Roswell
16 March 2024
Leaving El Paso, a sand-blown, sprawling city without much of a locus is no great wrench although TripAdvisor did redeem themselves slightly. Taft Diaz, their #1 rated restaurant, was a surprise, serving Tex-Mex with a few European twists such as truffles from Burgundy thrown in. The Reagan bar close by is also worth a visit if you find yourself marooned here.
Crossing the state-line into New Mexico, I stumble into the shanty-town of Chaparral in search of fuel. Although the UK has its problems with inequality between rich and poor, I’m not sure we have anything in the UK to compare with this place. Indescribably bleak and depressing.
Soon, the clouds lift with the Sierra Blanco mountain range in the distance, beyond Alamogordo. From here, it’s another 100 miles of climbing, swooping road to a grey, desert plain with Roswell in the middle of it.
I decline the motel I’ve booked into. One of the rooms has crime scene tape over the door and the other punters, milling around smoking god knows what, look psychotic. I’m re-booking to the Days Inn chain as these are ubiquitous, reliable, and of reasonable quality. Motel 6 and Super 8 are owned by the same group (Wyndham) but below the minimum standard in terms of cleanliness, facilities, and security.
Famous for the alleged 1947 crash landing of a UFO, the town has a slightly down-at-heel, visitor centre with a nice retro-kitsch feel to it. The central attraction is a brief AV experience that advances the theory that it was the nuclear tests, further north near Los Alamos that were the reason for alien curiosity. Ah…so that clears that up then.
The problem with single-issue obsessives is they try to convince the sceptics with an overload of circumstantial information, without ever landing a killer punch. The exhibition is the same, with the walls filled with artefacts and documents that try to prove the case that alien life forms really did crash their flying saucer up the road.
There are some interesting details though, such as the un-rusted fragments of twisted metal recovered from the site recently that, when analysed, were found to have a molybdenum content higher than the manufacturing processes at the time could produce. So where DID they come from, then? Aha…Alien lifeforms…QED. Mmm…
This is not a great place for a Saturday night. The neighbours at the Days Inn talk at maximum decibels all the time for this is the only way they can drown out the TV. And it’s not like listening to Melvyn Bragg debate Cartesian Dualism with Alain de Botton either. Occasionally, they go out to smoke weed and gob every few seconds, which is considerate of them.
I skulk out to Pepper’s Bar & Grill for drinks and dinner and take a perch at the bar. Next to me is the extremely charming and disgustingly handsome Jeremy Mastrioianni, a descendant of the famous actor. His other ancestors own a notable vineyard in Tuscany that he’s never tasted. I have some at home so I invite him to come over when he’s in the UK later in the year. Right now, he’s travelling across the US from New Jersey to Seattle for various reasons. His daily quest is posting a selfie with the most interesting person he meets every day. I’m that person today, apparently, and here it is:
