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Corn dog in hand, the man in the elevator bids me good tidings, and "welcome to our white trash fiesta." Here in Las Vegas the family has gathered to ponder the deep things, such as whether we shall retch before or after we ride the Stratosphere, a roller coaster-type attraction perched atop a tower over one hundred stories high. Weak-kneed and gurgling, we stumble off the ride in short order, observing that we probably won't give it another go-around. Then we soak in the view afforded from these lofty heights. "Don't you worry about earthquakes?" I ask the girl taking tickets. She says she doesn't, and that's hard to believe. But I cannot press the point, for now we are off to watch Pappy and my siblings-in-law jump from an airplane.
The rule of the day, enunciated this morning at Denny's, is that no one shall speak explicitly of skydiving until the deed is done. Thus we drive in silence for some 30 minutes to the place where "it" will happen, and I have time to cogitate this review. My mind turns first to the space aliens who, in the summer of 1947, lighted upon Roswell, New Mexico, only to be hounded into a government compound in Nevada and there sequestered till kingdom come. The famous compound is located in a military security zone called Area 51, which is the size of the fine State of Connecticut.
David Thomson, author of In Nevada, writes that anyone who attempts to penetrate Area 51 "runs the risk of arrest, confiscation of vehicle and equipment, heavy fines, and imprisonment." Indeed, signs around Area 51 warn that the use of deadly force is authorized against tax-paying intruders who want in on government military secrets. "There are those who say that UFOs are kept there and tested," Thomson writes, "along with the imprisoned aliens who piloted them to Earth."
Thomson himself doesn't appear to believe in UFOs, and neither does Glenn Campbell, a self-proclaimed "philosophical warrior" who resides in the tiny town of Rachel, a stone's throw north of Area 51. Campbell moved to Rachel in 1992 chiefly to debunk UFO mythology, and, Thomson writes, he has done some of that. In a "guide" for visitors to Rachel, Campbell writes that in southern Nevada, "UFO proponents expect to see flying saucers, and they do. Hardened skeptics expect to debunk the saucer stories, and they do. Spiritualists see spirits. Doomsdayers see the end of the world. Conspiracy buffs find just the evidence they need to link AIDS with JFK."
Of course, Campbell has his foes in Rachel, such as a certain Mr. and Mrs. Travis, who commissioned the writing of The Area 51 & S-4 Handbook (published in 1997). The handbook suggests that UFOs may carry "time travelers from our future—perhaps historians or anthropologists that have come to study their past." It's also worth noting that Art Bell, nighttime radio talk-show host with an audience of 15 million and America's best- known Nevadan, listens patiently, night after night from his studio in Pahrump, as callers report on their encounters with the dead and other beings from beyond. And in case you were wondering, Nevada's own governor, Bob Miller—"probably born on earth," Thomson surmises—has designated Nevada's Highway 375 the "Extra-Terrestrial Highway."
It's unclear why space beings prefer Nevada to, say, Colorado (on which more shortly), but a moment or two after my sister-in-law's own descent to earth she declares that her first skydiving experience was "dang cool." Adds Pappy: "Man! You can see everything from up there!" Everything? I ask if in the course of their plummet from 12,000 feet they happened to spy any atomic blasts.
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