Barbara: The Story of a UFO Investigator Read online

  For the first time since my childhood, I spoke of my years long infatuation with an image. I told Bob of the strangely real figure of a man who’d appeared at my Grandmother’s concert grand piano and of the impression he’d made on me, an impression that still lived inside me.

  I also told him about my dreams of someday being a stand-up comic, or a model, or an actress or, I held my breath before I said this one and hoped he wouldn’t laugh at me. “Maybe I’ll be an artist.”

  He didn’t laugh. In fact, he said, “Well, I can help you with that one if you’re sure that’s what you want to do. Art is a hard taskmaster!”

  Then he shared his dreams also.

  Sculptures, oils, constructions. As he talked and explained art as he saw it, I felt myself moving further and further into the world of this man. Our kisses on the street corners became sweeter and more urgent. He lived just two blocks from where I did and I knew that if I let him come into my apartment or if I went to where he lived, that I would be making a declaration of some sort.

  But the day came when I visited his apartment after one of our afternoon strolls. I was overwhelmed by the unfinished sculpture of two horses. The huge clay armature dominated the single room. The horses were made of cement and they were at least five feet tall. I’m a big woman and those horses made me feel small. They took up nearly all the space in that room. “Stone Horse” was what he called the huge sculpture. He’d been given the commission by a person who wanted to adorn his fountain with the animals. I was so impressed. I knew he was an artist and now I saw that other people recognized him as an artist as well.

  In the corner, the only space not taken up with horses and artist’s supplies and finished works, I saw a bed made of an old door with a foam mat on it. This man lived like the bohemian artists I’d read about! He was so different than I’d expected. He was practicing what up until this moment, had been only a dream for me.

  “You’re seeing a side of me my students don’t see,” he explained. He kissed me and coaxed me toward the bed. I made myself pull away and persuaded him to go back downstairs to continue our stroll in the street. But I knew something was happening to me, to us. Days turned into weeks, and weeks into a month. The trust I had in this man bloomed. I waited everyday for his call, for his knock at my door. One day I admitted to myself that I’d fallen in love and it wasn’t long until we were sharing the old foldout couch in my apartment or his makeshift cot at his place. Mostly we worked in his studio and slept in mine.

  The days of couples openly living together had not yet become common in Tulsa. I always felt edgy, worried, and terribly concerned about our lifestyle. I was as totally involved in my art now as Bob was in his, but I felt we both needed something more. We needed to be someplace where our way of life was an accepted lifestyle, not a situation for snickering and comments among our acquaintances.

  “Bob?” I stopped and looked at the man walking next to me. I faced him and took both of his hands. “Let’s move.”

  “Move? Where? Don’t you like living downtown?”

  “I mean someplace far away.” I guess I giggled. “Someplace where nobody knows us.”

  “Do you have a place in mind?”

  “Well,” I searched his face. “Where would you most like to go?”

  “How about Los Angeles?”

  “Los Angeles.” I could hear my voice trembling. “I could maybe check out the studios, and you could meet other artists and...” My mind raced as I searched for other reasons to move. “Los Angeles would be perfect.”

  Bob took me into his arms.

  “Okay,” he whispered, “Los Angeles it is.”

  Our Los Angeles neighborhood was flanked by Wilshire Boulevard to the South and Sunset Boulevard to the North. Is seemed to us to be the perfect place for me to investigate career possibilities in show business and for Bob to broaden his horizons as an artist.

  During the next few months I prepared a portfolio and spent days visiting studios. I began to work at modeling jobs, then I began to model exclusively for BoMel Originals, mostly high fashion eveningwear. I was with the designer for two years. I was her only model and while I worked for her I did show room modeling, runway work, and appeared in magazines.

  Even more importantly, I made contacts. I learned that for the people working in the entertainment industry, Hollywood and New York are treated almost as though they border on each other. Travel between the two cities is made as casually as we Tulsans drove to Oklahoma City.

  I was surprised the day I answered the telephone and heard a friend who’d gone to New York, speaking to me from the other side of the country.

  “I’ve found a job for you, Barbara,” My friend squealed with delight and I echoed the telephone laughter.

  “Wow. That’s great!” I tried to contain myself and make sense of the conversation but thoughts were storming through my head. There’s Bob to consider, I realized, and we don’t have any money. “Where’s the job? Doing what?”

  “Modeling. Modeling with some of my friends. How soon can you be in New York?”

  “I’ll ... let me call you back.” I couldn’t believe it. My lifelong dream was to go to New York. Now it was being offered to me if I could just arrange to go.

  “Okay, but don’t fool around. They might find someone else to take your place.”

  “I’ll call you back in an hour.” The heavy feeling in my chest swelled as I watched the hurt in Bob’s eyes. We were still living on the meager income from my last job in Tulsa and the $2000 Bob had received from the sale of his horse statuary and a small amount he’d gotten from a few other sales. We were just subsisting. There wasn’t enough money for both of us to go, I knew. Maybe not enough even for me to go. I called my Mother and explained and she agreed to wire enough money for me to get to such a good opportunity.

  Bob didn’t want me to leave, but his open life philosophy meant that he didn’t want to hold me back either.

  “You have to go,” he said, and turned away when I picked up the telephone to call my friend in New York.

  I’d promised my Mother that I’d stay at the Methodist Girl’s Residence in Greenwich Village so that’s where I went. I met a whole new group of people there, missionaries and the daughters of missionaries and ministers. I was careful to conceal the UFO contacts of my past. In fact, I didn’t even have to try to conceal them. I hardly ever thought about my childhood experiences anymore. I was even more careful to hide my New York modeling career lifestyle. I’d started as a house model and runway model for a designer and that’s where I learned about Dexedrine and then scotch.

  I was still only 19 and fairly slim but I was warned that I had to be stick thin for the job so I learned to have my J&B scotch to get to sleep every night. When I left the missionary house I left a whole chest of drawers filled with empty scotch bottles. I had become accustomed to the idea that that was the only way I could get to sleep after taking speed. All the models had to take speed to stay thin, then they had to take something to allow them to sleep. I chose scotch. I’ve always felt really lucky that I didn’t get hooked on any of those things I learned about. When I left New York I left all that behind.

  My career as a model was turning out to be just as glamorous as I’d hoped it would be. I was usually ferried to my job in a black stretch limousine. A year passed. I was twenty and excited and happy with my life. I was working in a sought-after field and my job seemed thrilling and exciting. I was where I’d always wanted to be, New York City.

  One evening I walked into the residence to receive a telegram that told me my father was dead in Tulsa. I took the next plane home. When my Mother invited me to stay in Tulsa to help her through her period of grief I accepted her invitation. I’d loved my Father more than life itself and I too, was grieving.

  In the weeks after the funeral I put aside my mourning and felt my eagerness for life returning. Coming back to Tulsa was sad because of my father’s death, but being in Tulsa was thrilling to me. Life seemed bett
er here in Oklahoma, somehow.

  One evening I borrowed my Mother’s car and drove to a small house in the artier, more bohemian section of Tulsa. At the back gate of a small bungalow, I stood silently peering into the lighted window of the tiny house. A man stood talking on the telephone, silhouetted against the overhead light. I took a deep breath and pulled my sweater more snugly against my body. I took a deep breath, clicked the back gate open and called to the man in the window.

  “Bob. Bob, I’m back.”

  In seconds Bob appeared in the doorway.

  “Barbara Simon, is that you?”

  I felt both sorrow and joy rise within me. I smiled and cried at the same time.

  “Daddy’s dead, but I’m home for good, Bob Bartholic.” I took one step forward and he met me with opened arms. I had to laugh later because Bob never did get to the art opening he was supposed to attend that evening. We did something more important. We probably started our family. We married very soon after that and I had one child right after another, four of them. My life became a round of sickness, caring for children and for our too large house and working to try to keep up with my art. Those were lean and difficult years. Both of us tried to make it as artists and there was almost no money at all. Bob had found a new interest in meeting with a UFO group but I had no interests other than my art, my house and our children.

  In 1973 we moved to a rural area, a small town near Tulsa.

  I think of 1976 as the year I broke out of Turley. (Editor’s note: Turley is a small working class town north of Tulsa, Oklahoma.) Our bodies continued to live in the house we rented there, but our professional lives moved on to The Barking Dog.

  Chapter 7

  THE BARKING DOG

  One morning when I awakened, I patted Bob’s side of the bed. He wasn’t there. For a moment I was puzzled by his absence then I remembered. Bob and the kids were taking Grandmother Bartholic shopping today, and they were using Grandma’s car.

  I looked around the attic we had converted to use as our bedroom. I’d never really minded that we hadn’t been able to afford to fix up the peaked roof attic to be a bit more like a real bedroom. Even a bucket of paint would have accomplished wonders for the space. However, it had given us just a few feet more room and we had certainly needed that. Right now I didn’t even think about what I could do to make our “sleeping space” better as I usually did when I awakened. This morning, there was something else entirely on my mind.

  “Today’s the day,” I said aloud into the quiet of the room. I felt a small ripple of fear because of my own boldness but I shook it off. Bob had already said that whatever I wanted to do would be okay with him, just so long as it didn’t interfere too much with his painting. I scooped up my “city” clothes and raced downstairs to our one bathroom. I was nearly 37 years old and I had had all the stay-at-home domesticity I could stand. And I still had that nagging feeling that I had a mission in life.

  Sometimes late at night I told Bob that I had a mission. I agreed with him that it sounded crazy since I couldn’t say what my mission was, but the need to do whatever it was that I was meant to do ate at me constantly. Art was the only thing that I knew anything about so whatever I was supposed to do must have something to do with art I told myself. And today was my day. Soon I was in Tulsa.

  Just off 18th and Boston, I spotted the place. Two stories. Stucco. An awful mustard color. Really ugly. I just looked upward and whispered to my unseen presence.

  “Is this my gallery? At last?” I stood silently for a moment until I felt I’d received my answer. I nodded and walked to the address of the place which had been listed on the “For Rent” sign on the front of the old house.

  I found the office then introduced myself before I made my pitch. What if he laughed me out of the room? I took a deep breath.

  “Mr. Jones, I don’t have any money but I need your house, that mustard colored place at 18th and Boston? I need it for... uh...a... an art gallery. I have to have it.” I reverted to childhood and crossed my fingers behind my back. This man could make or break all my dreams.

  The owner of the house looked me over carefully, then, as if he understood and as if he wanted me to start my new life, he nodded.

  “All right. I don’t see any problem. You can pay me when you get the first month’s rent.”

  “How much will the rent be?” My question came out a whisper.

  “Would $40.00 be too much?” He shuffled some of the papers on the desk in front of him as if he were not very interested in this transaction.

  “Wow! No. Okay. I mean, that’s fine.” I felt as if I were floating as I left his office. I then continued to float from my Volkswagen on into the paint store, which was my very next stop.

  “Two gallons of white exterior paint, please. I have an art gallery to paint.”

  “Two gallons, lady? That ain’t going to cover much.”

  “Well, it will have to do. That’s all I can afford right now.” Now, with only one dollar in change in my pocket, I picked up the two cans and walked out to swing the precious paint cans into the car. I looked up and sent another message. “Two gallons will have to do.”

  Next day we painted the exterior of our new art gallery to get rid of the nasty mustard color. Bob touched the last spot on the second story with the very last drop of white paint from the second can. I smiled up at him and reminded him of what I’d said to overcome his protests.

  “See? I told you it would cover the whole thing.” I hugged him when he climbed down to stand beside to admire the paint job. “Now we have to do something to the insides. We have plenty of good paintings, and those small sculptures. Now we have to give them a nice place to be displayed.”

  Later that same night, outside Don’s Carpet Company on Third Street, I found a treasure. I filled the back seat and trunk of our car with throwaway carpet scraps. Back at the gallery I fitted those carpet pieces over the scarred wooden floors on both levels, then tacked them into place.

  “Looks beautiful,” I stood and pressed my hand against my aching back. “One more thing.” I stood silently for a moment. “We need a name.” The sound from next door came through loud and clear as usual. I felt laughter bubbling up. “Let’s call it ‘The Barking Dog.’ That’s it!” Bob agreed that the name was perfect and it was.

  My first show was a hit. I say “my” because Bob was still involved with actually being an artist who painted or sculpted on a project every day. We’d let his work form the backbone of our first inventory of paintings for sale. Of course, he was the real artist in the family so that seemed fair to me. I’d decided that I could be an artist only part of the time. The rest of the time I had dreams of being a mover and shaker within Tulsa’s art world. We’d already tried with a gallery and had had some success. We’d become the center of a large group of interested artists and art lovers. I thought that if I worked at it in this new place I could be the person that artists turned to for justification of their need to paint, sculpt, and create.

  And that’s the way it worked out. I put in my time on my family or on the gallery. Once in awhile Bob, who was interested in flying saucers, would go to UFO group gatherings but after a time or two with him I never again went to the meetings with him. Dull. Terribly boring. I had absolutely zero interest in that subject. The Barking Dog was my new baby.

  At our first showing the crowd flowed through the rooms. Splashes of white wine and cigarette ashes fell and were absorbed by the multicolored jigsaw carpet design. I greeted my guests, both local artists, and the people whom I saw as potential clients. I was just a touch hyper, maybe I laughed and talked a bit too much, but I couldn’t help myself. It was too thrilling to look out over the crowd and see the visible excitement that moved through the rooms like electricity through water. I thought, I’ve found my metier.

  A man in a black suit stood against an inside doorframe and I could see he was watching me as I moved from group to group. When I neared the spot where he stood, the man straightened and
smiled directly at me.

  My eyes must have widened in surprise. There was something about this man. The dark suit? His aquiline profile? His dark windblown hair? Was he the man from the piano? He moved toward me and I stepped toward him.

  I know him, I thought, but no, I didn’t know him. I knew someone who looked very much like him. Something clutched within my chest. It couldn’t be! The man at the piano! I had to talk to him. Our conversation that night led to a longtime telephone relationship with the tall doctor, but, as it turned out, he was just a friend. I realized before long that he had been sent just to remind me of my resolution which I’d made in Grandmother’s music room, and I promised myself I wouldn’t forget again.

  # # #

  I was shocked that because of The Barking Dog I actually became one of the arbiters of art and a recognized promoter of arts happenings in Tulsa. Everything was fairly new to me, but everything went well. The gallery won me a job as hostess on a weekly arts show at a local television station. On the show we had guests from all over the world, all sorts of artists, dancers, rock bands, sculptors. I tried to make my show into an ongoing party, with the artists speaking out on their chosen subjects. Sometimes they brought up things dealing with the occult and my station manager never liked that.

  About a year after we opened the show, two well known Tulsans, Martin and Margaret Wiesendanger who were noted art critics and art restorers, spoke with me about a form of art they’d seen so I invited them to speak on my show.

  On air they told about looking at petroglyphs. (Editor’s note: Petroglyphs are drawings, paintings and/or carvings, usually on cliffs or cave walls. The pictures and symbols often tell a story.) They’d seen petroglyphs on a cave wall in the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon in Utah. The markings and drawings which they’d seen, seemingly validated the couple’s idea of UFOs extraterrestrials as being among the first Art explorers. What the Wiesendangers felt when they looked at the drawings and paintings in the petroglyphs, was that they’d found proof of extraterrestrials visits to earth.