about these reports
because five years before, almost to the day, Lubbock had plunged the
Air Force, and me, into the UFO mystery on a grand scale.

According to the best interpretation of the maze of conflicting
stories, facts and rumors about these famous sightings the only
positive fact is that there were scattered storm clouds across West
Texas on the night of November 4, 1957. This was unusual for November
and everyone in the community was just a little edgy.

It was early in the evening, at least early for West Texas on a
Saturday night, when Pedro Saucedo, a farm worker, and his friend Joe
Salaz, started out in Saucedo's truck toward Pettit, ten miles
northwest of Level-land. They had just turned off State Highway 116
and were heading north on a country road when the two men saw a flash
of light in an adjacent field. Saucedo, a Korean War Veteran, and
Salaz didn't pay much attention to the light at first. They only
noticed that it was coming closer. "It seemed to be paralleling us
and edging a little closer all the time," Saucedo later recalled.
Still neither man paid any attention to the light. They drove on,
Saucedo watching the road and Salaz talking.

Then it hit.

The first signal of something wrong was when the truck's headlights
went out; then the engine stopped. Before Saucedo could hit the
starter again he glanced over his left shoulder. A huge ball of fire
was "rapidly drifting" toward the truck. Without a second's
hesitation Saucedo did what the Korean War had taught him to do when
in doubt, he shoved open the car door and hit the dirt.

Salaz just sat.

"The 'Thing' passed directly over my truck with a great sound and
rush of wind," Saucedo later told County Sheriff Weir Clem, after
he'd started his truck and had driven back to Levelland. "It sounded
like thunder and my truck rocked from the blast. I felt a lot of heat."

The "Thing," which disappeared across the prairie, looked like a
"fiery tornado."

Five years before and a little east of where Saucedo and Salaz were
"buzzed" I had talked to two women who described almost an identical
UFO. And it remains "unknown" to this day.

In Levelland, the two men's story would have been enough to keep
Sheriff Clem busy for the rest of the night but between the hours of
8:15P.M. and midnight on the 2nd the "Levelland Thing" struck five
more times.

James D. Long, a Waco truck driver, came upon "it" four miles west
of Levelland and fainted as it