DISTAFF SIDE: Charles Kindervater Sr. of Bradford challenges our
gender assertion in Thursday’s paper: “I would be willing to bet
that your front page ‘rooster’ is a ‘hen.'” We truly need readers’
help on this one!

UFO REPORTS: Someone who keeps way better track of our newspaper
than we do forwarded an article from about 10 years ago concerning
a UFO sighted not in Roulette but in Port Allegany.

The article was sent to us in response to a request we’d printed
for information about a UFO seen in Roulette in the 1980s.

We figure this article from March 1999 may be the one in
question and, in any case, is close enough.

The story was datlined Smethport, and quoted a woman who had
been driving home to Bradford when she looked up to see a blue
streak racing across the sky.

The article went on: “Confirmation has come from Doris Ladlee,
who was sitting at Gallico Crossing in Smethport and Sandy
Bennett.”

“Doris tells us she was sitting at the crossroads at 11:31 p.m.
when, ‘the car lit up like broad daylight, and I saw a great big
ball of fire.’ A dazzling array of sparks followed as the object
dropped. She said she was looking eastward at the time, and the
object had a head and a tail like a comet. There was no noise. It
appeared to be heading (northeast) towards Port Allegany.”

” ‘I thought that maybe a plane blew up,’ she added. Her son
also saw it a couple of miles to the south. To him, it looked like
a blue streak across the sky – not a fireball like she had
seen.’

” ‘It looked kind of like a big bright firework, only it was too
high up in the sky to have been that,’ Doris said. Mercedes tells
us, ‘I saw the large flash. I thought it might be helicopters but
there was no noise.’ Sandy Bennett said she was driving into Wilcox
when she saw ‘a big round ball. I think it had a blue fire thing
after it, and sparkles. It went up very fast.'”

The article apparently was part of an online UFO Roundup.