As we do every time a potential buyer comes to see our farm, which is for sale, Paul and I chat over a meal and reminisce over the last 17 years in Puerto Rico and 15 on the farm. Last week was Witness Protection and this week is unexplained phenomena.
This morning over breakfast, we talked about a friend we used to have (who is now deceased) who had some interesting beliefs about power outages. Our town called Utuado is about half an hour south of Arecibo, home to was once the largest observatory in the world. Over dinner (and for him, several glasses of wine) he told us that many Puerto Ricans believe very strongly in intelligent existence outside our solar system; a belief that is shared by many throughout our vast land. Although I have yet to hear about this particular belief from anyone but him, well, you know how these things go.
According to him, there is a reason the largest observatory, whose sole purpose is to confirm the existence of extraterrestrials, would be housed in Puerto Rico. According to him, these beliefs are shared by your average puertoriqueños, be they farmers, doctors, lawyers, professors, teachers, engineers, police officers, postal carriers, garbage collectors, or those whose previous occupations aren’t any longer discussed, and whose current occupations appear to be daily seat warmers in the local bars.
Drinking and philosophizing is certainly nothing new, and Puerto Rico wouldn’t dream of allowing themselves to be excluded from the list of great drinking philosophers. Drunk or sober, this particular gentleman spoke very “candidly” and “off the record” about Aliens, UFOs, visitations (the apparent cause of many of the mysterious power outages throughout our little mountainous region). The power company often blames a down transformer, its blown fuse or power lines that crossed trees, but we know better—wink, wink. Then of course there’s the dreaded “La Chupacabra.”
La Chupacabra, which literally means goatsucker, is a “visitor” from another planet, existing throughout South and Central America and the Caribbean. Not so welcome, he is very feared by animals, and of course owners of these animals due to his wide spread practice of sampling their blood, but leaving carcasses as evidence of his “visitation.” I am not so inclined to dismiss these theories as there appear to be many unexplained phenomena throughout the world that personally, lacking any other logical explanation, I, too, am willing to chalk up to a possible visitation.
No “visit” with this friend of ours was complete without him mentioning some program he saw on TV about The Omni, Area 51, or a repeat of his favorite visitation story, which I believe we’d heard at least 20 times, but to him were as if it had been the first time all over again. We always listened as if we were hearing it for the first time, all over again.
The story goes went this: a friend of his was driving along a road and suddenly his car went dead, he had the presence of mind to check his watch which read 10:10 p.m. He was stuck on this road for about ten minutes; car unable to start while flashes of life flew overhead. After several flashes of light and some thunder, the car started and he again had the presence of mind to check is watch, which now read 10:20 p.m.
We know not what to make of his friend’s story or his continue retelling of it.
Losing power in the tropics is all too common. It is especially normal in the countryside, along our mountainous roads where power lines are above ground and are susceptible to high winds, heavy rains, lightening, tree limbs crossing above power lines, and indeed, the occasional drunken driver.
The people who work on the ground for the electric company do their best to get to blown fuses in transformers and other issues fixed in a timely manner. Although it seems like forever when you need power, when taking into account that it’s unlikely we’re the only ones without power, it’s all rather quick.
Each time we saw this couple, we got to hear all about the outage and visitation discussed in its minutia; the longer the outage, the longer the visitation and purpose for said visitation. His wife, mind you, thought he was off his rocker.
At some point Paul and I both learned to nod our heads in agreement.
We named one of our cats Mulder (I am a huge X-Files fan), so I must on some level want to believe also.