Chapter 1: Truth and Consequences

1. The Burnt Brownie Caper

Even though all these many years have gone by, it seems like yesterday to me. You wouldn't believe how many times the whole thing had been classified, reclassified and declassified, then reclassified again. It's true that all the original records and facts are either gone or so altered as to make no good sense at all. Bureaucrats, politicians and preachers will always cover their own butts, every time. It's like second nature to them.

However, in almost every case, always a few know the original truth about the events. As one such, I was there from the beginning. Now, since I don't have much longer to live anyway, I shall try to tell the whole and unvarnished truth about how this whole project started a year or so before Pearl Harbor, helped win World War Two, and why it has continued to be hidden from the world up till the present.

I'll also tell you how the US Government spent almost three trillion dollars on a science project that existed only in Nancy's and my very fertile imaginations, mostly mine. The whole thing started back in the 1930s in Poverty, Oklahoma, part of another township that has all withered away until it's only another Depression ghost town.

Everybody has heard snippets of facts about "Project Dark Star, and how it was started with "alien science" and won the cold war and made the whole country safe and happy from the evil Commies and other figments of politicians' imaginations.

It all began by accident, just because we, the two high school students, almost got caught necking and groping in the home ec room after classes were all out one afternoon. It also proved how stupid bureaucrats and educators can be if they put their minds to it.

It all began in the Hard Times Oklahoma High School home ec room, which was also the "science lab" and assembly hall. A bunch of people from the Oklahoma Department of Education came nosing around and Principal Wiggins decided that since they asked about a "science lab," just maybe we ought to have one. But that's getting ahead of the story.

My name is Billy Joe Weaver. Nancy Jean Hunter and I had been sort of trying to get together for almost a year. It was just like the Montagues and the Capulets in Romeo and Juliet, except we were not a couple of twelve or thirteen year olds. We were mature and sophisticated high school seniors who were dumb as hell and didn't realize it.

Now the Weaver clan and the Hunter clan hated each other, with the exception of Billy Joe and Nancy Jean, that's us. We had the hots for each other like nobody's business. The problem was, we wouldn't admit it to each other or even to ourselves. Kids are so funny that way.

Every time we got near each other, I would get all nervous and shaky (and hard as baseball bat) and she would start acting all flustered and twitchy. So, we naturally had to snipe at each other and wisecrack because we couldn't admit our feelings of attraction to each other or to our classmates at school. That was especially true in our case because of the Weaver-Hunter feud. (They called it the Hunter-Weaver feud.)

On the other hand, we were at that age where boys and girls start to really notice each other and don't know how to act or react on a social level. So, they start saying and doing all sorts of stupid things. I guess it's been like that the world over from the time the first teenager was put on this Earth.

You know what I mean; a boy meets a girl in the hallway at school and he says, "Hi there, pork butt." Now what he really means is "You're cute." But he just can't say anything that stupid in front of his buddies, so he says something even more stupid instead. That's the way it was with Nancy and me. What I really wanted to do was to kiss her, take her out to a movie, and have a malted later on at the malt shop and all that kind of stuff. But I just couldn't break the "teen age code of stupidity," so I said, "Hi, big butt."

Of course, she got all ticked off, stuck her nose in the air, and make a big show of ignoring me. Then one of her friends would say something like, "Why are you such a jerk? Just go away, Billy Joe Weaver, get lost." So, I would go on down the hall, strutting my stuff and while inside I felt the strong desire to just go back and say, "I'm sorry" and make friends with Nancy. But that was not the "way things were (and probably still are) done.

Then came one particular day, Nancy was in the Home Ec Room, which was also the study hall and the English classroom and the chem and physics labs. That gives you an idea of how small our school was. We had a total student population of a little under one hundred in all grades from one through twelve. Kindergarten? Forget that. We had no money for frivolous things. Besides, that's what mothers were for, to watch after the kids until they were old enough to go to school, or to jail, just depending on the circumstances and which family was involved.

Right now, you must be wondering what all this has to do with anything, so I will tell you. But first, I have to give you the background so you will be able to understand things. My story is all about how our government, or rather the wooly brains who run it, can take a bad idea, make it worse, ignore the facts and invent a "truth" all their own with a new reality to match.

You see, as I said, my name is Billy Joe Weaver. Or rather it was until the government changed it "for security reasons." Anyway, the day it all started was when Nancy was baking fudge brownies for her home making project at school and I walked in on her while she was bent over looking in the oven. And I did what any red blooded real he man American teenager would do in a case like that. This was especially so, since I had been getting much more interested in her of late. She had started to get all those bumps and curves that made her irresistible to me. I kind of slipped up behind her real quiet and asked right into her ear, "Whatcha doin' there?"

"Oooh." She shrieked and stood up straight all sudden like and smashed my nose with the back of her head. Dad gum it, but that smarted. Then she backed up and almost knocked me down. I threw my arms around her to steady myself and ended up hugging her. I also had two hands full of her fine frontal assets. I jerked my hands off that personal part of her and kept on hugging her close to me.

Nancy tried to jerk away from me and twisted around in my arms to see who was getting all that personal with her. She saw it was me and started to get mad. Her eyes got big and she started to get a frown on her face, so I kissed her on the lips. It was definitely in the beginners' class of a kiss. What it lacked in expertise, it made up for in enthusiasm. She looked at me kind of surprised and I kissed her again. Boy howdy but that felt good.

So, I kissed her yet again and this time she kissed me back. I held her closer to me, she threw her arms around me, and we really had a kissing party going when we finally smelled something burning.

All at once, she jumped back and shrieked, "My Brownies." We saw smoke billow in black clouds out of the oven. I just stood there and watched all that smoke come out around the oven door. "Oh no. And this batch was so perfect. Now look at what you did, Billy Weaver."

She opened the oven door and grabbed the flat baking pan with a towel. She was quick to set the shallow cookie sheet, with its load of burned to carbon brownies, on the cool stovetop.

Mister Wiggins, the school principal rushed in and asked, "Who screamed? What's wrong? What happened? Is anyone hurt?" From long experience he had come to expect at least one minor disaster or more every day.

"He burned them." she accused me.

"He burned what?" Mr. Wiggins asked, as worry seemed to be just dripping from his voice. He looked her breasts over to see if they were the "them" that got burned.

"Billy burned the best..." Nancy began, when I interrupted.

"It's our science project." I blurted out, trying to come up with some excuse. I operated on the same idea teenagers have for years, if the truth doesn't look so good, tell the most outlandish lie you can imagine. This one ranked right up there with, "The dog ate my home work." And, "The canary let that fart, not me."

Nancy started to say something, but shut her mouth again. She got that mean little grin on her face that said she was going to let me stew in my own dumb lies. Some girls are real mean that way. Her look seemed to say, "Let's see you talk your way out of this one, big boy."

He looked at Nancy, who had her poker face up and on by then, and asked, "What science project? I haven't authorized any money for some foolish science project."

"I'll let Billy Joe tell you about it. He knows so much more than I do about it." She gave me a look of pure murder.

"Well sir, I wasn't going to say anything unless we could get it right, but I found this stuff that seems to have some interesting properties. I, well, we wanted to make sure we had something of interest before we bothered you with it. If it didn't pan out, then no problem. But if it looked good, we might win at least honorable mention at the state competition."

The words "honorable and mention" could mean more funding for our little school. Principal Wiggins was never the smartest man alive about anything, but he was totally brain dead when it came to science. And like most school administrators, he was as greedy as he was stupid.

"Well, tell me about these 'properties' you think you have discovered." He started to stroke his chin, which was a sure sign he was trying to look "judicious." But it really meant, "I don't understand a thing you are going to say, so I'll fake it."

I decided to wing it and began to blabber. I told him, almost quoting an article from a magazine, "In its original state, it was heavier than water, but it may have been partially water soluble in its original state. Then, when we applied heat we induced it to change states, it proved to be partially water soluble at that time."

"Ah." said Principal Wiggins.

"Not only that, but it also displayed a resistance to electrical conduction after it was introduced to medium heat." I said. "After a while actually lost its ability to conduct an electric current for a period of time before regaining it later on. It bore an interesting resemblance to selenium but had none of selenium's photoelectric capabilities"

"Well." said Principal Wiggins.

"And it seems to display opposing electrical properties to that of selenium oxide which will conduct electricity in direct sunlight." I added for good luck.

"Very well, keep me informed of your progress. Honorable mention." he muttered under his breath, as he left. I was glad he did not understand what I said, because I sure didn't either. What I had done was to quote various portions of an article I read on photovoltaic cells another on electrical conductivity. I read them in a back issue of "Popular Science" I found beside the road. It must have blown out of some car passing by, headed down Route 66.

"Ah yes," Principal Wiggins told us and repeated himself, "Well, keep me informed of your progress." He wandered out of the smoke filled room in a daze.

"Oh Billy, you are a fool for certain. What are you going to tell him when he asks how you are coming along with your science project?" She was still angry about her brownies and happy about the necking, at the same time. She was, as they say, operating on mixed emotions. "In fact, what was all that nonsense you were telling him?

"Aw, I just said that brownie mix dissolved in water and didn't make a very good conductor of electricity, even when it was burnt to a crisp. "Besides, don't worry about it, he'll forget all about the whole thing before he gets back to his office."

However, that is exactly what did not happen. Wiggins was like so many men who are what some call "intellectually challenged" today and used to be called "stupid retards." He felt he had to call the principal of one of the other schools in the district and crow about "his" science project.

Josh Taylor, the principal of the larger and better-funded Waggoner High School, was the bureaucrat's bureaucrat. He knew how to part the waves and make things happen where government money was concerned. He was also aware that if that idiot Wiggins actually had a student who had come up with something new, he had better start looking for funding for a science project of his own in order to compete so he could come out looking good.

That bit about the compound having electrical properties similar to selenium oxide, and a mass with a similar atomic weight as that of water sounded too authentic. It was inconceivable to believe that buffoon had made it up.

Perhaps he had better call his cousin in Washington DC at the Bureau of Weights and Measures and see if they knew anything about this. It might be wise to also see if there was any government grant money lying around waiting to be funneled down his way. Another good idea would be to snoop around and try to find out what was really up over there.

So, I helped clean up the burned mess at school and then went home and did my chores. That was when Principal Taylor sent his very own Mata Hari over to spy on me. Her name was Violet Flowers and she was the world's most perfect tramp.

Now mind you, he didn't tell her to do anything immoral, well not exactly. He merely asked her to use every means at her command to find out what our "science project" was about. Violet loved her work as a spy because she was also a natural born snoop. Besides, Principal Waggoner promised ... and he always kept his promises.

Very early the next morning, Violet Flowers "just happened" to be walking by our barn as I was out there milking our three cows before I got ready to go to school. What made this interesting, about her just "passing by" was that Our barn was way out behind our house, which was three miles from the Poverty city limits sign.

Also, as she said, "Helloo, Billy." her hands got caught up in her skirt and it came up just barely enough for me to see a flash of her thigh and white underwear. Now back in the 1930s this was more than plenty to get young a guy's juices to start flowing through his body.

"I just sooo admire smart men." she cooed at me in her best Betty Davis tone of voice. "Tell me all about your new discovery," she whispered in my ear.

Now I was a young guy with the naturally high level of hormones that all young guys have, so my brain sort of short-circuited. Remember, I was still milking while all this was going on. What happened next was that when she stuck her tongue in my ear it felt like I got jolted by electricity.

The sensation made my already hormonally over abundant body jerk and spasm. I jerked my hand, just as I began to squeeze milk out of the cow's teat and the stream of milk went right down into her shoe. She snorted, gave me a dirty look, took a deep breath and continued, "You can tell me how you discovered all of ... of ... uh what you discovered."

All at once I realized that she wasn't interested in me, she wanted to find out about my non-existent "discovery." I was heart broken for almost five seconds over that. Then I got mad that she would try and use female trickery on me.

Since I really didn't have a "discovery" for her to find out about, I told her a bunch of bull about the "strange properties" of my material and she said "bye," in a breathless voice and hurried right back to Principal Taylor, who changed her failing grade in math to a brand new "A," just like he promised. The only time she ever failed a grade in school was in a woman teacher's class. I bet by now she has a doctorate in something or other and still has yet to open a book on purpose. Can you imagine her as a judge in a court of law? Come to think of it, I do believe I have seen a few who probably got their judgeships without knowing anything.

After that, everything went crazy. Something called serendipity happened about then. The previous year, I stole two glass jars of pigment from the local hardware store. One jar was filled with powdered aluminum used to make "silver" paint by adding it to clear varnish or lacquer. The other was finely powdered bronze used to make "gold" paint the same way.

My conscience bothered me and I got scared that I would get found out so I buried my loot under the floor of our storage cellar. (For those of you from California, a "cellar" is usually a basement without a house over it.) Anyway, I have absolutely no idea why I stole that pigment and probably never will. It was just one of those stupid urges that teen aged boys get and succumb to and regret later, I really didn't consider myself a thief. In fact, the only other thing that I remember ever to have stolen was a Hershey bar from the local Piggly Wiggly market. But boys do the dumbest things, sometimes. At least this boy did.

A week later, the REA, the Rural Electric Administration people began to install power lines all over our part of the state so farmers and small towns would have electricity. They rented our storage cellar from my pa to store explosives.

They brought in more than a thousand pounds of dynamite. The cellar was two feet above ground and six feet below ground level. This made it perfect for their purposes. Pa had built it out of dogwood, just about the hardest native wood to be found in Oklahoma. It seemed there was already a fly in the ointment, namely greedy bureaucrats. An explosives company had some old dynamite in storage that had settled and crystallized. That stuff was every bit as unstable as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The crooked salesman sold the greedy bureaucrat all of that unstable explosive material, gave the bureaucrat a kickback and hired two Mexicans who spoke no English to deliver it to our shed. They planned to store it there until it was needed to blast down into the rocky soil so the high line poles could be planted.

The Mexicans delivered the dynamite on the following Sunday Morning after the REA rented the cellar. Of course, this meant we were all in church when it happened. First there was a dull "Whump!" sound you felt in your chest more than heard with your ears. The preacher stopped preaching about some old Jew asking God for a sign just as the shock wave from the explosion hit us. It blew out every window in the church and sprinkled us all with bits of glass.

The silence was like a vacuum. "It's a sign from the Lord. Hallelujah!" our preacher, Brother Johnson, screamed. "It's a sign from the Lord!" Well, many folks later on thought it was a warning to straighten up and fly right. Then, because, no one was cut from all the flying glass, it became an official miracle in Poverty, Oklahoma. Some people are just real easy to please.

Any way, when we got back to where our house used to be, to where our barn no longer was, to where our three cows ceased to exist and where the dynamite sure as hell wasn't, the woes were already multiplying, as the saying goes.

Ma cried, Pa cursed and we headed into town to get a room at the small hotel in down town Poverty. The next day a representative from the REA got scared and began to wring his hands. He was worried about a black mark on his record because a job under his ever-watchful eye blew up on him and perhaps might have killed a white American family.

He didn't care about the two Mexicans who evidently were not explosives trained. They weren't even Americans, so they didn't count in his narrow little world.

Well, I guess they did matter to their families back in Mexico, but I never heard one agonizing word about them from those government types who were nosing around. All I remember is how the one little guy had a mouth full of gold teeth. When he grinned, his mouth outshone the gold plated capital dome.

When the REA man saw that we were unscathed, he fell all over us apologizing for what had happened and promised us a new house, a new barn and three new young Jersey cows, freshened and giving rich, cream filled milk. He promised it and meant it. Right then he would have promised to hurry the Second Coming of Christ if it seemed like the expedient thing to say. I learned that day that bureaucrats kept their word when their own butts were on the line.

2. Agreements

Because of his past experiences with the government people, my Pa already had such a great distrust in bureaucrats that he hurried out and brought Judge Walker back. The judge was running a special on justice that week and it only cost Pa five dollars.

Judge Walker had the whole thing drawn up as an agreement between the REA, an agency of the US Government and us, meaning Pa. Everybody signed and the judge officiated over the agreement. The REA man left and we, Ma, Pa, Sally and I, went for a walk together.

"How come it only cost your pa five dollars to get the judge to make a house call and it cost my pa seven dollars?" Sally asked.

"The Weavers and the Walkers is kin, twice removed back in Arkansas," I told her. "Also, Ma is blood kin to the Walkers."

"Oh," she nodded that she understood. After all family is everything in situations like this.

In the meantime, Principal Wiggins heard about the explosion and thought it was my "science project" that had blown up. He had the idea it had blown up because of the devastating power of the "results" of our experiment in burning brownies.

He even got the school board pay for our hotel bill for a week while the government rebuilt our house and barn. Now the man from the federal government had also given us a voucher to pay for that same hotel bill. So, no matter how you sliced it, we got paid twice for two rooms rented only once. I explained it to Pa and he liked the idea. He had a small streak of larceny in him, too.

Pa turned to me, once Principal Wiggins had given us the money for our hotel rooms and departed and asked, "What science project?"

Well, since Ma and my little sister Sally Mae were out of the hotel, taking in the wonders of the big city life there in Poverty, I told pa the truth, about the burnt brownies and me slipping up behind Nancy and all the rest. When I got to the part about her and me huggin' and a kissin'; and how she quit fighting and commenced to enjoying it when I got my hands on her. He started to turn red in the face as he roared out his laughter.

"You mean you got one of them Hunters to be huggin' and kissin with you? And she didn't try to cut you up even a little bit?

"No, Pa, actually the enjoyment was mutual; we had us a wonderful old time, right up till smoke started to pour out of that oven."

Pa actually read more into it than there actually was. When I said "huggin' an' kissin'," he was hearing so very much more. He wondered if I got her pregnant.

I didn't feel comfortable with that knowing smirk on his face. After all, Nancy and me, we had something pretty special started between us. Anyway, that's what I figured.

"Pa, why are we and the Hunters mad at each other, anyways?" I asked him.

"Hell, boy, I disremember now because it happened back when my great grand daddy was your age. It really don't matter because they are a no good bunch of red neck white trash, and you can take that to the bank and cash it."

I gave a mental sigh of relief because it looked like I was out from under the "project," since it "blew up" and we would get a new house and barn and stuff. All in all, I figured it looked like a great ending. I was relieved for the rest of that day. That was all the relief I was going to get, though.

The next morning, Nancy Hunter caught me as soon as I got to school. I was headed toward the classroom where I studied English and she was in the math class on the other side of the room. "You all are staying at the hotel," she accused me.

"Well yes. Our house got blown up, Nancy, you know that." I could not for the life of met see what the matter was with her.

"And the school district is paying for it," she accused me even more.

"Well, Principal Wiggins thought it was that phony "science project" had blown up and I can't tell him any different, now can I?" I began to get a little exasperated with this girl.