WEIRD WISCONSIN
RICHARD D. HENDRICKS
March 16, 2004
Five seconds can change a young person’s life.
In those fleet but immeasurable moments, some find a cause to which they devote their entire lives. Some experience an inexplicable high from which they never come down, or for whom everything after is blighted. Others make one fatal mistake that snuffs out a life barely begun.
Recognition fails others who shamble into queue with other zombies plodding gerbil wheels. And for some, that moment brings questions that haunt the rest of their days.
Eau Claire River, west of Barstow Bridge (Photo: Richard Hendricks)
In June 1978, downtown Eau Claire’s South Barstow Street was pulsing with activity. Two thriving movie palaces with another one-half block off, several rowdy saloons thanks to the sensible drinking age of 18, pizza joints, a furniture outlet, book and antique stores, clothiers, and more. Like other downtowns, urban sprawl took a dagger to the city’s heart in the late 1980s, although in recent years life flutters anew.
The Eau Claire River bisects Barstow, North and South. The north has always been the rough side, with ancient barber shops, graceless wooden storefronts, and taverns where at the time a quarter would buy an eight ounce tapper of Walter’s and a shot of Jim Beam. Squalidly vibrant.
Night – clear and warm. Two cousins, Kevin and Tim, 20, and a friend, Steve, 19, fishing just west of the Barstow bridge, a few hundred feet upstream from where the river terminates at the Chippewa.
The trio fished four, five nights a week, sometimes dropping off dates before casting lines for a few hours. Two and three story buildings crowded the south bank; they sat on rocks in the shadow of hulking brick structures on the north. Feeble yellow light from the bridge – otherwise, a narrow, dark canyon. Time? The witching hour.
The three hunkered quietly, waiting for fish to take bait. Endless black water rolled.
Kevin noticed it first. Down river, a tree had fallen. Above it, some five or six feet, there it was, dangling. Words failed; he watched, disbelieving.
Then Tim’s attention tugged. Neither could say why – no movement, no light, no noise – but some internal warning sounded, causing each in turn to angle an eye downs tream . Tim saw it, glanced at Kevin still hooked down river. Tim swiveled back. Still there. Turning to Kevin: “You might think I’m crazy or something, but ... what is it?”
Steve – snagged now too.
No traffic rumbling over the bridge; only an eerie stillness.
It – a lighted entity mid-air. Not on the tree; the water; the bank. Six, seven feet tall, willowy, with a silvery, shimmering metallic look. Possibly a suit of some kind, wrinkled but tight. The suit, reflective, like burnished aluminum, cast no reflection in the water. Glowing softly – self illuminating.
Everything elongated; spidery long legs, long spindly arms, lengthy thin torso.
Atop, a close fitting helmet with an opaque face shield. Gloves, but none remembered feet. Kevin insisted it resembled an astronaut’s suit, but streamlined, not bulky.
Tim: “Never moved. It just looked like it was staring at us. I think that’s what unnerved Steve, is that he thought it was looking at him. But I don’t think it was staring at us.”
An immeasurable moment; the alluring luminous entity against a black sky, the trio transfixed. Then it turned ... took a step ... disappeared.
Kevin: “You couldn’t see no facial. Its head didn’t move, its arms didn’t move, ‘til it turned, a little bit, and it took one step like it would have went off that tree, and it was gone. It kind of moved sideways and gone, disappeared.”
That’s when Steve threw his fishing pole in the water, took off running.
Tim: “I didn’t have fear, but him taking off like that with the panic that he had there, it was like, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, maybe we should get out of here’.”
Kevin: “What really got us to go and run, was when it stepped off that tree, it disappeared. It didn’t drop into the water, it just disappeared.”
They tore away in their truck, slinging gravel. Kevin and Tim returned the next day to look for evidence. Nothing. For the longest time they wouldn’t return to fish. Steve never has.
Tim: “The first time we came back here fishing, we come out, set our worms down on the ledge, set our poles down, climbed up and hung our feet over the edge and just sat there and stared there. I don’t know for how long. We just looked.”
Over the years they’ve joked privately about the Aluminum Guy. Steve won’t talk. He fears a visit from Men in Black.
Kevin: “I don’t care if you think I’m crazy or not, I know what I seen.” Tim agrees: “It seemed very, very real.”
After a quarter century their experience still haunts. Quietly they’ve asked around – what was it? what does it mean? why us? – but the solution – if any – remains as elusive as dreams.
Richard D. Hendricks is the man behind the curtain at Weird Wisconsin and newsline editor of The Anomalist.
