This week I cleaned off my desk. Shock. Amazement. Astonishment. I sorted and filed (in a cardboard box) the collection of notes that had accumulated there over a couple of years.
I scanned my notes to make sure I wasn’t missing anything that could be turned into immortal prose among The Friday Letters. One name kept popping up.
It was none other than Paul Solem, a character who was an inhabitant of the lava rock desert of central Idaho.
Why I have Solem in my notes so often is a minor mystery. I met him in the late 60’s or early 70’s.
Solem came to my newspaper office to ask for publicity. He wanted the public to know he was organizing a vigil to call down brothers and sisters from the planet Venus by means of telepathy.
By the time I met Solem, I had been promoted to “editor” of The Blackfoot News. I wanted to do the reporting. Temptation, you know. I assigned a reporter to the story.
Perhaps a little historical background will help. Solem, depending on the which witness one heard: Had been excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; or, he had left the church of his own volition; or he never was a Mormon, just a random nutcase with some Mormon trappings.
Regardless, there were many of his ilk in eastern Idaho. The history is, that shortly after the Mormon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, a rift took place.
Members clinging to the “old” ways, many of them Scandinavian by heritage, were steadfastly following the teachings of Joseph Smith and couldn’t abide the radical teaching of this new guy Brigham Young.
When this particular Mormon schism (there are many) happened, many of the old-school folks decided to move north, into Idaho. They took with them their Scandinavian-accented English and stick-in-the-mud humorless spiritual delusions.
They clung to Smith’s Book of Mormon and its various fabrications and oddities. One of these is that each good man, as he dies, will inherit his own planet for himself and his wives.
Solem believed that certain souls who had gone on before had found glorified bodies and a home on Venus. He was convinced that space travel had become feasible for them. He had asked them to come for a visit, to show themselves, to confirm the faith, in a way.
He was just a plain scary guy. A chunky white-haired man with enormous shoulders and a considerable paunch, he never threatened me or offered any hazard. But looking into his Lee-Harvey-Oswald vacant white eyes, one could not read any emotion. What was behind those eyes? No one but he could know.
Solem had picked Ferry Butte as the vigil site. Ferry Butte is southwest of the Snake River near Tilden Bridge. The butte is on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation. Solem had gotten permission from the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes to use the butte for his vigil.
I assigned cub reporter Bill Hathaway. Hathaway attended the vigil faithfully, night after night. He managed to cast new light on the event for daily reports. The reporter carried a camera but no photographs of spacecraft or space visitors resulted.
Solem’s idea was that if enough believers would assemble and put their minds to it, people from Venus would receive the message and respond to it.
Ferry Butte is minor as buttes go. It is a rounded hillock with an easy slope. Old folks can climb it. It’s nothing like Devil’s Tower – but Solem’s project was an eerie precedent to the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
Curiosity seekers arrived, along with many Indians and some real believers in the Solem cause. Hathaway’s approach to the story would be that he was skeptical the first night, mildly convinced the second, gradually becoming a believer. It was an excellent yellow-journalism gambit. Management approved.
The vigil went on for a week or so. Hathaway complained of having a stiff neck from looking skyward for hours at a time, and suggested he should get extra monetary compensation for his physical pain. Management declined.
In the end, interest waned and no Venusians in space ships showed up. At least, we don’t think they did. Solem didn’t claim any visits either, saying people just hadn’t concentrated hard enough to call them.
A series of stories in a newspaper will usually lose reader interest after the third installment. We had seven or eight. The congregation on the butte diminished from 200 or so at the beginning to a dozen hard-liners.
After things died down, Solem came in again to my office and asked for coverage of a different aspect of his story.
He told me that he had built a gigantic shelter in a cave somewhere out in what Idaho people call “the lavas.”
Solem said the cave was made into a shelter from wind and weather and human invasion. He said he had built two giant wood and iron doors on huge hinges for this security. A space ship could enter this cave, according to Solem.
He wanted to take me and/or Hathaway to the site to demonstrate what he was up to. He required, though, that whoever went with him would have to be blindfolded to keep secret the location of the cave.
I declined this offer. Hathaway declined as well. I never saw Solem again. That I know of. I don’t think I saw Hathaway after that, either. That I know of.
-0-
Words of the Week: Modus Operandi. Guess what. It’s Latin. Latin is so hard to understand. Modus Operandi means “method of operation.” It describes a procedure, as in “The modus operandi of the burglar was to hide in a restroom until the building was closed.”
I scanned my notes to make sure I wasn’t missing anything that could be turned into immortal prose among The Friday Letters. One name kept popping up.
It was none other than Paul Solem, a character who was an inhabitant of the lava rock desert of central Idaho.
Why I have Solem in my notes so often is a minor mystery. I met him in the late 60’s or early 70’s.
Solem came to my newspaper office to ask for publicity. He wanted the public to know he was organizing a vigil to call down brothers and sisters from the planet Venus by means of telepathy.
By the time I met Solem, I had been promoted to “editor” of The Blackfoot News. I wanted to do the reporting. Temptation, you know. I assigned a reporter to the story.
Perhaps a little historical background will help. Solem, depending on the which witness one heard: Had been excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; or, he had left the church of his own volition; or he never was a Mormon, just a random nutcase with some Mormon trappings.
Regardless, there were many of his ilk in eastern Idaho. The history is, that shortly after the Mormon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, a rift took place.
Members clinging to the “old” ways, many of them Scandinavian by heritage, were steadfastly following the teachings of Joseph Smith and couldn’t abide the radical teaching of this new guy Brigham Young.
When this particular Mormon schism (there are many) happened, many of the old-school folks decided to move north, into Idaho. They took with them their Scandinavian-accented English and stick-in-the-mud humorless spiritual delusions.
They clung to Smith’s Book of Mormon and its various fabrications and oddities. One of these is that each good man, as he dies, will inherit his own planet for himself and his wives.
Solem believed that certain souls who had gone on before had found glorified bodies and a home on Venus. He was convinced that space travel had become feasible for them. He had asked them to come for a visit, to show themselves, to confirm the faith, in a way.
He was just a plain scary guy. A chunky white-haired man with enormous shoulders and a considerable paunch, he never threatened me or offered any hazard. But looking into his Lee-Harvey-Oswald vacant white eyes, one could not read any emotion. What was behind those eyes? No one but he could know.
Solem had picked Ferry Butte as the vigil site. Ferry Butte is southwest of the Snake River near Tilden Bridge. The butte is on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation. Solem had gotten permission from the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes to use the butte for his vigil.
I assigned cub reporter Bill Hathaway. Hathaway attended the vigil faithfully, night after night. He managed to cast new light on the event for daily reports. The reporter carried a camera but no photographs of spacecraft or space visitors resulted.
Solem’s idea was that if enough believers would assemble and put their minds to it, people from Venus would receive the message and respond to it.
Ferry Butte is minor as buttes go. It is a rounded hillock with an easy slope. Old folks can climb it. It’s nothing like Devil’s Tower – but Solem’s project was an eerie precedent to the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
Curiosity seekers arrived, along with many Indians and some real believers in the Solem cause. Hathaway’s approach to the story would be that he was skeptical the first night, mildly convinced the second, gradually becoming a believer. It was an excellent yellow-journalism gambit. Management approved.
The vigil went on for a week or so. Hathaway complained of having a stiff neck from looking skyward for hours at a time, and suggested he should get extra monetary compensation for his physical pain. Management declined.
In the end, interest waned and no Venusians in space ships showed up. At least, we don’t think they did. Solem didn’t claim any visits either, saying people just hadn’t concentrated hard enough to call them.
A series of stories in a newspaper will usually lose reader interest after the third installment. We had seven or eight. The congregation on the butte diminished from 200 or so at the beginning to a dozen hard-liners.
After things died down, Solem came in again to my office and asked for coverage of a different aspect of his story.
He told me that he had built a gigantic shelter in a cave somewhere out in what Idaho people call “the lavas.”
Solem said the cave was made into a shelter from wind and weather and human invasion. He said he had built two giant wood and iron doors on huge hinges for this security. A space ship could enter this cave, according to Solem.
He wanted to take me and/or Hathaway to the site to demonstrate what he was up to. He required, though, that whoever went with him would have to be blindfolded to keep secret the location of the cave.
I declined this offer. Hathaway declined as well. I never saw Solem again. That I know of. I don’t think I saw Hathaway after that, either. That I know of.
-0-
Words of the Week: Modus Operandi. Guess what. It’s Latin. Latin is so hard to understand. Modus Operandi means “method of operation.” It describes a procedure, as in “The modus operandi of the burglar was to hide in a restroom until the building was closed.”
Mark and I just returned from Idaho. If we had known, we could have searched for the 'cave' and maybe given you some more interesting facts to add to your story!
ReplyDelete