Graylien
As if!
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2004
- Messages
- 4,428
- Location
- Norwich.
See the saucer before reading further.
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Source: http://aikenonline.com/stories/081404/new_12345530.shtml
From Wire Reports
BOWMAN, S.C. -- Fame hasn't gone to that space between Jody Pendarvis' ears. His UFO Welcome Center is still ramshackle.
He's built a second flying saucer on top of his now notorious flying saucer and moved into a control room in between. The whole works now dwarf the beat-up trailer he keeps alongside. And it's all up in the air - on cinder blocks.
In fact, the original saucer was repositioned 26 inches closer to earth and "stabilizer" wood beams were hammered along the rim after one of those tour groups that keep dropping by got it wobbling. Codes officers said that wouldn't do.
For extraterrestrials passing through rural Bowman on S.C. 36, the center - like any good welcome center - can't be missed. The giant saucers loom behind a rustic post and metal fence just across the road from a country home flying two American flags.
Nearly 10 years after Pendarvis laid the first nail to a tongue-in-cheek joke of a backyard project, it has become one of those eccentric bits of Americana.
The center was beamed into the cosmos, via satellite, when Pendarvis appeared on Roseanne Barr's TV talk show. He's been written up in newspapers and magazines worldwide, roasted on TV's "Liars & Legends," "Comedy Central" and Japanese television.
Ring the bell at the "tour" gate and nobody seems to be home. But a long ramp begins to winch eerily down from the saucer to the ground.
Pendarvis emerges with a shrug. He does the now well-rehearsed routine of stopping in the middle of a sentence to stare off at something in the sky. He talks about sightings with his eyebrows jumping up and down for comic effect.
The "U" of "UFO" spray-painted on the saucer wall is dangling loose. It's a strip of silver tar paper.
As Pendarvis walks across a dirt launch pad strewn with tar paper, scrap wood, pontoon-like old jet gas tanks and an EverStart battery, there's a loud pop. One of the portal windows of the new, "upper" saucer has dropped out.
"Uh-oh. There goes one of my pie plates." The window is, in fact, a glass pie plate.
In 1995, Pendarvis set out to build a Christmas float with planks from his grandfather's torn-down house. That turned into a shed office. That turned into a mystery. The further the construction got off-center, the more neighbors asked exactly what he was building. He no longer knew.
But he began selling $1 tickets to its grand opening, and after awhile something emerged that was, um, alien.
Whether UFOs arrive or not, the center has put Bowman on the map. Visitors from as far away as England have detoured down two-lane country roads to find this smidgeon of a farming town.
Riding past on his Huffy bike, neighbor Edward White stopped to smile. "It's all right. Everyone in South Carolina knows it's here. It's excellent."
Pendarvis treats it all with that same hands-in-his-pockets sense of homespun fun - he built it and, look, they came. "Oh, man, they love my tour. They want to bring their kids," he said.
The tour is a watch-your-step odyssey through a split-split level treehouse of science fiction and messy living. Pendarvis is a 53-year-old bachelor who works at an Orangeburg plant that builds lawnmowers.
The walls are eerie patterns of portals, lights, pipes and wiring. The floor is strewn with chocolate wrappers and Raid cans. To stay cool, he spends summers in a bunk in the control room. He spends winters in the old trailer.
The crafts have debris everywhere and mud daubers hovering with celestial grace. There's a computer in one wing and a toilet in another. Obsolete military and nautical radar and yard ladders between floors climb to the De-Gravitron - a 70-pound bad-hair-day of PVC pipes and hoses, sitting on a scale.
So far, the invention hasn't been able to lift off. But when it does, the scale will show it.
Pendarvis squeezes like an astronaut through the hatch to the upper saucer. He turns on the radar and the wood beams begin to hum. He speculatively taps the hinged boards of the walls and talks about how he held onto one of the lower craft's skylights during Hurricane Floyd to keep it from blowing away.
If he gets a big enough wind, he said, "this ship'll fly."
.........................................................
Source: http://aikenonline.com/stories/081404/new_12345530.shtml
From Wire Reports
BOWMAN, S.C. -- Fame hasn't gone to that space between Jody Pendarvis' ears. His UFO Welcome Center is still ramshackle.
He's built a second flying saucer on top of his now notorious flying saucer and moved into a control room in between. The whole works now dwarf the beat-up trailer he keeps alongside. And it's all up in the air - on cinder blocks.
In fact, the original saucer was repositioned 26 inches closer to earth and "stabilizer" wood beams were hammered along the rim after one of those tour groups that keep dropping by got it wobbling. Codes officers said that wouldn't do.
For extraterrestrials passing through rural Bowman on S.C. 36, the center - like any good welcome center - can't be missed. The giant saucers loom behind a rustic post and metal fence just across the road from a country home flying two American flags.
Nearly 10 years after Pendarvis laid the first nail to a tongue-in-cheek joke of a backyard project, it has become one of those eccentric bits of Americana.
The center was beamed into the cosmos, via satellite, when Pendarvis appeared on Roseanne Barr's TV talk show. He's been written up in newspapers and magazines worldwide, roasted on TV's "Liars & Legends," "Comedy Central" and Japanese television.
Ring the bell at the "tour" gate and nobody seems to be home. But a long ramp begins to winch eerily down from the saucer to the ground.
Pendarvis emerges with a shrug. He does the now well-rehearsed routine of stopping in the middle of a sentence to stare off at something in the sky. He talks about sightings with his eyebrows jumping up and down for comic effect.
The "U" of "UFO" spray-painted on the saucer wall is dangling loose. It's a strip of silver tar paper.
As Pendarvis walks across a dirt launch pad strewn with tar paper, scrap wood, pontoon-like old jet gas tanks and an EverStart battery, there's a loud pop. One of the portal windows of the new, "upper" saucer has dropped out.
"Uh-oh. There goes one of my pie plates." The window is, in fact, a glass pie plate.
In 1995, Pendarvis set out to build a Christmas float with planks from his grandfather's torn-down house. That turned into a shed office. That turned into a mystery. The further the construction got off-center, the more neighbors asked exactly what he was building. He no longer knew.
But he began selling $1 tickets to its grand opening, and after awhile something emerged that was, um, alien.
Whether UFOs arrive or not, the center has put Bowman on the map. Visitors from as far away as England have detoured down two-lane country roads to find this smidgeon of a farming town.
Riding past on his Huffy bike, neighbor Edward White stopped to smile. "It's all right. Everyone in South Carolina knows it's here. It's excellent."
Pendarvis treats it all with that same hands-in-his-pockets sense of homespun fun - he built it and, look, they came. "Oh, man, they love my tour. They want to bring their kids," he said.
The tour is a watch-your-step odyssey through a split-split level treehouse of science fiction and messy living. Pendarvis is a 53-year-old bachelor who works at an Orangeburg plant that builds lawnmowers.
The walls are eerie patterns of portals, lights, pipes and wiring. The floor is strewn with chocolate wrappers and Raid cans. To stay cool, he spends summers in a bunk in the control room. He spends winters in the old trailer.
The crafts have debris everywhere and mud daubers hovering with celestial grace. There's a computer in one wing and a toilet in another. Obsolete military and nautical radar and yard ladders between floors climb to the De-Gravitron - a 70-pound bad-hair-day of PVC pipes and hoses, sitting on a scale.
So far, the invention hasn't been able to lift off. But when it does, the scale will show it.
Pendarvis squeezes like an astronaut through the hatch to the upper saucer. He turns on the radar and the wood beams begin to hum. He speculatively taps the hinged boards of the walls and talks about how he held onto one of the lower craft's skylights during Hurricane Floyd to keep it from blowing away.
If he gets a big enough wind, he said, "this ship'll fly."