There was a big special on ABC Thursday night about space aliens. Peter Jennings, a respected journalist, took a look at this hot topic.

I’ve been wondering where all the stories about how them big-headed goomers are comin’ to visit so they can abduct people in order to perform a few medical experiments?

I always wondered why them pint-sized, big-headed goomers were comin’ all that way – traversing interstellar distances that, if the physicists are right, would have to take thousands of years – just to torture folks that live in trailer parks.

I’ve read up on it and found out there’s more than just the big-eyed skinny ones visiting. I don’t remember them all, but apparently there’s five or six different kinds of space goomers zipping around, mutilating cows, mashing wheat into geometric patterns, confusing trailer park people by appearing and disappearing, and, of course, beaming folks up to their flying saucers so they can stick probes in them.

It’s a shame that we don’t hear more about the aliens. Heck, when the latest NASA probe went into orbit around Mars there was not the first word written about the mysterious &uot;face&uot;. They didn’t even send them itty-bitty robots over to it to take a look. What’s up with that?

For those who listen to terrestrial news exclusively, the Face on Mars, photographed in the 1970s during one of the earliest NASA flybys, is a huge mesa that looks like a face. Scientists say it’s just a well-worn mesa with shadows and light making it appear facelike; the folks that see UFOs and space aliens say that it’s really a sculpture of a human face that is millions, or billions, of years old.

Whatever it is, whenever something happens on or about Mars the networks drag out that old black and white picture from the ’70s to discuss the possibility of life on Mars.

I believe there is life on other planets and think there’s a good chance that there’s microscopic life on Mars, but there’s not much chance that there’s anything big enough to be seen. Of course, them Martians might be invisible.

I also believe there’s intelligent life on other planets in the galaxy, which makes me wonder why we haven’t detected any radio or television signals from those other civilizations.

Even if the galaxy is teeming with highly advanced civilizations, however, I have to question why the little bug-eyed goomers would be coming all this way just to kidnap – and return in an hour or two – people out of trailer parks.

I used to live in a trailer park – one way outside of town in the woods – and I lived in the sorriest looking trailer you’ve ever seen. It was a 1961 model and it had, to say the least, seen better.

During all the years I lived there listening to wind whistle right through the living room, never once did I see a big-headed goomer.

Now that I think about it, however, it could be that the whistling noises I heard every time the wind blew was not because the front door didn’t fit tight, not because the tin outside had a few dings, and not because the rollout windows didn’t quite roll back all the way.

It could be that the whistling paid little mind to was big-headed goomers spiriting away my neighbors, who, now that I really concentrate on it, did seem to disappear rather abruptly from PineView Trailer Court near Greenville.

I must have been in some kind of goomer trance while I was living there because I never thought about where all those people went. I’d come home in the afternoon and there would be a different car parked beside the trailer next to mine. It wasn’t because those folks got a new car, but because someone new was living there.

The goomer trance must be wearing off. I can’t believe I never questioned that before now.

Because of the rapidity with which my neighbors came and went, I never tried getting to know them. Well, there was the one couple that lived to my right who tried to get me to take sides when they were yelling, cussing, screaming and hitting one another, but I tended to avoid those folks like the plague.

After several months of having to listen to their fighting and arguing, suddenly one day there was peace and quiet. The manager of the mobile home park was cleaning out their trailer – ripping out the carpet because it had apparently been a litter box for cats I never knew lived there.

It was odd that they disappeared, but I must guiltily admit that I was relieved to be shunt of them. If they were snatched by big-headed goomers from outer space, I pity them goomers.