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It felt like some sort of col­li­sion of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and H.G. Welles’ War Of The Worlds. I was def­i­nitely in a small, four-person fun house car that sped up, slowed down and spun on a dime. I was thrush for­ward at a scene, and stopped just as sud­denly. In front of me a man ran out of a tum­bling build­ing, the city behind him ablaze. He looked at us (because there were more peo­ple than me in our vehi­cle, I now notice) with a dazed, almost empty look, and he took off run­ning across the burn­ing landscape.

Our cart sped back­wards at break­neck speed, paused as it seemed to look for a new vignette to show us, and then shot off to the right. Again, the stop was abrupt; again, before us was a man tor­mented as he watched his city destroyed. He turned to us, the fear burn­ing deep behind his eyes. He pulled his hands up to his tem­ples, and screamed a sound­less scream.

Now all I see is a waste­land of metal objects. Movie props for sci­ence fic­tion films piled high on dis­used rail­road tracks. The cam­era trucks left to right across this junk­yard of film mem­o­ra­bilia. Some I rec­og­nize, some I am sup­pose to rec­og­nize I feel sure. Here are full-sized UFO mock ups, ray guns, minia­tures and other objects, all with an other-worldly feel.  At this point, I notice the dream has gone into a black and white mode… but with a blue sepia tint. It all begins to make sense to me as Rod Serling’s voice begins a voice-over:

Movie props lit­ter the land­scape– props made for one rea­son and one rea­son only. To fool peo­ple into think­ing UFO’s exist. Serv­ing their pur­pose, they are left for­got­ten here to rot. It may be said with a degree of assur­ance that not every­thing that meets the eye is as it appears. They all seem to be movie props, and they all are, except per­haps for one.

The lit­tle twirl of theme music plays, and I know I am watch­ing an episode of “The Twi­light Zone.” As the show begins in earnest, I have a cer­tain sense of déjà vu. The show is a shot-by-shot replay of the very begin­nings of this same dream, this time played back in black and white. But now, instead of the immense sense of fore­bod­ing, the scenes are a lit­tle lighter in nature, almost comic. The sound track is dif­fer­ent, and now has a laugh track. The men now smile and smirk at the end of their lit­tle scenes. Some­where in the file of rub­ble, I know, I sense, there is a real UFO.

Inter­mis­sion.

I get a large check for some­thing unspec­i­fied, and I leave it in my car. I go into my bank, a large branch office. I meet with the man­ager, a man I have known a while. I ask him a favor. He is happy to com­ply; he just needs the check in my car. So I tell him I will go get it.

On my way out to the door, I see an office to my left with IT work­ers. I decide to look in, as I know a few peo­ple who work in IT at Zions Bank. No one I know is work­ing in there, but I do rec­og­nize a child in the room. And sure enough, as I look over the door, Shel­ley is work­ing in the crawl space, pulling cables.

I over­hear Shel­ley men­tion to the man she is work­ing with that she is going to Istan­bul next year. I call up to her, “I went last year, and it was won­der­ful. Would you like to hear more?”

She climbs down, and I tell her about my trip. I tell her the best part was in Greece, espe­cially the islands. I list them off; Milos, Mykonos, and most espe­cially San­torini. We look down at the desk, and there are pic­tures, one of which is of the Lisa and I stayed at in San­torini. I pull the pic­ture and show Shelley.

We look at some other pic­tures, all of places I have been. Then I go home. I am stay­ing in my Grandmother’s trailer in Pismo Beach. My Dad is there, as is my brother and sis­ter. My dad is stay­ing in the room my brother and I usu­ally stay in.

He calls us out, and says we need to go out and pick some­thing up. So we pile in the car, and I get shot­gun. I notice my father has a new car– a Dat­sun B-210. Despite the cars age, it is in sur­pris­ingly good shape.

We head down the road, but have to stop at some road con­struc­tion. There is a long trench across the road. Two men are there, only one work­ing. He is stuff­ing straw down into the trench to fill it up. The right side is filled, and the other worker switches the road to open so we can pass through on the right.

We head toward a free­way on ramp that heads into a spaghetti bowl of inter­sect­ing roads and ramps. To our left, beneath a ramp much higher than we are, hang bits of road the DOT has decided to save for some future ren­o­va­tions… things like pylons that have been dam­aged in acci­dents, short stretches of road, and light poles.

As we head up the on ramp, my dad pulls to the right to another ramp that has bee closed. This ramp has been turned into an out­door store of sorts. My dad goes up to the counter and tells the woman what he needs– a han­dle for a door. She goes to get it. My bother starts mess­ing around, and breaks some items on the sales table. The woman tells him that his behav­ior is not appre­ci­ated. I bite Dan’s fin­ger, deep and repeat­edly. I tell the woman I have taken care of him for her, and show her is gnawed finger.

The han­dle is found, and we return to the car.

I wake up.