New York City, late August 1954 – One Friday night after Uncle Joe came home from work (he was a factory worker), he decided to spend the evening observing the moon with his new telescope. He had purchased a 3” reflecting telescope with a 4 ft. cardboard body. Can you believe he only paid $16.95 for it! Harry’s Scientific on Hester Street in lower Manhattan supplied everything you needed for your science hobbies! Back then you could buy such a scope without a tripod inexpensively.

It was a lovely, warm summer evening in New York around 8:00 pm. Uncle Joe was anxious to get started. He propped his scope up, and placed it partly out the open window of his apartment He focused the telescope on the bright, full moon. While observing the craters on the moon, he noticed an object moving from right to left across the center of the moon! The object was long, slim and black like a cigar, and had a fin-like structure on the underside. Uncle Joe was so startled, he could hardly believe his eyes! In the early 50’s, UFO’s were not as common an occurrence as they are today. Or, maybe they were, but people were not as aware of them. He never saw anything like that again. What was it…a UFO or something else? Since then, he has been keenly interested in the UFO phenomenon!

Uncle Joe’s Rendering of his UFO!

Talk soon,
Bamster

My Uncle Joe, who is 88 years old, sees dead people. He has had that ability all his life. He told me of an incident that happened when he was a young man: One night, after returning from a party, the face of a girl co-worker (who he was fond of) appeared against the curtains of his living room. He instinctively knew that something was wrong from that apparition. Sure enough, he learned later on that evening that she had died in a car crash. I guess she appeared to him to say goodbye!

He also related to me a story about a time when he and my family visited the “Robert Lewis Stevenson” house here in California. My family and I were touring all over the house and did not see anything out of the ordinary. Uncle Joe, however, had stopped outside of the library and was admiring an antique doorknob when he happened to glance up and see a lady dressed all in black “glide” out of the kitchen area and into the pantry across the hall! He reckons it was the housekeeper from that long-ago time period.

(…stay tuned for more short tales from Uncle Joe)