My dad, Ralph Mroch, inspired this story. Somehow he nicknamed himself Banasack (pronounced Banacheck). Or did someone else do it? I can’t remember. I just know it was a name he’d call himself sometimes.
I also don’t remember if the “Super” was part of it, or if I added it for this tale.
Sadly, he’s gone now, so I can’t ask any of these questions. But I’m sharing the story because he passed away two years ago on October 21st. I was hoping to share it on his deathiversary, but my laptop was in the shop.
Then time went by and I never did it. No time like the present.
I don’t know why my dad’s death hit me harder last year than the first one he was gone, but it did. Maybe because I couldn’t help but think of him when all the Storm Area 51 and AlienStock stuff was happening last year? He would’ve gotten a huge kick out of all that nonsense.
Or maybe it was because of my interview with Alexandra Holzer? We spoke on October 19th, two days before my dad’s deathiversary. She shared so many amazing memories of her dad. It brought back happy ones of mine.
At any rate, I wanted to honor his memory and I thought this would be a fun way to do it.
He’d always wanted me to write a Banasack the Super Pole book based on his foibles. I never got there. At least he got to enjoy this story, though. I hope you do, too.
Banasack the Super Pole vs. The Alamogordo UFO
We do not remember days, we remember moments.
Cesare Pavese
Banasack was the orneriest Pole I ever met. Didn’t take much to light his firecracker temper, and man did he like to fight. With his fuse lit, he was like a fart in a mitten –zipping twenty different directions at once, fists raised, ready to pummel anyone flat. Even extraterrestrials.
Got his nickname in basic training. We hadn’t been there but a day or so when some wise ass made a crack about his Polish name.
“The name’s pronounced Banacheck,” he’d corrected the unfortunate dupe.
“Sack, Check, Schmeck. Why can’t you Poles just spell your names like they sound instead of having to correct everyone all the time? Or does that just make too much sense, little man?”
Banasack had a gorilla’s chest and lumberjack arms, but he was only five six –inches below the rest of us enlistees. To this day, I don’t know which rubbed him wrong more —the crack about his heritage or the crack about his height. Whichever it was, it prompted Banasack to crack back –with his fist.
Needless to say, he cold-cocked the poor sucker, earning respect from us boys, but also spot number one on the drill sergeant’s shit list. “Save it for them Koreans son, not your fellow recruits,” our commander advised.
But that incident wasn’t what granted him his Super status. Nope. That would happen about a week later when we were out running the obstacle course.
There’d been a pretty significant rain the night before, and the course was oozing with fresh, slippery mud puddles. Wouldn’t you know, the same fella with the smart mouth was the one who took a tumble coming out of the tires? Snapped his ankle. The poor broken slug lay there crying like an orphaned babe. No way was he gonna make it the mile back to the barracks on his hands and knees.
Me? I would’ve left him there, but what’d Banasack do? The ornery little cuss hoisted the two hundred and ten pound lug over his shoulders and hauled him to the infirmary. Thus earning himself the nickname, Banasack the Super Pole. Super in strength and Super in heart. Outstanding qualities in any man, but especially in a soldier.
Banasack’s strength came from working for his father’s moving company, Banasack Motor Transfer, based out of Calumet City, Illinois. Never would’ve gone there if I hadn’t met Banasack. Or to Alamogordo for that matter.
Unlike Banasack, who’d gotten discharged after the docs detected a heart murmur, I went to Korea. I was scared. He was crushed. Like me, he joined the Air Force for the planes and the adventure. But his heart murmur blew his chances, so back to Cal City and the moving business he went. Which wasn’t all bad, because, in the end, he still got to travel. Just around the States instead of abroad.
Before he left, he told me if I ever wanted a job in the moving business I knew who to call. When my time was served and I came home, I did. Banasack Motor Transfer moved people all over, not just around Illinois. Banasack chose to drive the long hauls, the cross-country moves. Said he’d train me to do it too, if I was interested. Money was decent, the work sounded okay, so I agreed.
It was on my first long haul training session that we encountered the UFO outside Alamogordo, New Mexico.
We were traveling down U.S. 54, south of Three Rivers, southwest of Roswell, and north of Alamogordo. Dusk had just fallen. I lit a Camel and listened while Artie Shaw and His Orchestra’s “Oh! Lady Be Good” played on the radio. Banasack was watching the sky, babbling some sort of nonsense about aliens.
“There ain’t no such thing, you crazy Pole. They don’t exist,” I said after a while, tired of listening to his baloney.
“How do you know?”
“Because I know.”
“Well stop the truck and call the press! That authoritative insight will surely end all debate.”
I ignored him and looked out the window at the expanse of empty, dark nothingness.
The desert had received some rain earlier that day and a fog was developing. Desert fog. It’s a different species than East Coast, or even West Coast, fog. More deceptive. Yup, one strange beast, that’s for sure. Wild and rare. Comes with more intent and stays with more purpose, because, like the rain, it’s an unexpected visitor out there in that dry climate.
Oh sure, the right combination of moisture and air temperature generates it just like any other fog, but desert fog lives. Breathes. Comes to life all around you. It’s like you’re that piece of rolled cardboard being dunked into the vat of air-puffed sugar at the carnival –you find yourself trying to navigate through a cotton candy haze. Can’t see in front of you or on either side. And when you look back, you can’t see where you came from or where you’ve been. Yup, that desert fog swallows you whole.
Banasack’s goal was to make Las Cruces. The truck’s headlights penetrated through the fog enough to shine on the sign showing the miles remaining to Alamogordo and U.S. 70, the highway we’d ride in to Las Cruces. The same sign showed the miles to White Sands.
“Ever seen that crater out there at that missile range? What’s it called?” Banasack asked.
“White Sands Missile Range?”
“No! The name of the crater.”
“Oh. Trinity Site.”
“Yeah, that’s it. Ever seen that?”
“Nope. You?”
“Nah. Not yet.” Banasack sipped some coffee from his thermos. “You know what I think?”
“No, but I think unless I jump out of this truck I’m gonna hear it anyway.”
“You better not work that smart mouth with the customers or, friend or not, I’ll can your ass.”
“Sorry, Mr. Banasack, sir. I’d love to hear anything you have to say, boss.”
“Smart aleck.” He lit a cigarette and exhaled a puff of white smoke and said, “This is what I think. I think an alien spacecraft really did go down ten years ago out by Roswell, but I think it was heading for White Sands.”
“This oughta be good. Why do you think that?”
“Because of that explosion at Trinity Site.”
“You’re loony! That’s been almost ten years ago. And a good few before that damn Roswell hubbub.”
“Two, to be exact. The explosion was in July of ’45. The crash in’47. Which, coincidentally, also happened in July.”
“So?”
“So! Two years after this big atomic bomb blows up, a spacecraft crashes a mere one hundred and some odd earth miles away from that site. Don’t you think that’s more than just a heck of a coincidence?”
“Not really. I already told you I don’t believe in UFO’s. If you ask me, I think it was a weather balloon that went down out there. Was probably foggy that night, too,” I said, nodding my head in the direction of the fog outside. “Made it seem like something it wasn’t.”
“Aw, come on! That bomb blasted smoke 40,000 feet into the air. What if they’d seen that? Or had felt the explosion? Maybe mistook it for an intergalactic distress signal or something. Like a big flare being shot from a sinking ship.”
“And they came to help? Put out the fire and save our drowning souls? Or maybe they wanted to see if we had finally annihilated ourselves so they could claim the planet as their own?”
“Be a smart aleck skeptic all you want, but I think it’s more than just a coincidence.”
“So how come we didn’t hear about any UFO’s visiting Hiroshima?”
“Because the first one never made it back home. They figured it wasn’t safe.”
“Uh-huh.”
Silence crept into the cab. Banasack tapped the wheel with his thumb to whatever trumpet heavy song was playing, keeping himself awake. It’d been a long day of driving, and he’d been doing most of it. But driving was better than passengering. I stared out the window at the ever-increasing fog until I felt my eyes grow too heavy to hold open.
A little while later I was snapped back to consciousness by a loud bang. I woke up to see Banasack beating the top of the dash, trying to reclaim the tunes. As was typical out there in the middle of nowhere, the reception, which had been marginal to begin with, had declined to nothing but scratchy static.
Banasack leaned forward to snap off the radio, but his fingers froze on the dial. He was staring up at the sky, and when I looked at his face, he was as blanched as a skinned almond fresh out of scalding water.
“You okay boss?” I asked.
He bobbed his head up and down and eased himself back in his seat. But his face was still white, and, except for the occasional glance at the road, his eyes remained focused on the upper right corner of the windshield. I felt the truck losing speed as he lifted his foot off the accelerator.
“Gotta pee?”
He shook his head.
“Then why’re we stopping?”
“Not stopping. Just slowing up.”
“Cop?”
Another head shake.
We were crawling at this point. Not that it mattered. No one was behind us as far as I could tell. Although the fog might’ve been hiding something.
“Engine trouble?”
“No,” he whispered, his gaze stuck on that windshield’s corner.
As quick as a cobra strike, his arm shot out and pulled the rheostat, flicking out all our lights, leaving our Goliath truck to navigate that dark Southwestern stretch without illumination.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled. Banasack knew better. Even without that much training, I knew better! Alone or not, you don’t stop a mammoth rig –or any vehicle for that matter—in a fog bank, especially without lights!
He answered by punching the gas pedal to the floor and flicking the lights back on. His eyes immediately flew back to that spot above the windshield.
“Son of a bitch!” he shouted.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“I can’t shake them.”
“Who?” I was hell-fire mad at this point because I was scared. I followed his gaze. The fog swirls above the truck glowed orange from the lights that were keeping perfect pace with our International model R 185 with a 372 engine –an engine built for hauling not for speed. Certainly not the speed Banasack was pushing it to.
“Don’t worry buddy. Banasack the Super Pole won’t let ‘em take us without a fight.”
“Won’t let who take us?” I asked, ducking my head, trying to see whatever he saw above our truck. All I saw were the orange lights. And then I understood.
I burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, clearly irritated.
“Slow down and turn the lights off again,” I said through my chuckles.
He did.
“Now turn them back on.”
He did.
“Notice anything?”
“Other than that they’re still with us?”
“That’s right, you crazy Pole, they’re still with us. That’s because it’s us! It’s our clearance lights, you moron!”
The truck slowed even more. Bansack’s shoulders drooped, partly from relief, partly from embarrassment, and he released the breath he’d been holding. He looked up at the orange fog and flicked the lights on and off one more time. Then he started laughing too. He pulled off to the side of the road, and we both howled until tears flowed and our stomach muscles ached.
When our giggle fits subsided, I said, “You’re not just any Pole, Banasack. You’re a Super Pole indeed. Too smart for your own Polish blood, that’s for sure.”
“Hey, watch your mouth,” he growled. “Or I’ll belt you one like I did that first day of basic!”
We burst into a renewed round of laughter.
That was Banasack: an ornery son of a gun ready to fight anytime, anyplace, anyone. Even aliens. But lucky for them, that was as far as the confrontation between Banasack the Super Pole and the Alamogordo UFO went.