Aliens, the Inca, & Jackie Gleason
Word-of-mouth alien rumors and urban myths
Six of us sat in a restaurant talking about aliens. The subject had transformed us from middle-aged adults into wide-eyed kids, leaning into wonder. No one looked at their phone to dredge some fact from the demystifying internet. Such was the power of the stories.
It started with talk of Machu Picchu. Both Susan and I have been there. We shared a bit of what we’d learned of the enigmatic Inca, including speculation of how this 15th century culture managed to construct such a truly awesome mountaintop city of interlocked stones. What was Machu Picchu? How, exactly, did they get those massive stones – some car-sized – eight thousand feet in the air? To this day, no one is sure. We do know the Inca who resided therein fled in the wake of Spanish conquest, leaving the jungle to completely consume and obscure Machu Picchu until late-19th century white explorers “discovered” and excavated it. After four hundred years in the tangle, the structures were remarkably intact. By then, however, even Peruvians living within a few miles of Machu Picchu claimed ignorance of it.
Why so little knowledge of this architectural marvel? Amazingly, for all their technological know-how, the Inca possessed no written language, no archives other than oral tradition. Only the Conquistadors’ records exist, and somehow, remote Machu Picchu - 50 miles from the capital of Cusco – escaped their rapacious, destructive gaze.
Like my friends and me chattering in that early 21st century eatery, the Inca communicated solely via storytelling, words rising and intersecting in the air, lighting up the collective mind. For us, the activity was just fun, but for the Inca, talking also somehow inspired engineering feats no modern folk could begin to undertake.
But maybe Machu Picchu was achieved via something other than just talking?
I told the table, “When I trekked through the Andes with my brother (see here), I asked our Peruvian guide Arturo for his thoughts on the construction and purpose of Machu Picchu. Arturo did not skip a beat. He said, ‘Aliens.’”
Of course Arturo could have been secretly delighting in yanking the sweaty American’s chain. But Arturo, with whom my brother and I spent five days, in often dicey circumstances, was no jokester. Not only did he seem quite serious, he also seemed to immediately regret divulging his opinion on that mountainside. He would not elaborate.
It had been an arduous day at high altitude, and we were as far off the grid as I’d ever been. My mind was almost painfully clear. I’d like to think I would’ve been more attuned to someone lying to me.
I don’t think Arturo was lying to me.
The door to alien stories was now flung open. I brought up the “Jackie Gleason and the Alien” urban myth, which Katie excitedly acknowledged. As often happens with urban myths, her version is a little different than mine. Hers includes Nixon.
Our stories’ commonality lay in Jackie Gleason’s rumored penchant for all things extraterrestrial. Legend has it, the genius actor and consummate showman was fascinated by aliens. He was an ardent believer.
In my version, sometime in the late 60s, Gleason meets a “Man in Black” type, either at a bar or a party. Point being: copious alcohol is consumed. The MiB takes a shine to Gleason, which is not hard to believe. He really, really wants to be Gleason’s pal. Amid cigarette smoke and repeated clinking of glasses, Gleason, obsessive by nature, carries on about UFOs and little green men.
MiB puts his arm around Gleason, pulls him in close, and says words to the effect of, “Wanna see something cool?”
Jackie Gleason does.
“You can’t tell anybody, though,” MiB says. “NOT A SOUL.”
Gleason swears on the eyes of his children, his mother’s grave, etc., that he can keep a secret.
The drunken and delighted MiB escorts drunken Gleason to a black car, which the MiB drives to An Undisclosed Location. Let’s say a warehouse, like the one at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. MiB passes through checkpoint after checkpoint with Gleason in tow. He guides Gleason to a refrigerated container, like, say, a meat locker. The MiB pulls open a heavy door. A rush of subfreezing vapor hits the men, immediately sobering them up.
There, supine on a slab, lies the corpse of a dead alien.
MiB half-jokingly says he will hunt Gleason down and kill him if he breathes a word to anyone. Gleason vows absolute silence. They stare awhile. Perhaps the MiB reveals the provenance of this deceased being. Perhaps he just lets Gleason wonder about the details.
Gleason repeatedly assures the MiB he’ll take the story of this night to his grave.
In Katie’s version, there’s no Man in Black. Rather, it is Richard M. Nixon who really wants to impress Jackie Gleason. Using his power and clearance, etc, the 37th President of the United States somehow reveals a dead ET to the esteemed entertainer. While both versions strain credulity, I think mine demands a bit less suspension of disbelief. Although picturing Nixon doing the unveiling is funnier.
In any case, it is important to note Jackie Gleason, icon of American TV and film, was fearless. Like SNL, his brainchild, The Honeymooners, was shot in front of a live audience (1,000 people!) and broadcast live to the nation. Unlike SNL, however, The Honeymooners was prime time television. Gleason nevertheless preferred not to rehearse, and didn’t always memorize his lines, opting instead to improvise in front of millions of people, none of whom ever noticed if he made a mistake.
The man possessed balls of steel.
If Jackie Gleason feared reprisal for divulging Top Secret U.S. government information to someone – which he allegedly did – he did not capitulate to that fear. He defied it, and lo, these decades later, the story of his close encounter still circulates, undiminished by time, beholden to no paper trail, thriving in the public consciousness by word of mouth.
Lastly, the person closest to me who experienced something akin to “close encounters” tales was my father-in-law, architect Alvis O. George, who passed away in 2001.
Alvis was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. He could converse at length about history, politics, the natural world, science, human nature. He possessed a cynical streak, and although an avid member of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Asheboro, NC, in private moments Alvis softly ridiculed claims of anything supernatural. He identified as a skeptic.
And yet. Shortly after I meet him in 1986, his daughter, my then-girlfriend Holly, asks him to share details of something inexplicable that happened while he was driving at night along a North Carolina highway in the early 80s.
In my recollection, Alvis mentions faraway lights in the sky, like heat lightning. Suddenly, all the electrical systems in his car cease. He coasts onto the shoulder. There’s no other traffic. He waits a minute or so, then cranks the ignition. The car roars back to life. He drives on, a little shaken.
Alvis pulls into a rest area to find several other motorists talking animatedly, comparing notes. Like him, they’d been driving along the same highway when their cars’ electrical systems suddenly died. After a short period of time, they were able to restart their engines, and drive on.
When I ask what he thought had happened, Alvis shakes his head, his features open in wonderment, briefly childlike. He utters words I rarely, if ever, would hear from him: “I don’t know.” Like Arturo on that mountainside years later, Alvis didn’t care to elaborate. As I would do with my Peruvian guide, I didn't press the man. But the exchange was different from the vast majority of communications I would share with Alvis in the coming fifteen years. Those few moments were weirdly intense and pure, tapping into something ineffable before hastily retreating back to the comfortable, companionable exchanges that would color our relationship. There would always be a lot to talk about with Alvis, and I enjoyed – and I dearly miss – shooting the breeze with him. But possible close encounters with aliens never came up again.
Although the implications indicate darkness as much as light – especially these days – I remain fascinated at how the human mind latches on to stories told as opposed to stories written. As a species, we’ve been talking – and singing and drawing pictures – for hundreds of thousands of years. We’ve been writing for barely five thousand. That’s a blip, evolutionarily speaking. Clearly, despite the digital revolution and more time spent looking at – and frequently misreading – text, the power of oral tradition is undimmed. One need only sit around a dinner table, sans smartphones, etc, and observe what converges in the air between independent souls to briefly feel the same power that once created cities in the sky. Perhaps with extraterrestrial help, perhaps on the strength of story alone.
HOW SWEET IT IS!!!!!
Beguiling and beautiful, Robert. Makes you wonder about Norton.