations only need a slight nudge, but by doing so, it changes the calibre of the situation and pushes the
importance of the material and the rancher's realisation of what he'd found into a more serious position
First off, the date of discovery. If the June date was true, that meant Brazel tolerated the daily mile-around trip for his sheep and
never bothered attempting to clear the discarded material from his herd's regular route to the waterhole. His curiosity wasn't aroused
and the interpretation for this might be that the scraps of foil-like substance were merely of a downed weather-balloon, of a device
he'd seen before.
Maybe it's not a problem and twenty days later, he asks his family to come over -or more likely, he drove his jeep to Tularosa and then
returned to the ranch with them in order to -not only enjoy the three-day-weekend celebrations of the United States independence out
in the New Mexico scrub-land, but wander the wide debris field and pick up some trash that was scaring the sheep for almost a month.
Mac really loved his family!
My Suggested Change Of Narrative:
On Saturday 5th July and after any possible Independence Day celebrations, Mac Brazel -accompanied by his neighbour's son,
seven-year-old Billy-Dee Proctor, rode the Foster property, checking its condition and monitoring the rancher's stock.
Being the weekend and not a school-day, the pair come across the frightened sheep and some strewn weird material.
Brazel and the kid move some of the stuff out of the way to let the sheep water and during the clearing, discover unusual
properties of the material.
The sheep still won't approach the waterhole via the area where that material laid and an alleged gouge on the soil also resided.
Mac and Dee steer the sheep around the troubling location that involves a wide detour.
Taking the young boy back to his parents, Brazel relates to Floyd and Lorretta Proctor his excitement of the strange material that
he'd found and Dee's parents advise Mac that he should notify the authorities. He agrees.
The rancher then proceeds to the nearest town -Corona, for supplies on the Saturday afternoon and whilst wetting his whistle in
the town's only drinking establishment, hears his Uncle and some other ranchers talking about Kenneth Arnold's encounter with
nine shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier in the Pacific North-West.
The gossip may have included the recent disc-sightings near Williams, Arizona too.
With the term 'flying saucer' still a new catchphrase due to a Reporter's miss-wording of Arnold's account, Mac Brazel wonders if the
bizarre material he'd found that morning might have some connection to these things and so, rises early on Sunday morning, grabs a
handful of the foil-like elements, clears his chores and drives to the only place open on a Sunday, the Sheriff's office. (Sunday 6th July)
After examining Mac Brazel's offerings, Wilcox contacts the Army Base and piques enough interest that Major Jesse Marcel and two
other officers drive to the Sheriff's office and investigate the situation. Taking some of the alleged weather-balloon debris, the three
officers return to the base and show their superior -Colonel William Blanchard.
Col. Blanchard orders them (it's still Sunday 6th) to investigate further and the trio, Marcel, Cavitt and Rickett drive back in two vehicles
to Wilcox's office, pick up Mac Brazel and set-off for the Foster Ranch. Marcel was in his 1942 Buick convertible, Brazel in his jeep and
Cavitt and Rickett were in a Dodge-Jeep Carryall.
After checking the full range of the area where the debris was scattered, they spent Sunday evening at the Foster ranch and stayed
overnight at the abandoned Hines house. (For a downed weather-balloon?!)
Monday 7th July 1947. The three officers comb the scrub for the last of the debris and load both of their vehicles with the remains.
As the desert evening wears on, they call it a day -or actually a day-and-a-half of picking bits of a weather-balloon up from the hot
desert floor, and return to the Army Air Force Base.
Major Marcel takes a detour to explain his absence to his family and show his son what we're told is balloon scraps in the early hours
of Tuesday 8th July. At 930.am. that same morning, RAAF public information officer Walter Haut issues a press release stating that
personnel from the field's 509th Operations Group had recovered a "flying disc", which had crashed on a ranch near Roswell.
The rest -as they say, is history.
.....................................................
It's not a bad theory and has merit due to the steady beat. Someone finds something unusual, reports it to authorities for whatever
reasons and the system takes over that. Mistakes are made, corrected and life goes on. Simple.
But there's other parts that rarely get mentioned because of their hindrance to the standard narrative. Apart from the dates, Brazel's
'arrest' by the military for over a week and his radio-broadcasted recanting of his story goes unchallenged and how during the account,
the rancher drops off the radar during the search and transfer of the debris from the Foster property.
Yes, there are questions unanswered.
Why blur the dating of when the wreckage was discovered? What difference does it make when Mac found the stuff and when he
reported it? His later broadcast of how he'd mistakenly identified the material and confused the dates -via encouragement
from the interrogation, seems to tell us that whatever happened on the ranch, when it occurred was more important.
Did something else happen at the beginning of July three-day weekend of 1947 that could be attached to the debris-discovery of
Saturday morning 5th? Something that would purposely slow or ruin the narrative beat? If we imagine that the account is weeks old
and valuable investigation time has passed, then would a Reporter bother looking into it or just take what the military gave them?
If it was the remains of a flying disc and the amount of material didn't make up -what we'd assume would be a full a machine,
why did Col. Blanchard charge ahead and have the press announcement released?
Did he know of a real downed flying disc in another location...? Was he aware that by focusing on the Foster Ranch situation and
boasting that a 'out-of-this-world' craft had been acquired, he was distracting the public and the media from somewhere possibly
more sensitive?
Could Bill 'Mac' Brazel afford a new Jeep...? He certainly enjoyed one after the whole flying-saucer-weather-balloon debacle.
Who purchased that for him and what was the real cost...? A reversal of what he'd originally said?
Shall we take a look?!!
paradigm and the kernel becomes buried under the unconscious-bias that we're all guilty of.
For the average onlooker, the Roswell story involved an ignorant rancher finding some strange material on his land and
being a dutiful patriot, contacted his local sheriff that passed on the information to the Army.
After an alarming announcement that was quickly corrected, the Army says the dumb-assed cowboy couldn't tell a balloon
from a spaceship and we should all go back to ploughing the fields and sticking labels of tins.
Dates and locations are discarded in order to display the authoritative and calming the narrative that the world will keep
turning and if the silly notion of a men-from-Mars ever came true, then the military have got your back.
Restraining one's modern perception of our world and it works, looking into the 1947 story needs a steady line of sight and
an attention to how trust in those same powers wasn't as eroded as it is these days. Class is also a factor and the gulf between
the cultural levels of the time -certainly in a well-developed country like the USA, were viewed far different from the way we do
today.
The current global outlook has ironically blindfolded us to the simplicity of 'small-dom', the natural beat in a community where
wild imaginings are stunted for the sake of making a living. Hardheaded men and women getting on with their lives and letting
one day merge into the next because their focus were on the standard goals of a society, real family-orientated goals.
Anyway, within that trust of '47 and the sense of victory from a war, Roswell, New Mexico ticked under the desert sun and a small
story that was quickly forgotten. It took another thirty years before that mysterious tale was reawakened, but by then, our view on
the world had changed.
So with my best Joe Friday impression in my pocket, I'll try to keep to the facts.
Please forgive me for going over a little of what I may have already written.
.....................................................
From the previous writings, I noted that William 'Mac' Brazel found the bits of foil and unbreakable sticks on the Foster Ranch
on the accepted date of the June 14th 1947 -a Saturday. As often mentioned, Bill's sheep were too-scared to approach the area
and this was having an effect on their access to a waterhole.
This could be just due to the sunlight reflecting off silver foil and the breeze wafting the paper-thin material, a natural presumption
that Brazel could realise and appreciate. But since this could be a reality, why not just spend some time clearing away the material
and filling in the gouge that was supposed to be there? Maybe the debris field was wider than we may presume, some estimates
place it as three-quarters of a mile long and two to three hundred feet wide.
The gouge was said to start at the northern end of it and extend to four or five hundred feet toward the other end of the debris field.
It's in the lore that on 8th Juy, Mac reported his findings to Sheriff Wilcox of Roswell and from there, up to the Army Air force Base.
But if Brazel was dealing with his frightened sheep avoiding the area on the way to the watering-hole, why would he wait so long
to fix the problem?
After all, its just pieces of a weather-balloon.
The Wikipedia article states:
"On June 14, 1947, William Brazel, a foreman working on the J.B. Foster ranch, noticed clusters of debris approximately
30 miles (50 km) north of Roswell, New Mexico. This date—or "about three weeks" before July 8—appeared in later stories
featuring Brazel, but the initial press release from the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) said the find was "sometime last week",
suggesting Brazel found the debris in early July.
Brazel told the Roswell Daily Record that he and his son saw a "large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil,
a rather tough paper and sticks." He paid little attention to it but returned on July 4 with his son, wife and daughter to gather up
the material.
Some accounts have described Brazel as having gathered some of the material earlier, rolling it together and stashing it under
some brush.
The next day, Brazel heard reports about "flying discs" and wondered if that was what he had picked up.
On July 7, Brazel saw Sheriff Wilcox and "whispered kinda confidential like" that he may have found a flying disc.
Another account quotes Wilcox as saying Brazel reported the object on July 6..."
As it stands, the narrative seems to make sense.
Wreckage found and and after clearing up the mess with his family, Brazel hears that flying discs are the new craze and decides
to report the stuff he'd found to the authorities. For a month, the remains of an almost mundane weather-balloon -equipment
that often came down in that area, lay under a bush or at least out of the view of the scared sheep and treated in the manner
of something uninteresting.
Uninteresting and nobody was looking for it.
Then why drive the thirty miles to Roswell and tell Sheriff Wilcox you might have the remains of one of those discs stashed under
some bushes? Well, as his son suggested later in life, Mac Brazel may have been visiting the town to look for a replacement for
his jeep.
Again, the timing doesn't seem odd if we view the situation as being a casual mention to a Sheriff that he had a weather-balloon
on his land, but if Brazel believed it was fragments of a flying disc, what would cause the delay of an assumed important find?
Mac did produce some of the pieces to the Sheriff -a dodgy act, if the rancher was trying to trick Wilcox into believing the scraps
belonged to a other-worldly vehicle and solely based on the idea that the Sheriff had never seen a weather-balloon before.
Ignoring the drudgery of steering sheep away from the material for the sake of keeping them alive, the Wikipedia article states
that it wasn't until 4th July (Friday) -a day of celebration in the US and twenty days later from the standard initial discovery, that
Brazel's family travelled the over-one hundred miles from Tularosa to pick up the pieces of the supposed balloon.
Why the delay from the discovery -(14th June)? The family tidying-up the stuff -(4th July)?
Brazel's visit to the Sheriff's office (7th July)?
Well... let's change the narrative for a moment and attempt to reassemble the timeline so it would make more sense to a passerby.
The dates and the locations only need a slight nudge, but by doing so, it changes the calibre of the situation and pushes the
importance of the material and the rancher's realisation of what he'd found into a more serious position
First off, the date of discovery. If the June date was true, that meant Brazel tolerated the daily mile-around trip for his sheep and
never bothered attempting to clear the discarded material from his herd's regular route to the waterhole. His curiosity wasn't aroused
and the interpretation for this might be that the scraps of foil-like substance were merely of a downed weather-balloon, of a device
he'd seen before.
Maybe it's not a problem and twenty days later, he asks his family to come over -or more likely, he drove his jeep to Tularosa and then
returned to the ranch with them in order to -not only enjoy the three-day-weekend celebrations of the United States independence out
in the New Mexico scrub-land, but wander the wide debris field and pick up some trash that was scaring the sheep for almost a month.
Mac really loved his family!
My Suggested Change Of Narrative:
On Saturday 5th July and after any possible Independence Day celebrations, Mac Brazel -accompanied by his neighbour's son,
seven-year-old Billy-Dee Proctor, rode the Foster property, checking its condition and monitoring the rancher's stock.
Being the weekend and not a school-day, the pair come across the frightened sheep and some strewn weird material.
Brazel and the kid move some of the stuff out of the way to let the sheep water and during the clearing, discover unusual
properties of the material.
The sheep still won't approach the waterhole via the area where that material laid and an alleged gouge on the soil also resided.
Mac and Dee steer the sheep around the troubling location that involves a wide detour.
Taking the young boy back to his parents, Brazel relates to Floyd and Lorretta Proctor his excitement of the strange material that
he'd found and Dee's parents advise Mac that he should notify the authorities. He agrees.
The rancher then proceeds to the nearest town -Corona, for supplies on the Saturday afternoon and whilst wetting his whistle in
the town's only drinking establishment, hears his Uncle and some other ranchers talking about Kenneth Arnold's encounter with
nine shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier in the Pacific North-West.
The gossip may have included the recent disc-sightings near Williams, Arizona too.
With the term 'flying saucer' still a new catchphrase due to a Reporter's miss-wording of Arnold's account, Mac Brazel wonders if the
bizarre material he'd found that morning might have some connection to these things and so, rises early on Sunday morning, grabs a
handful of the foil-like elements, clears his chores and drives to the only place open on a Sunday, the Sheriff's office. (Sunday 6th July)
After examining Mac Brazel's offerings, Wilcox contacts the Army Base and piques enough interest that Major Jesse Marcel and two
other officers drive to the Sheriff's office and investigate the situation. Taking some of the alleged weather-balloon debris, the three
officers return to the base and show their superior -Colonel William Blanchard.
Col. Blanchard orders them (it's still Sunday 6th) to investigate further and the trio, Marcel, Cavitt and Rickett drive back in two vehicles
to Wilcox's office, pick up Mac Brazel and set-off for the Foster Ranch. Marcel was in his 1942 Buick convertible, Brazel in his jeep and
Cavitt and Rickett were in a Dodge-Jeep Carryall.
After checking the full range of the area where the debris was scattered, they spent Sunday evening at the Foster ranch and stayed
overnight at the abandoned Hines house. (For a downed weather-balloon?!)
Monday 7th July 1947. The three officers comb the scrub for the last of the debris and load both of their vehicles with the remains.
As the desert evening wears on, they call it a day -or actually a day-and-a-half of picking bits of a weather-balloon up from the hot
desert floor, and return to the Army Air Force Base.
Major Marcel takes a detour to explain his absence to his family and show his son what we're told is balloon scraps in the early hours
of Tuesday 8th July. At 930.am. that same morning, RAAF public information officer Walter Haut issues a press release stating that
personnel from the field's 509th Operations Group had recovered a "flying disc", which had crashed on a ranch near Roswell.
The rest -as they say, is history.
.....................................................
It's not a bad theory and has merit due to the steady beat. Someone finds something unusual, reports it to authorities for whatever
reasons and the system takes over that. Mistakes are made, corrected and life goes on. Simple.
But there's other parts that rarely get mentioned because of their hindrance to the standard narrative. Apart from the dates, Brazel's
'arrest' by the military for over a week and his radio-broadcasted recanting of his story goes unchallenged and how during the account,
the rancher drops off the radar during the search and transfer of the debris from the Foster property.
Yes, there are questions unanswered.
Why blur the dating of when the wreckage was discovered? What difference does it make when Mac found the stuff and when he
reported it? His later broadcast of how he'd mistakenly identified the material and confused the dates -via encouragement
from the interrogation, seems to tell us that whatever happened on the ranch, when it occurred was more important.
Did something else happen at the beginning of July three-day weekend of 1947 that could be attached to the debris-discovery of
Saturday morning 5th? Something that would purposely slow or ruin the narrative beat? If we imagine that the account is weeks old
and valuable investigation time has passed, then would a Reporter bother looking into it or just take what the military gave them?
If it was the remains of a flying disc and the amount of material didn't make up -what we'd assume would be a full a machine,
why did Col. Blanchard charge ahead and have the press announcement released?
Did he know of a real downed flying disc in another location...? Was he aware that by focusing on the Foster Ranch situation and
boasting that a 'out-of-this-world' craft had been acquired, he was distracting the public and the media from somewhere possibly
more sensitive?
Could Bill 'Mac' Brazel afford a new Jeep...? He certainly enjoyed one after the whole flying-saucer-weather-balloon debacle.
Who purchased that for him and what was the real cost...? A reversal of what he'd originally said?
Shall we take a look?!!
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.