Jim Bradshaw: The three-headed spacemen playing canasta

The discussion went on for weeks after people claimed to have seen a flying saucer zip across south Louisiana on Saturday, Jan. 7. 1950. That was something to talk about, but not uncommon. This was at the height of the saucer craze that began at the end of World War II.
 What caused the stir this time was that one of the sighters said he was able to see inside the saucer, and that it was flown by men with three heads.
Joe Weir made that claim to the Daily World, who proclaimed him to be a sober and substantial citizen of Opelousas. “I saw men in it,” he said. “They had three heads and seven legs and they were all wearing bikini bathing suits.”
Weir, who was a pilot, said that two men were with him and saw the same thing, albeit only a glimpse, since the thing was flickering odd lights and flying at a speed he calculated to be 6,817 miles per hour. He said the saucer was flying from west to east and shot across the sky from horizon to horizon “in about a minute.”
The newspaper said it had talked to other people who had seen the saucer but who did not want to be quoted. Kingsley Veltin didn’t mind. He said it was about 11 a.m. when he spotted something “shiny like a mirror” that left a white streak through the sky. “There isn’t anybody on the face of the earth who is going to prove to me that it wasn’t a flying saucer,” he said.
Wilfred Carson and Nelson Andrus were heading for lunch at the American Inn in Ville Platte when they saw what the Gazette headline called a “flying something,”  but their description wasn’t nearly as dramatic as the Opelousas account.        
They described “a curious looking object” that looked like a ball, appeared to be about one foot in diameter, and left what they thought to be a vapor trail.
In Eunice, the implication was that the thing should be taken seriously.
The New Era newspaper reported, “A flying saucer streaked across Eunice at 11 a.m. Saturday, leaving a trail of vapor and a number of startled citizens who now believe such things are real and not products of the imagination.”
One of those new believers was Coleman (Red) Fontenot, who spotted the saucer from his service station, flying from the west “at terrific speed.” Others who saw it agreed with Red that the object was “round and shiny.”
The New Era said it had received reports of the sighting from Oakdale and other places, including Opelousas, and that “the Daily World, whose editors have not read the latest edition of True magazine, which proved conclusively that flying saucers are real and some of them are manned by creatures from other planets  … made light of the event.”
The Daily World defended itself in its “Cup of Coffee” commentary column later that week.
“There definitely was something — described as looking like a rocket — zipping at a fast and furious rate of speed through the skies [on] Saturday.
 “There were NO men in it with three heads and seven legs. That was merely a fabrication of Joe Weir’s fertile imagination. We strung along, played it light, thinking the thing was a jet bomber. Besides, it was a dull day.”
The Daily World said that it could have been a weather balloon that had been released in Lake Charles that morning “and might POSSIBLY have been driven here by winds “
 But, the newspaper pointed out, “according to the wind readings of the Lake Charles weather bureau — and wind readings are wind readings — the radiosonde would have ended up considerably south of here, down around Gueydan or thereabouts.”
Jimmy Dupre of Eunice gave an even more mundane answer about a week later: “I was driving in Mamou at the time and looked up into the sky and saw a bomber flying very high. Long trails of vapor strung behind the plane. It was a sight almost any serviceman had seen numerous times.”
That’s a far cry from bikini-clad, three-headed men, who the imaginative Weir also claimed were drinking Scotch and playing Canasta.
Imaginative or not, I like that version better. Wind readings are wind readings, and if the suspect weather balloon went to Gueydan like it was supposed to have done (probably not traveling at a “terrific speed”), and since bombers are bigger than the sphere described by the Ville Platte viewers, why not a flying saucer, and why not three-headed Scotch drinkers to liven up a dull news day?
You believe what you want, I believe in all sorts of imaginary things.
<>You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.