digressions: a blog

Al Proffitt, from Plume

Last summer I was driving down a back road in Cheshire and I drove past a house that felt really familiar. I realized a few seconds later that it was Al Proffitt‘s farm. I visited Al a few years ago when I made my first SE Ohio trip. He was fighting a permit that would allow a coal mine to open up literally across the street from his house. As I drove by his house a few years later, sure enough, across the street was an active (and loud) coal mine.

Al Proffitt’s UFO, from Plume

A few hundred yards from his house I spotted what looked to be a television-style UFO. It was bizarre enough that I actually stopped my car and got out. The space ship was actually spinning in the middle of a field, with no indication of its origin or power source.

The next day I stopped by Al’s place to catch up. He didn’t remember me at first, and then said, “Ohhhhh man, you are the photographer who actually sent me pictures!” Apparently a few photographers had come to talk to him over the years, and each promised to send photos, but never followed through. He was pretty used to the coal mine at this point, but still upset that they ruined his retirement spot. As a lesson, he decided to play a little trick on them. He went over there one day and told them that if they didn’t keep it down, his Indian ancestors would come down from space and get their revenge (he’s part Native American). Within a few days he had salvaged an old satellite dish, hooked it up to a solar powered rotation device and lights (it looks insane at night) and installed it in the middle of the night. When I visited him last summer he was in the middle of assembling a photo album that documented him being taken in the middle of the night by aliens, shot by his amateur photographer girlfriend. Very cool guy.

Read the old entry on Al Proffitt (third story down).