by Sarah Vowell
“Just as soon as I put price tags on these drunk Indians,” he says with a chuckle. “They’re for storing whiskey, see?” He shows me the openings where the liquor flows in and out.
I wince and say, “Oh. Look at that.”
The shop is more like a storage unit, barely any attempt at organization or attractive display. The guy, named Zachary, invites me to sit in a metal folding chair, pushing aside an ashtray on a cluttered table so I can rest my arm. I take stock of his appearance: blue eyes, baseball cap, missing teeth.
Suddenly he remembers something and gets up. “Sorry,” he says, turning the sign on the door from closed to open. “We’re having a little sale. A lady in town, Barbie, her husband committed suicide two weeks ago, so I’m donating twenty percent of all my profits for the weekend to help her cover the funeral costs.”
“Is Barbie a friend of yours?” I ask.
“Kind of. She works at Giggle Springs,” he says, referring to the gas station and convenience store across the street. I later learn that the name is a mistranslation of the town’s Paiute name, which does not mean “laughing water” as the original owner had believed. “She’s a real nice lady that helps anybody out in town. When I came to this town I didn’t have nothing. And the gentleman that owns this building gave me this store to run, gave me the house I live in, and everything else. So somebody helped me, and now it’s my chance to help someone else.” The gentleman, of course, is Hank P.
I ask him where he came from, and he says Arkansas, though he’s originally from Aberdeen, Washington. “The hometown of Kurt Cobain,” he adds.
“How does Tonopah stack up?” I ask.
“It’s a quiet little town,” he says, “but there’s too many alcoholics here. There are about twenty of them that sit out front of my store every day. It’s irritating. A few of them live in apartments up above the Hock Shop. If you went into the Hock Shop and talk to that guy, his name is Jeff, he’s drunk from the time he wakes up to the time he passes out.”
“Jeff seems to have a real reputation,” I say.
“Oh yeah,” he confirms. “He comes into my store all the time and helps himself to my stuff. All my jewelry from Africa ended up in his store for sale.”
“Do you live in these apartments back here?” I ask. He scoffs and says you couldn’t pay him to live there. The apartments are on the backside of the building. I can see them from my motel room, and have observed the comings and goings of various men clad in dirty jeans, often accompanied by muscular off-leash dogs.
“Are the guys who live back there Hank P.’s guys?” Zachary nods his head yes. I ask if he’s friends with any of them.
“No. I’m not friends with any of Hank P.’s guys,” he says with a sneer. Zachary is himself one of Hank P.’s guys, but evidently envisions himself a cut above the rest. “Actually I can’t say that. There is one guy that works for him as a mechanic that I’m friends with personally. But he and I have a similar background, so we get along pretty well. The other guys are all just a bunch of worthless drunks.”
“Do you think it’s good that Hank helps them out?” I ask.
“Yes and no,” he responds. “It’s good that Hank gives them something productive to do for the day, otherwise they just sit here and bother people. But it’s bad that he gives them the money that he does, because he knows they’re just gonna go out and drink. That’s the only time they come in and work for him is when they need money for booze. And I have a problem with that.”
Bells jingle and a Latino man walks in, wobbly on his feet.
“Hey Lee,” says Zachary coolly.
“Has anybody come in here and tried to sell you a DeWalt drill?” Lee asks, leaning on a cane to steady himself.
“Nobody’s tried to sell me anything stolen,” answers Zachary. “They know better. Everything that comes into my shop goes to the sheriff’s department for thirty days and then comes back.”
“That DeWalt cost me $170,” Lee says in protest. “That sucks. That was expensive.”
“Well, I’ll keep my eyes out. If someone brings it in I’ll snatch it up and call the sheriff’s office.”
“I think he left town,” Lee says, shaking his head.
“Who was it?” Zachary asks. “Nate?” Lee nods yes, anger glowing in his eyes. “Nate left,” Zachary confirms. “He owed Hank a lot of money. He split, man.”
Lee is quiet, disappointed. Abruptly he lifts his cane and brings it down hard. “I hate thieves,” he declares.
“Trust me, so do I,” says Zachary. “I’ve had many thieves in here try and steal stuff from me. They were willing to go to jail for fifteen dollars—hey, fine by me. They don’t realize that I can put handcuffs on ’em myself and take ’em to jail.” He turns to me and straightens his back as he boasts, “I work for the sheriff’s department here and in Mineral County. I can arrest people.” Somehow I doubt this is entirely true.
Lee is silent, stewing. After a long pause he says resignedly, “Well you have my number,” and turns to leave. Before he exits he looks over his shoulder and says, “Hey, you want these?” He’s waving a stack of envelopes.
Zachary asks what they are.
“My bills!” says Lee, and laughs from his belly, his spirits temporarily lifted. The bells jingle again, and he’s gone.
Zachary turns to me. “He’s one of the drunks I was telling you about. He had a dog called Tiny. It was a really big dog. He had that dog for twenty years. And somebody from California come and hit it with a car, and it had to be put down. Lee’s been drunk ever since.”
Stuff Out There That Isn’t There
Throughout the Cold War, the United States Air Force ran a classified program to test the capabilities of its aircraft against foreign fighter planes. The USSR-based Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau was building exceedingly agile aircraft and supplying them to the United States’ Cold War enemies. By the late 1960s, as the Vietnam War came into full swing, American air-to-air combat losses due to these planes—known as MiGs—were growing worrisome.
In 1967, under a program called Have Doughnut, the United States acquired a Soviet MiG from Israel. The plane had been handed over by an Iraqi fighter pilot who chose to defect rather than drop napalm on Iraqi Kurdish civilians. It was flown to top-secret Area 51, between Tonopah and Las Vegas, to be poked and prodded by the United States Air Force.
Over the next decade more captured MiGs were flown in, and secret dogfights began to take place over the Nevada desert. To keep the program under wraps, airspace was fully restricted and the area was blotted out in red ink on aerial maps—furtive measures that contributed to Area 51’s prominent place in conspiracy theories about UFOs and insidious government plots.
In 1979, these foreign technology evaluation tests were relocated to nearby the Tonopah Test Range, known as Area 52. The fighter pilots there, known as the Red Eagles, lived in a dormitory called Mancamp, which consisted of “a chow hall, an Olympic-size stainless steel pool, bowling alleys and a sports field that was lit up at night,” according to an interview given by pilot John Manclark after the official declassification of the secret program.
Some pilots played the role of aggressors—they were tasked with flying Soviet planes and replicating enemy tactics so that trainees could troubleshoot effective responses. Several pilots died flying the unfamiliar aircraft, for which the United States had no manuals. “We didn’t know what 90 percent of the switches did,” said Manclark. “We had one switch that we just labeled BOMB EXPLODE.”
At the same time, Lockheed was busy building the F-117 Nighthawk at the Tonopah range. It was America’s first stealth aircraft, designed to avoid radar detection in enemy airspace. The engineering of the F-117 was a highly classified black project and the Tonopah Test Range a black site. Thousands of personnel worked on the project, and were flown to Tonopah on Mondays and back out to the Las Vegas area on Fridays. They were prohibited from telling their families where precisely they went all week.
The United
States government came up with a cover story involving a surrogate aircraft, justifying the program’s existence to the civilian world and deflecting suspicion. Early biometric technology was used to screen everyone who entered the base, and vehicles that came too close to the range were searched and their occupants warned away.
The F-117 flew only in the dark, and its manuals were kept inside a hyper-secure vault. The pilots were called Bandits and wore patches featuring scorpions, sphinxes, atomic symbols, grim reapers, and eagles with lightning emanating from their talons. One patch featured an image of the plane and the embroidered words, “To those who hide at night, beware of those in the shadows.”
Eventually, the Nighthawk was ready for war. In 1991, leaflets rained down on Iraqi villages showing the plane wreaking havoc and warning civilians to “Escape now and save yourselves.” The aircraft dropped thousands of bombs during the Gulf War, and continued to operate through the ’90s.
Only one Nighthawk was ever lost to U.S. enemies—the aircraft, named Something Wicked, was shot down by Serbs in Yugoslavia in 1999. There is speculation that the missing equipment was acquired by China or Russia for study, bringing full circle Tonopah’s relationship to the top-secret world of foreign aircraft exploitation.
While Tonopah’s Area 52 is not as ubiquitous in conspiracy theories as neighboring Area 51, the site’s combination of strict confidentiality and global impact lends itself to paranoid interpretations. Most residents know bits and pieces of what takes place in the desert outside their town, but nobody knows everything. Parts of the history are still classified, and secret projects are still underway.
Proximity to the genuinely clandestine inspires eccentric worldviews in locals, or at least an increased openness to what might elsewhere be considered crackpot conspiracy theory. But few people dwell near government black sites—information about the land we live on is readily obtainable, largely predictable, and often mundane. If secret plots are actually unfolding in your backyard, orchestrated by absentee elites intent on consolidating global power, it becomes difficult to dismiss other theories that follow the same pattern. For some residents of Tonopah, the mystery of nearby government activity is understandably destabilizing.
“Do a lot of people believe in UFOs around here?” I ask Wilma at the Clown Motel.
“Oh yeah,” she says unreservedly, her eyes growing wide. “A lot of people have seen UFOs here. I’m one of them. I’ve seen multiple UFOs throughout my life. I know it sounds crazy. But I had people with me who witnessed it.”
I ask her to describe what she’s seen in Tonopah. “I’ve only seen one here,” she says. “It was a couple years ago and I was walking home from work at the Clown. I saw this thing come flying in, no sound at all, right in the middle of town. There was no denying it was freaky. It did a little back and forth thing, a very intelligent type of movement, and then it went straight up into the universe. I mean, c’mon!”
“Why do you think people see so many UFOs here in this part of the country?” I ask.
“It could be the Indian reservations,” she explains soberly. “That’s a huge possibility. The governments are not allowed to touch the UFOs or even try to go after them in the reservation areas. I know that for sure. And the Native Americans are firm believers in UFOs. It’s part of their whole thing.”
Mounted on the wall to her left is a placard that boasts a silhouette of the F-117 against a map of the Middle East, pockmarked with little cartoon explosions. It reads TONOPAH STEALTH—1ST TO STRIKE IN THE GULF.
I suspect that Wilma would believe in UFOs whether or not she lived near a secret government site. Throughout our conversation, she eagerly divulges theories about additional forms of paranormal activity (while she has not seen a ghost at the Clown, she has smelled one—it wafted in on a cold wind and “smelled like a very ancient perfume”). Other residents surprise me a bit more, like Clifford who works at Joe’s bookshop.
A self-described computer nerd who moved here six years ago from Southern California, Clifford speaks matter-of-factly. “I help Joe out in the bookstore,” he says, “but my skill set is more technical. Computer networks, information systems, business systems.”
He gets excited when I mention the Tonopah Test Range and the stealth bomber built there. “Oh man, it’s an awesome piece of war machinery,” he says. “It’s a killing machine. The designers were all told to design different parts—the wings, the cockpit. There was no collaboration whatsoever. That’s how they keep the secrecy of the design.” He relishes both the technical sophistication and the cloak-and-dagger gravity of the project.
“Somebody told me they’re building another secret plane out there,” I offer.
“That’s what I heard,” he affirms. “Man, the security measures that they have in place are serious. If you wander off the beaten path and end up on the test site, within minutes security will come out of nowhere and be all over you. It’s very tightly controlled.” I had read accounts of wayward explorers who suddenly found themselves surrounded by a swarm of military vehicles, unaware that they had trespassed from public into top-secret land.
I ask him if the secrecy has any effect on people living in town, if it fosters theories about covert activity. Clifford strikes me as a rationalist, and I’m expecting to chuckle together about local kooks. Instead he says, “I mean, I don’t know. I’ve seen some pretty weird stuff myself that I have no explanation for here in Tonopah. I’ve seen flying objects that I couldn’t identify. The flight path and the flight pattern, the maneuverability, there’s nothing that we have that I’m aware of that can maneuver like that.”
He continues, “I’ve seen glowing orbs in the sky. They go one direction and then another and then they just disappear. Then they reappear somewhere else, and it makes no sense.”
I ask him if the flying objects could be military technology and not intelligent extraterrestrials. “Absolutely,” he says, relieved by my suggestion. “Here in Nevada, there’s so much open ground that it’s a lot easier to test aircraft without having to worry about communities getting an eyeball on it. They mostly fly out in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes a camper or a hiker will see something, but they largely go undetected.” He lights a cigarette and leans back in his chair, taking a long first drag. “The stuff we see is just one fraction of what goes on out there.”
Later, I’m at the Tonopah Liquor Company conducting an interview when a man comes up to me and says quietly, “So you’re a reporter.”
I nod my head and he says, “I work for the government. Listen. If you go up into the hills, find the golf balls. And when you’ve found the golf balls, look southeast. There’s stuff out there that isn’t there, if you know what I mean. It isn’t there, but it is.”
I never learn his name, and I never find the golf balls.
SIMON PARKIN
■
So Subtle a Catch
FROM Harper’s Magazine
In April of last year, under the crisp light of an embryonic English spring, Darren Wakenell pulled his Citroën hatchback onto the gravel driveway of Timberland, a private fishery nestled improbably among stratospheric smokestacks on an industrial estate about an hour’s drive from London. Wakenell is a postman turned fishery-enforcement officer with the UK’s Environment Agency, and Timberland is one of some 300 fisheries that he and his partner, Stephen Robinson, patrol.
Along the ramshackle banks of Timberland’s Mystery Lake, one of five waters the fishery comprises, Wakenell parked his car within sight of a few wispy-haired men lounging on deck chairs. Each seat was surrounded by a jumble of angling equipment and grubby Tupperware, and was separated from the others by enough distance to spare the men, and their dogs, the necessity of interaction. Robinson, a former military-police officer in khaki pants and a knife-proof vest, led the approach. “If it all kicks off with one of these guys,” Wakenell warned me in a whisper, “just walk back to the car. We’ll handle it.” He fingered an extendable truncheon that hung from his belt a
nd strode toward a middle-aged man who was patiently ignoring our presence.
After a few minutes, the man looked up from a margarine tub full of writhing maggots and offered a conciliatory smile. “Nice to see the Environment Agency showing a presence round these parts,” he said, drawing his rod license from his wallet without being asked. “They’ve had a lot of problems, haven’t they? People keep taking the carp.”
The carp grows in estimation the farther east he travels. In the United States, he is often branded a rough fish or, more damningly, a trash fish, a catch that is good for neither cuisine nor sport, food nor glory. The so-called Asian carp, an unscientific amalgam of four species, is loathed up and down the Mississippi River, where he outcompetes local fish and is known to leap from the water at the sound of a propeller, bruising the eyes and breaking the bones of passing sailors.
When he comes to England, the carp’s fortunes elevate considerably. Here, as Izaak Walton wrote three and a half centuries ago in The Compleat Angler, the carp is regarded as “the Queen of Rivers, a stately, a good, and a very subtil fish.” Indeed, in 2015, a drawing of the fish was printed on the rod license, which most anglers carry in their wallet as though it were a cherished family photograph. As the fish enters Poland he discovers that he is no longer merely good: now he is considered a delicacy, eaten in place of turkey or ham as the nation’s favourite Christmas dish.
By the time he reaches Japan, the carp has grown in both confidence and chic. Gone is the glum pallor and gormless mouth. Here the koi—a variety of the common carp—is prized not for subtlety but for its opposite: his papery fins and drooping mustache are judged to be the height of aquatic elegance. In Japan the fish may be considered a family heirloom, even a life companion. Hanako, the longest-living specimen on record, was born in 1751 and handed down through generations until she died, two centuries later, at the unlikely age of 226. Her final owner, Komei Koshihara, described Hanako in a 1966 radio broadcast as his dearest friend.
