Green men and greenbacks

                  by  Phil Gianficaro

                  The man heard a strange noise, stepped outside his New Britain home, looked up and saw an unidentified object.
                  "I saw something that appeared to be my teenage son painting the shutters on the second floor," Mark Pachulla said.  "my son?  Doing chores without being asked?  Couldn't be.
                  "That's as close as I've come to seeing something like a UFO.  It was just like all those people who say they've seen flying saucers or weird blinking lights; I saw it, but couldn't believe what I was seeing, Aliens?  Yeah, seeing my son doing work on his own, that was alien to me."
                  His surprisingly ambitious son on the ladder aside, Pachulla has never seen a UFO, but others claim to, including many throughout Bucks County over the past decade.  There was that unusual object spotted hovering above Sesame Place in Middletown in 2008.  And that unexplained conical beam of light flashing in the sky in Buckingham in 2009.  And even as recently as October in New Britain, where a large spheerical object with three triangular lights was seen whooshing over Route 202 near the Duck Deli.  But just as quickly as the object in the sky appeared, it was gone.
                 That wasn't the case 66 years ago this week in Roswell, N.M.
                 On a ranch near the now-infamous town in July 1947, something shiny fell from the sky and crashed.  Was it a flying saucer?  Was it a weather balloon?  Was it a failed secret military experiment, given the proximity of nearby Roswell Army Air Field?  Recovered in the debris were pieces of rubber, super-strong tin foil and metallic I-beams on which geometric symbols resembling hieroglyphics were etched.
                 Fifty years later, the Air Force explained the material recovered was from Project Mogul, a secret program of atmospheric balloons used to detect Soviet nuclear tests.  Skeptics abound.
                 Whatever happened that day in the high plains of New Mexico was the best thing to happen to Roswell.  The UFO legend has transformed the nondescript town into a tourist destination, complete with a UFO museum.  The recently held Roswell UFO Festival included live music and entertainment, 5K and 10K walks and runs, a carnival, UFO seminars, UFO ice cream and souvenirs, and even alien costume contests for folks and their pets.  There's even an eatery called the Cover-Up Cafe.  The town's motto is "Alien City."  Roswell has become Loch Ness without the monster.
                 If two strange-looking men from space landed their flying machine on my front lawn, it wouldn't surprise me.  The universe is a big place; believing we're its only inhabitants reeks of arrogance.
                My first personal experience with the UFO phenomenon occurred at an early age.  The father of a close friend had an interest in UFOs that bordered on obsession.  An eccentric, the man's home was littered with stacks of soft-and hard-cover books on the topic.  On hot summer days, his son and I ate Fudgesicles and listened to The Byrds' "Eight Miles High" on their stereo; he was certain the mysterious truth in the sky came from so much farther away.
               "See any Martians today, Mr. Buff?  we'd jokingly ask.
               He'd just laugh, nod his head knowingly, peer at us over the top of his eyeglasses and say, "Someday you'll see, boys.  Someday."
               Perhaps someday.  But 56 years into this life, I've yet to look up and see an unidentified object ------ flying or otherwise.
               Of course, our son is still too young to paint the shutters.