I have like a "ton" of stuff on my network drives and this AM was doing a search for something and came across this. It involves John Lear's family, his dad Bill Lear and I thought many of you would find this of interest. This is really historical especially if your historical knowledge of the field is a bit spotty.
Decker
Saucer Stories and the Lear Family
by Jean Erhardt
In the early sixties the Air Force worked overtime to promote the notion that UFOs were merely illusions or misinterpretations of natural phenomenon and not extraterrestrial craft. The media was only too happy to cooperate. But on April 24, 1964, New Mexico highway patrolman Lonnie Zamora watched a bright, shiny, humming disc touch down just a few feet away on the dusty desert floor. Lonnie then observed two wide-eyed aliens in white coveralls go in and out of the craft picking up bits of this and that. And while Lonnie smoked what he hoped wouldn't be his last cigarette, the aliens re-boarded and the UFO shot off into the cosmos, leaving behind a big, ugly burn in the brush that couldn't easily be explained away by the Air Force or the papers or anybody else who had a reason to try.
Reports of UFO sightings followed all that summer, jamming the lines at Project Blue Book and anywhere else there was someone to listen. But then maybe the strangest thing of all happened. In the fall of 1964, late at night in a dark laboratory in Southern California, William Powell Lear gave birth to the 8-track tape. Bill Lear, glamour boy and eccentric scientific genius, a man who was on the verge of unleashing the amazing and mighty Learjet on the world and making then losing so much money it would drive him and his entire family nuts, created the endless loop tape cartridge. Right away, Bill Lear got on the phone to RCA who agreed to provide music from their vast library and Ford would offer the Lear Stereo Eight in its Lincolns, Galaxie LTDs and Thunderbirds.
One does not have to be a disciple of fringe to begin to suspect that, indeed, something was and is up. And the deeper one looks, the weirder it gets. For starters, Bill Lear's son, Bill Jr., a well-respected pilot, reports on his very own Close Encounter and a whole lot more in Timothy Good's recent book "Alien Contact: Top Secret UFO Files Revealed." Bill Lear's younger son, John, also highly honored and regarded in the aviation world, is now a noted UFOlogist and publically states that on April 30, 1964, the aliens agreed to provide technology and we agreed to overlook the abductions, the messing up of our cattle, crop circles and whatever other sinister stuff they wanted to do. John Lear was written out of his father's will.
What About Bill?
Was Bill Lear in cahoots with the government all along? Was he being fed the goods on alien technology and passing off all those inventions as his own? It's no secret that Bill Lear's government connections go a long way back. According to Richard Raske in his Lear biography "Stormy Genius," Bill made so much dough via government war contracts that, as a result of the 1944 War Profits Control Act, he had to give back $1.4 million. In 1944, Pepsi was a nickel.
While in the heat of the research and writing of this article, I received a strange message from someone who identified himself only as Ghost Rite. It came to me on August 8, 1994 at 13:15:09 EDT via America Online. Ghost Rite's note read, "I recently spoke to an engineer who did considerable consulting work with the government. This man, now in his 80s, worked on the Manhattan Project in Chicago. He told me a couple of weeks ago that he knew Lear well, flew with him many times and was also involved with some of the plane's design. He didn't go into a whole lot of detail, but did mention that Lear had told him about seeing UFOs." Is it possible that Learjet technology was over Bill's own head? When quizzed about his inventions and how he alone had made these quantum leaps of science, Bill Lear would often respond with evasive, mysterious answers like, "Could 500 men have painted the Sistine Chapel?" or "You never have to repair or replace what you leave out of the design," or "I have a mission." Bill's own engineers, a group of very bright guys, were reportedly "shocked" by the technology of the Learjet. How had he gotten from A to Z? Even 30 years later, Bill's own biographer explains it no better than "Lear was driven by a vision of beauty and simplicity in which every part song harmony." Huh?
But our concern here is not so much as to whether or not the aliens handed Bill the blueprint for the Learjet or the Electrical Resistance De-Icing Means for Aircraft Windshields or the Torsionally Deformable Support for a Gyroscopal Gimbal. What about the 8-track tape?
An 8-Track/UFO Testimonial
In 1969, Tina Kidd turned 15 and she and her mother Louise took off for Roswell, New Mexico in a '58 Chevy low rider. It was white with lots of chrome, big silver pipes and a Kraco deck. Driving across the desert they listened to Marty Robbins and Merle Haggard and watched for tornados. But it wasn't a funnel of wind that Tina Kidd saw that night as they rounded the last bend and were just outside of Roswell. It was about sunset, and Louise had just slipped Johnny Paycheck into the deck and suddenly she nearly lost control of the car when Tine grabbed her mother's arm and screamed bloody murder. Then Louise saw it, too. "Holy shit," they said in unison as they stared up at the big silver cigar hovering over the car. "Floor it, Mom," cried Tina, and Louise did just that. But the UFO stayed right with them. It wasn't until they passed the Roswell city limits sign that the big cigar finally vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
When they safely arrived at Louise's sister Goldie's, they rushed inside and told Goldie of their hair-raising experience. But to their shock and amazement, Goldie just giggled. "Oh, hell," she said, "them damn UFOs are always buggin' everybody around here. Bobby Joe has a hell of a time with 'em." As it turned out, Tina's cousin Bobby Joe drove a tow truck and was out most every night making his pick-ups and dodging UFOs. He swore that all he had to do was put Uriah Heep in his rig's deck, especially Demons and Wizards, and wham, the UFOs would come around like a swarm of giant, metallic horseflies. Goldie claimed that she'd once been taken aboard a UFO. The aliens had shown her a short film about spores and not much else had happened. Goldie hadn't noticed any particular after effects with the exception that, from that day forward, she could get ten hamburger patties out of a pound of ground beef.
Strange Day Indeed
John Lennon stood naked on the terrace of his New York City penthouse and watched a dome-shaped UFO flashing a circle of red and white lights fly past the United Nations Building. On Walls and Bridges, Lennon sings "Strange Days," one of the last songs he wrote before his murder. "There's UFOs over New York and I ain't too surprised."
Many other legendary musicians have had Close Encounters. The band Hot Chocolate describes their UFO encounter in the number one hit single, "No Doubt About It." On "Passage," the Carpenters recorded "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft," and anthem for an International Contact Day. But some may be less forward about the sharing of their UFO experiences and perhaps are more cryptic. Consider: Electric Light Orchestra's "Out of the Blue," Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy," Elton John's "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy," Jefferson Starship's "Freedom at Point Zero," anything by Earth, Wind and Fire and K-Tel's Starflight which gave us the hits "Heaven Must Have Sent You," and "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now."
It's just too ugly to consider the notion that the 8-track was passed to Bill Lear as part of some alien mind control plan. I prefer to think that maybe 8-track slipped through the cosmic crack. That a whole, good spirited band of alien trackers somehow managed to sneak the 8-track to us, knowing that at some point down the line there would be others here on Earth who would come to know that they know we know. And this knowledge alone may be enough to sustain us.
Try It For Yourself
According to UFO expert Jenny Randles there are places called UFO hotspots where you are most likely to have a Close Encounter. While sightings take place all over the world, the North American UFO hotspots are: Niagara Falls, Oregon, Washington, Texas, New Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico from Biloxi, Mississippi to Pensacola, Florida. Maybe you are fortunate enough to live near a hot spot. If not, don't despair because there are spooky sites everywhere. Trolls (aliens?) have been spotted under the bridges in Loveland, Ohio; bipedal "giant lizards" are crashing about the woods in Trimball County, Kentucky and phantom trains or Railroad UFOs are regularly running the tracks from Kansas to Massachusetts. If all else fails, find a hill overlooking any military base, electrical station or rock quarry.
During the '60s, skywatching parties were quite popular. Folks would get together and stay up all night to look for UFOs. Maybe you and your 8-track-minded friends would like to organize your own skywatch. Randles suggests that you bring along the following items: flashlight, watch, binoculars, camera, small coin or dried pea (to gauge sizes of objects) and a thermometer. I would recommend that you add in beer, hearty sandwiches, your portable 8-track player and some tapes which might be most likely to attract UFOs. These may include any of the aforementioned, your particular favorites or mine: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, anything by the Fifth Dimension, Alice Cooper, Les Baxter and (who can explain this?) Conway Twitty. Sail on.
Further Reading
Books
"Hi-Fi: From Edison's Phonograph to Quadrophonic Sound," by W.E. Butterworth (Four Winds 1977)
"Curious Encounters," by Loren Coleman (Faber and Faber, 1985)
"UFOs & How to See Them," by Jenny Randles (Sterling, 1992)
"Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief," by Donna Kossy (Feral House, P.O. Box 3466, Portland, OR 97208, 1994)
"Seeing and Believing: UFOs and Aliens in Film and TV," by Nigel Watson (Valis Books, 52A Lascotts Rd., Wood Green, N22 4JN, London UK, 1993)
"UFOs: A Pictorial History from Antiquity to the Present," by David Knight (McGraw-Hill, 1979)
"The Ultimate Deception," by Commander X (Inner Light, P.O. Box 753, New Brunswick, NJ 08903)
"Forbidden Science: Journals 1957-1969," by Jacques Vallee (North Atlantic, 1992)
Magazines
Crash Collusion ($4 from Wesley Nations, P.O. Box 49233, Austin, TX 78765)
The Gate ($2 from Beth Robbins, P.O. Box 43516, Richmond Heights, OH 44143)
Decker
Saucer Stories and the Lear Family
by Jean Erhardt
In the early sixties the Air Force worked overtime to promote the notion that UFOs were merely illusions or misinterpretations of natural phenomenon and not extraterrestrial craft. The media was only too happy to cooperate. But on April 24, 1964, New Mexico highway patrolman Lonnie Zamora watched a bright, shiny, humming disc touch down just a few feet away on the dusty desert floor. Lonnie then observed two wide-eyed aliens in white coveralls go in and out of the craft picking up bits of this and that. And while Lonnie smoked what he hoped wouldn't be his last cigarette, the aliens re-boarded and the UFO shot off into the cosmos, leaving behind a big, ugly burn in the brush that couldn't easily be explained away by the Air Force or the papers or anybody else who had a reason to try.
Reports of UFO sightings followed all that summer, jamming the lines at Project Blue Book and anywhere else there was someone to listen. But then maybe the strangest thing of all happened. In the fall of 1964, late at night in a dark laboratory in Southern California, William Powell Lear gave birth to the 8-track tape. Bill Lear, glamour boy and eccentric scientific genius, a man who was on the verge of unleashing the amazing and mighty Learjet on the world and making then losing so much money it would drive him and his entire family nuts, created the endless loop tape cartridge. Right away, Bill Lear got on the phone to RCA who agreed to provide music from their vast library and Ford would offer the Lear Stereo Eight in its Lincolns, Galaxie LTDs and Thunderbirds.
One does not have to be a disciple of fringe to begin to suspect that, indeed, something was and is up. And the deeper one looks, the weirder it gets. For starters, Bill Lear's son, Bill Jr., a well-respected pilot, reports on his very own Close Encounter and a whole lot more in Timothy Good's recent book "Alien Contact: Top Secret UFO Files Revealed." Bill Lear's younger son, John, also highly honored and regarded in the aviation world, is now a noted UFOlogist and publically states that on April 30, 1964, the aliens agreed to provide technology and we agreed to overlook the abductions, the messing up of our cattle, crop circles and whatever other sinister stuff they wanted to do. John Lear was written out of his father's will.
What About Bill?
Was Bill Lear in cahoots with the government all along? Was he being fed the goods on alien technology and passing off all those inventions as his own? It's no secret that Bill Lear's government connections go a long way back. According to Richard Raske in his Lear biography "Stormy Genius," Bill made so much dough via government war contracts that, as a result of the 1944 War Profits Control Act, he had to give back $1.4 million. In 1944, Pepsi was a nickel.
While in the heat of the research and writing of this article, I received a strange message from someone who identified himself only as Ghost Rite. It came to me on August 8, 1994 at 13:15:09 EDT via America Online. Ghost Rite's note read, "I recently spoke to an engineer who did considerable consulting work with the government. This man, now in his 80s, worked on the Manhattan Project in Chicago. He told me a couple of weeks ago that he knew Lear well, flew with him many times and was also involved with some of the plane's design. He didn't go into a whole lot of detail, but did mention that Lear had told him about seeing UFOs." Is it possible that Learjet technology was over Bill's own head? When quizzed about his inventions and how he alone had made these quantum leaps of science, Bill Lear would often respond with evasive, mysterious answers like, "Could 500 men have painted the Sistine Chapel?" or "You never have to repair or replace what you leave out of the design," or "I have a mission." Bill's own engineers, a group of very bright guys, were reportedly "shocked" by the technology of the Learjet. How had he gotten from A to Z? Even 30 years later, Bill's own biographer explains it no better than "Lear was driven by a vision of beauty and simplicity in which every part song harmony." Huh?
But our concern here is not so much as to whether or not the aliens handed Bill the blueprint for the Learjet or the Electrical Resistance De-Icing Means for Aircraft Windshields or the Torsionally Deformable Support for a Gyroscopal Gimbal. What about the 8-track tape?
An 8-Track/UFO Testimonial
In 1969, Tina Kidd turned 15 and she and her mother Louise took off for Roswell, New Mexico in a '58 Chevy low rider. It was white with lots of chrome, big silver pipes and a Kraco deck. Driving across the desert they listened to Marty Robbins and Merle Haggard and watched for tornados. But it wasn't a funnel of wind that Tina Kidd saw that night as they rounded the last bend and were just outside of Roswell. It was about sunset, and Louise had just slipped Johnny Paycheck into the deck and suddenly she nearly lost control of the car when Tine grabbed her mother's arm and screamed bloody murder. Then Louise saw it, too. "Holy shit," they said in unison as they stared up at the big silver cigar hovering over the car. "Floor it, Mom," cried Tina, and Louise did just that. But the UFO stayed right with them. It wasn't until they passed the Roswell city limits sign that the big cigar finally vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
When they safely arrived at Louise's sister Goldie's, they rushed inside and told Goldie of their hair-raising experience. But to their shock and amazement, Goldie just giggled. "Oh, hell," she said, "them damn UFOs are always buggin' everybody around here. Bobby Joe has a hell of a time with 'em." As it turned out, Tina's cousin Bobby Joe drove a tow truck and was out most every night making his pick-ups and dodging UFOs. He swore that all he had to do was put Uriah Heep in his rig's deck, especially Demons and Wizards, and wham, the UFOs would come around like a swarm of giant, metallic horseflies. Goldie claimed that she'd once been taken aboard a UFO. The aliens had shown her a short film about spores and not much else had happened. Goldie hadn't noticed any particular after effects with the exception that, from that day forward, she could get ten hamburger patties out of a pound of ground beef.
Strange Day Indeed
John Lennon stood naked on the terrace of his New York City penthouse and watched a dome-shaped UFO flashing a circle of red and white lights fly past the United Nations Building. On Walls and Bridges, Lennon sings "Strange Days," one of the last songs he wrote before his murder. "There's UFOs over New York and I ain't too surprised."
Many other legendary musicians have had Close Encounters. The band Hot Chocolate describes their UFO encounter in the number one hit single, "No Doubt About It." On "Passage," the Carpenters recorded "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft," and anthem for an International Contact Day. But some may be less forward about the sharing of their UFO experiences and perhaps are more cryptic. Consider: Electric Light Orchestra's "Out of the Blue," Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy," Elton John's "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy," Jefferson Starship's "Freedom at Point Zero," anything by Earth, Wind and Fire and K-Tel's Starflight which gave us the hits "Heaven Must Have Sent You," and "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now."
It's just too ugly to consider the notion that the 8-track was passed to Bill Lear as part of some alien mind control plan. I prefer to think that maybe 8-track slipped through the cosmic crack. That a whole, good spirited band of alien trackers somehow managed to sneak the 8-track to us, knowing that at some point down the line there would be others here on Earth who would come to know that they know we know. And this knowledge alone may be enough to sustain us.
Try It For Yourself
According to UFO expert Jenny Randles there are places called UFO hotspots where you are most likely to have a Close Encounter. While sightings take place all over the world, the North American UFO hotspots are: Niagara Falls, Oregon, Washington, Texas, New Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico from Biloxi, Mississippi to Pensacola, Florida. Maybe you are fortunate enough to live near a hot spot. If not, don't despair because there are spooky sites everywhere. Trolls (aliens?) have been spotted under the bridges in Loveland, Ohio; bipedal "giant lizards" are crashing about the woods in Trimball County, Kentucky and phantom trains or Railroad UFOs are regularly running the tracks from Kansas to Massachusetts. If all else fails, find a hill overlooking any military base, electrical station or rock quarry.
During the '60s, skywatching parties were quite popular. Folks would get together and stay up all night to look for UFOs. Maybe you and your 8-track-minded friends would like to organize your own skywatch. Randles suggests that you bring along the following items: flashlight, watch, binoculars, camera, small coin or dried pea (to gauge sizes of objects) and a thermometer. I would recommend that you add in beer, hearty sandwiches, your portable 8-track player and some tapes which might be most likely to attract UFOs. These may include any of the aforementioned, your particular favorites or mine: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, anything by the Fifth Dimension, Alice Cooper, Les Baxter and (who can explain this?) Conway Twitty. Sail on.
Further Reading
Books
"Hi-Fi: From Edison's Phonograph to Quadrophonic Sound," by W.E. Butterworth (Four Winds 1977)
"Curious Encounters," by Loren Coleman (Faber and Faber, 1985)
"UFOs & How to See Them," by Jenny Randles (Sterling, 1992)
"Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief," by Donna Kossy (Feral House, P.O. Box 3466, Portland, OR 97208, 1994)
"Seeing and Believing: UFOs and Aliens in Film and TV," by Nigel Watson (Valis Books, 52A Lascotts Rd., Wood Green, N22 4JN, London UK, 1993)
"UFOs: A Pictorial History from Antiquity to the Present," by David Knight (McGraw-Hill, 1979)
"The Ultimate Deception," by Commander X (Inner Light, P.O. Box 753, New Brunswick, NJ 08903)
"Forbidden Science: Journals 1957-1969," by Jacques Vallee (North Atlantic, 1992)
Magazines
Crash Collusion ($4 from Wesley Nations, P.O. Box 49233, Austin, TX 78765)
The Gate ($2 from Beth Robbins, P.O. Box 43516, Richmond Heights, OH 44143)
