I let myself into the Piper Museum through the side door, rode my bike through the maintenance room, and parked it in the hangar. Then I walked among the planes, looking at them all as I went for the stairs.
I've been here for over a year. Been the curator for nine months, and the thrill hasn't worn off. I don't think it ever will.
I walked past the Vagabond, the Aztec, the Cub, the Grasshopper. I paused a moment to touch a couple of them, looking them over affectionately before walking up the stairs.
How could anyone get used to this, ever? How could I ever take it for granted? Being here, among the planes....Being a part of this history....Having a whole museum to explore? How could you ever lose this feeling?
I climbed the metal stairs to the second floor, and walked inside. Through the display area, to the heavy door in the back of the building. I unlocked it with my key, and walked into the archives. Row upon row of old artifacts and files, A toy alien on my desk. A couple of black jackets hanging on the rack.
I'm home.
"Hi, my name is Lou. I'm the county historian out in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, and I have a sort of weird question for you."
I heard the woman on the other end laugh as I walked around the archives with my cell phone. "Well, try me and let's see."
"I've got a request out here---I get these sort of questions all the time, you know how it goes. A woman says she was visiting your museum a few years back, and saw signage that says that New Harmony, Indiana and Lock Haven, Pennsylvania have a connection. Someone was involved with designing both, or something. She says they're considered sister cities. I know nothing about this, and have found nothing in my archives. I wanted to cover all my bases, so I'm calling to check. I'm told you're the person to talk to."
"Well, I do study the area's history out here. But I'm not familiar with Lock Haven. I never heard anything to suggest this. Of course, it might be a connection I don't know about. but...."
"Yeah, I know," I said. I began to dig through a stack of recent donations on the table---Old sketches of Piper prototypes. Looked like the Saratoga, the Cheyenne. "I'd probably have heard this, too. Chances are one of us would know. I believe you; I know how I'd react if I got this call."
One of the sketches caught my attention. It showed a plane that didn't look like a plane---It was weird-looking. Sort of rounded, with stubby wings and not much of a window. Nothing I'd ever noticed before---Probably one that never went into production.
"Well, good luck," she said. "I hope you find what you're looking for."
"Actually," I said,"I think things are looking up."
"Daddy! I make surprise for you!" My son, two years old, held out a picture he'd drawn. Green scribbles on purple paper. Paul Matthew is currently somewhat abstract.
"Thank you, Paul! I like it." I took the paper and set it on the table. "Daddy's going to work now."
"Go to library?"
"Today I'm going to the airplanes," I said. Paul loves the airplane museum. "Daddy needs to track down some UFOs."
"Aliens!" said Paul.
"That's right. And what do aliens say?"
"Take your leader."
"Did someone call you with another sighting?" my daughter asked. Since we'd adopted Paul, Tif is our go-to babysitter. Tif is in her thirties and has cerebral palsy, and Paul adores her.
"Not this time....Piper Navajos see UFOs all the time. The damn things are UFO magnets, but that's not what I'm working on right now," I said. "I got a donation of sketches of odd prototypes, and some of them are weird-looking. I'm wondering if they may have caused some sightings in the old days."
"Were there actually sightings?"
"There were. I found an article. Five men in 1952, down around the airport, spotted a UFO over the mountains. Metallic and round, it floated for a while, and then shot southwest out of sight. Could be a Piper prototype."
"How would you prove that?"
"Good question. I'm going to go through the files and see what I can find---If I can discover a prototype that was tested around them. We should have the documentation."
"Well, have a good day with it," said Tif. "We're going to make cookies here."
"Cookies!" said Paul.
At work at the library the next day, I dug into my research job a little. I didn't really think I was going to find any connection between Lock Haven and New Harmony---I'd have known about it already---But a former mayor of Lock Haven has sent someone my way for this, so I had to try.
I checked the newspaper indexes. I checked Linn's History. Nothing. I spent about an hour looking at any documentation I could find, and came up with about what I'd figured: No connection.
There was a letter from Jazmyn in the mail, which brightened my day up considerably. She was looking forward to coming home in the summer, and working with me on some of these research projects. I sat down and read it at my desk, where I have files labelled Here There Be Monsters and Illegal Aliens. I can't believe I get paid for this.
I paced in the lobby for a few minutes. In the stack of magazines, I found a copy of Young Salvationist, a religious magazine. The cover story was "The Supernatural: Discover The Truth!"
I picked the thing up and read it out of sheer morbid curiosity. The "truth" seemed to be that ghost don't exist because the bible says, and simultaneously, demons can kill you.
I threw it in the recycling bin, along with my notes from the New Harmony job.
Some days you're the Austin Dam. Some days you're the flood.
It was Monday when I went into the museum. I was wearing one of my alien T-shirts, the one that showed an alien mowing a crop circle on it. I hadn't realized it was President's Day; I had the entire building all to myself. Which was good, as I'd decided to dedicate the morning to finding UFOs.
The first thing I did was to look through the airplane files. My office has a set of cabinets with files on every airplane Piper ever designed; I'd spent hours looking through the Aztec and the Navajo. I worked my way through the drawer with experimental planes, figuring it was a good bet.
And I found the file marked X-27.
It had two photos, both showing a long, metal craft sitting in the development building. I recognized the building at Lock Haven; no way this was taken somewhere else. The device was long and shaped kind of like a Sharpie, with wings and wheels. And, yeah, it could easily be mistaken for a UFO.
Every aspect of history has one book that is basically the bible for that research. In Piper's case, that would be Piper Aircraft, which the museum has about ten copies of. I looked up the X-27, and found a short entry.
In the early 1950s, the Navy was creating the X-27, a top-secret towed target. Piper put in a bid on the landing gear, but didn't get the job. One of these had, however, been at Piper---The photo proved it. It was likely that it had been tested, and almost certain it had been kept classified.
I looked for plans. The shelf in the archives has a whole bunch of rolled tubes, but nothing labelled X-27 or anything close. Some cool floor plans, though. Next I went downstairs to the shed.
The hangar has a small shed on the east end, where a lot of old parts and files are kept. There are large flat files, and I dug through those, looking for something that looked about right.
It was about half an hour before I found it.
A design for a landing gear, one wheel on a swivel. No date, no labelling at all. Just the print.
I took it upstairs, and set it next to the photo. It was a match; it was the same landing gear.
That was my UFO. The X-27.
The museum's conference room used to be part of stock and fabrication---They'd created airplanes in there. These days, we held board meetings in it. I was in for one the next morning, sitting across from John, the board president. He was an ex-Piper engineer, and I'd never had problems getting him to answer my questions. It was a bigger problem getting him to stop.
"John, question for you," I said. "I came across something recently about a classified Navy contract for Piper. How much of that would there have been? Did Piper do a lot of top-secret military stuff?"
President John smiled. This guy is like having the world's coolest grandfather telling you stories. And I realized later that he'd managed to answer the question in a roundabout way, without really answering it.
"Well, let me tell you. When I came here in 1960, I was classified as an A-1 draft dodger. I told this to Walter Jamouneau when he hired me, and he wrote a letter to the government. I didn't see the letter until years later, but they wrote back and deferred me because they said I was working a critical job in a critical industry. What we did was necessary to the war."
I nodded.
"What I needed to know. Thanks."
I found a frame in my office and slipped the X-27 wheel plan inside it. The whole east wall of my office is some kind of corkboard, and I stuck a nail into it, and hung the plan up. It showed the design for a wheel that had never gone into production. But sixty-five years ago, a few men had seen it....And talked of UFOs.
I stepped back and looked at the design on the wall. Nobody would ever know why I'd hung it up. But I appreciated it.
I'll never not love this.
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