• When the meteorite struck the chimney of a Carbon County home, I was the lone casualty.

• I must confess responsibility for the Great UFO cover-up in Tazewell County, Ill.

• When saints cornered the Captain, I found myself in the middle.

If I seem to limp at times, it’s because one leg is sometimes shorter than the other.

Folks scammed by Hilton (full name) are not alone in having one limb jerked out of proportion. Journalists, hard-nosed cynics that they are, can be pathetically vulnerable to cons and con men. Reporters who would not take a politician’s word for the time of day will swallow a swindler’s pitch with a gulp and a smile.

Hunger for a great story trumps common sense.

Mea culpa, mea culpa.

Most of us love scams but only when someone else is the victim. Seeing another gulled gives us a feeling of superiority.

I was readying the paper for the printer when the meteorite walked in the door of the Clarks Fork Bonanza. A fresh faced lad cradled the smudged rock in his arms.

The scene spelled FRONT PAGE to me. Meteorite and fresh faced boy landed on the cover of the Bridger weekly. Later, the local science teacher told me that the meteorite was a rock blackened by an acetylene torch.

Too late. My partner and I had already sold the business and moved on.

• • •

Feral Girls Living in Pryor Mountains … Intermountain news service report.

• • •

Pilots called Tazewell County’s UFO “Big Mama.” The Pekin Daily News’ photographer and a pilot spent the night in a Cessna chasing the erratic light. The photographer shot roll after roll of film.

When our UFO chaser returned to the newspaper office, the publisher sent him home to catch some sleep. Later, I was given the guy’s film to develop.

There was nothing on 17 rolls but points of light.

On a whim, I used simple darkroom tricks to create a black print with white spiral. The spiral ended in a white disk that looked a lot like I imagined “Big Mama” might appear.

Careless in my housekeeping, I left the darkroom a mess. Strips of negatives - with each transparent frame marked by a single black dot - littered the floor. My bogus Big Mama print and a few imperfect earlier attempts were scattered across the table that held the enlarger.

“Heck with it,” I thought. “Let the regular guy clean up.”

I left for lunch and the shooter returned. He was delighted with my Big Mama print. After soup and a sandwich, I went on to my next assignment – the trial of a drifter who had shot a drifter. The trial was a bore but spending time in the Tazewell County Courthouse was always a thrill. Both Abraham Lincoln and his arch rival Stephen A. Douglas had argued cases there.

I returned to the office to find a copy of the afternoon paper on my desk. My ersatz Big Mama streamed across a four-column photo on the front page. Above the photo the resident UFO hunter wrote, “Where are my negatives.”

I told him his negatives were the trash on the floor when he returned to the office.

I figured he would not believe me. I did not figure that he would stay mad for the next six months, letting the air out of my tires, telling the managing editor he smelled wine on my breath, telling the office girl lewd jokes and attributing them to me.

• • •

Tarp funds to create Rimrock Rushmore … A half-mile long diorama will illustrate Custer’s Last Stand, Fluoridation of City Water, construction of the Great Roundabout and other notable events in the area’s history ... .

• • •

He called himself “Captain.” He is probably dead by now. To spare his survivors, I won’t use his name.

The Captain apprenticed in the hoax business early. Fresh out of high school, he sailed to Antarctica with a troop of explorers. He returned six months later after saving a fellow crewman’s life and making several scientific discoveries.

Or at least, that’s what he told a local reporter.

In the decades to follow, the Captain’s file at the Gazette morgue grew fat. In it were stories of the Captain’s incredible adventures. He survived a plane crash in the desert and trekked his way to civilization, navigated the Mississippi in a Chinese junk, slipped into Islam’s holiest sites disguised as a Moslem pilgrim and learned ancient secrets from Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The Captain supported his family and paid for his adventures by lecturing on the National School Assemblies circuit and teaching adult classes in Egyptology.
He erred egregiously when he added disenfranchised Mormons to his fan base. He developed a following with a lecture that alleged that a Mormon prophet had misinterpreted certain Egyptian hieroglyphics. The result, he claimed, was a flawed dogma.

A group of Mormons took up the challenge. They followed the Captain from speaking date to speaking date, recording every word he said. They followed with fact checking, questioning the Captain’s alleged friends and associates - famous scientists and government officials around the world.  
All said they had never heard of the adventurer/scholar from Billings. The Mormon expose, bound in a magazine format, was the best piece of investigative journalism I had ever seen.

• • •

City will change its name … . Leading contenders include: Accounts Receivable, Boston of the West, Fort Worth of the North and Tulsa, North by Northwest.