By Tim Sanders

America has an alien problem. Not an illegal alien problem. That problem was solved several years ago when an impressive group of America’s brightest sociologists, population experts, and political leaders gathered in our nation’s capital and finally, after months of research and brainstorming, decided to take the bold step of calling "illegal aliens" something much warmer and friendlier, "undocumented workers." And voila, millions of illegal aliens sort of, well, vaporized. Of course we still had all of those pesky documented cases of undocumented workers, but that wasn’t nearly so serious. (Those experts obviously learned from retailers who had fought a futile battle against shoplifting for decades, until they renamed it "shrinkage," and thus solved their growing shoplifting problem. They turned it into a growing shrinkage problem, if that makes any sense.)

But we’re not talking about documented undocumented workers or growing shrinkages here, we’re talking about aliens; real ones, from places as far away as Idaho, Ohio, and, yes, from galaxies light years from Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I mention Eureka Springs because in the April 13th edition of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, reporter Adam Wallworth tells about attending the 20th annual Ozark UFO Conference in that fine city. (In researching Eureka Springs, I learned that it is located in the beautiful Ozark Mountains in northwest Arkansas. It was once the home of a famous author I’d never heard of named Crescent Dragonwagon. No, I didn’t make that up, and no she isn’t an alien, she only writes cookbooks and children’s stories. I just thought you’d appreciate her nom de plume. Her real name is Helen Oblong Wellonmelon. Okay, I may have made the Wellonmelon part up.)

But back to the UFO Conference. According to Mr. Wallworth: "There were no tinfoil hats or alien costumes. The crowd in the conference center appeared little different from those window shopping downtown." Normal, everyday folks listening to normal, everyday lectures on topics like crop circles, cow skeletons, light beam travel, alien etiquette, flying saucers, flying gravy boats, how Dennis Kucinich artfully uses make up and loose fitting clothing to conceal his gill slits and vestigial tail, and whether Barack Obama’s ears pick up high frequency radio signals from other solar systems.

And what three-day Arkansas conference, UFO or otherwise, would be complete without a Walton in attendance. But the guy that Woolworth ... er, Wallworth interviewed was not one of the Wal-Mart Waltons, but only Don Ray Walton, who wrote a book called "The Coming Human Aliens." Walton hails from Texas, by way of Idaho Falls, Idaho, by way of the constellation Orion. The only biographical information I could find about Don Ray accompanied a review of his book on Amazon.com. "He was home-schooled until he was 16 because weird things always happened when he was around other children. In 1954, his mother was abducted by aliens and impregnated. Don was born the following year. When he was a child, strange visitors would take him onto spacecraft to examine him and teach him to understand what was happening to him as he grew older. At the age of ten, he learned how to use electricity to jam the aliens’ tracking implants in his head."

I wanted to read more, but there was nothing else. Apparently, however, Don Ray’s anti-tracking batteries eventually ran low. Either that or his head implants sprouted during puberty like a set of magnificent titanium deer antlers, because those aliens managed to locate him a few months ago. He told the Gazette reporter that his book "needs to be rewritten because beings from outer space gave him new information when they picked him up outside of Stephensville, Texas, earlier this year."

Don Ray told Wallwoth that our solar system is soon to be sucked into a massive black hole, and it is his duty to tell the public, because a) in the next four years, humans will be offered a chance to leave our solar system on space ships piloted by representatives of 143,999 alien races, and b) proceeds from his book will help him plant 42 acres of corn in Texas to provide ethanol for those space ships. Okay, so maybe I made up the ethanol part, but you have to allow a little literary license when you’re dealing with black holes.

There were other people at that conference who’d been abducted by aliens, and many more who’d had close encounters. One was Stacia Noteman, who had seen a glowing light in the sky as a child in Ohio, and brought her sister Betsy outside to see it. Her sister was also at the conference, as a UFO book vendor. She recalled that: "I don’t remember seeing anything, but the next day I was sick as a dog." Funny how those little details add credibility to UFO sightings.

It is a matter of public record that on July 7, 1947 something landed just outside of Roswell, New Mexico. After 60 years of scientific investigation, it has been determined that the object was either a space ship containing extra terrestrial beings and highly sophisticated interstellar technology or possibly a tarp that had blown off somebody’s barbecue grill. Either way, just eight days later, on July 15, 1947, I was born. Not that there was any connection, mind you.

When I was about four, I saw something hovering several hundred yards above our home in Montague, Michigan. I thought it was a bomb, like that one in Gilead Mom and Dad used to sing about in church. It certainly looked exactly like what I thought a bomb would look like. So I jumped up and down and squalled a great deal until my parents came outside to see if I’d stepped in dog poop again. They finally looked skyward and explained that what I saw was only a blimp. At least that’s what they said it was. All I know for sure is that it was flying, it was an object, and I certainly couldn’t identify it.

Coincidence? Maybe so, but I still wear my tinfoil hat when I go fishing.