Have you ever had that one friend that not only marched to the beat of a different drummer, they just totally marched off the football field entirely?

I had such a friend. I’ll refer to him as Bart for a name’s sake.

You could see him coming a mile away and instantly recognize him. Coffee cup in one hand, cigarette held aloft in the other.

I’d heard tales of him long before I ever met him.

Bart held a pretty high position in the powerhouse. It was a critical job that entailed a lot of stress and responsibility. One day he didn’t come into work. The man he was to relieve that day probably thought he’d overslept. An hour passed and no one heard anything from him. Calls to reach him at home went unanswered. The whole day passed and he didn’t call and report off.

Everyone who has ever worked in a mill like the one we worked at knew that it wasn’t wise not report off. Disciplinary action was in order. His coworkers figured he would receive more than just a verbal reprimand. They were afraid he would be given time off.

Low and behold, Bart didn’t show up again the next day either. Or the next. People feared he had been in an accident. The local hospitals were called. He wasn’t there. Folks feared the worst.

They removed his name from the upcoming week’s work schedule. Two weeks passed, still no word from Bart. It was debated among the higher-ups about what action to take. Most figured that he had just quit. Walked away without a word, some thought. Three weeks passed. No Bart. By the beginning of the fourth week things had settled down and nobody ever expected to see him again.

About a month to the day he had disappeared, into work strolls ole Bart. Lunchbox in one hand, cigarette dangling from his lips, and a cup of coffee in the other hand.

Heads turned. “Bart! What are you doing here?”

“Well, duh, I work here.”

Hmmmmmm. There was a predicament.

They informed him that he was not on the work schedule. They thought he’d quit. After all, he had been gone a month.

“No. I didn’t quit!”

“Well, you never reported off. We tried calling you for days. We called everyone we knew trying to contact you. After you were gone so long without reporting off you were replaced.”

“I couldn’t report off.”

“Sure you could. You had several days where you could have picked up a phone and called!”

“There weren’t any phones where I was “

“Oh, really? No phones? Where the heck were you? Mars?”

“Close. But not Mars.”

“Huh?”

“I was abducted by aliens.”

That’s when things got a little complicated. After management quit laughing they realized Bart was serious. In fact he was dead serious. They weren’t laughing anymore.

The plot thickened. They fired Bart.

His representatives filed a grievance and it was quickly denied. They filled another one and it was taken all the way to an arbitration board. After the company presented its case before the judge things did not look good for Bart.

Then his representative presented Bart’s side of the case.

Matters of that sort are seldom settled in one day. The arbitrator takes the information and goes through it with a fine tooth comb, sorting out all the little details. Days passed. Weeks passed. Finally, the judge had reached a decision.

In all his years he had never had a case like the one with Bart. There was no precedent. He finally determined that no one could prove Bart hadn’t been abducted by aliens. So he ruled in Bart’s favor. However, there were stipulations. Bart wouldn’t receive any back pay, and he would never promote any higher in his department than his current position.

Years later Bart transferred to another department and that was how I came to know him.

We ended up working together a long time and I never mentioned the experience he had had with the aliens. He never brought it up either.

One night he and I had to go up on the roof of our building to work on a gas valve that had failed shut. It was a nice fall night, about two o’clock in the morning. We finished what we were doing and leaned back against the pipes, looking up at the night sky filled with stars.

Something in the east caught my eye. About a hundred yards above us were about five triangle shaped objects moving in our direction. They made not a sound as they flew overhead. I watched in awe as they silently glided by and went out of sight. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“What the heck was that!” I asked Bart.

He looked at me and smiled. “I didn’t see anything. Did you?”

I thought about what he said and shook my head, “Nope. I guess I didn’t.”

I learned a lot from ole Bart. We worked together several more years before he ended up leaving the mill, not on his own terms. He has since passed away.

Sasquatch had nothing on Bart when it came to social distancing. Had he lived, I’m sure he would be intrigued by what is happening nowadays. He never failed to have a different perspective on problems that arose.

If perchance our government actually knows about the existence of aliens, we should all thank our lucky stars they have kept it a secret. Instead of a run on toilet paper like we’re experiencing now, we’d all be running out and buying aluminum foil.

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Rick Algood
March 31, 2020