Skip to main content

Ralsina.Me — Roberto Alsina's website

UFO For Ever

My dad was born in the prov­ince of Cha­co, and mi­grat­ed (very slow­ly) some 1500km to the south. The mi­gra­tion was slow enough that he man­aged to have two dif­fer­ent lo­cal foot­ball teams to like.

The one he liked when I met him was Unión de San­ta Fe, but the team of his child­hood and youth was the re­mark­ably ob­scure Cha­co For­ev­er. And of course, be­cause it's what peo­ple do when their teams have no chance of ev­er win­ning any­thing, he liked one "big" team just to have some chance to cel­e­brate (Bo­ca Ju­niors, in his case).

On­ce, at the end of the 60s, he was driv­ing north, to­wards Re­sisten­ci­a, the home of Cha­co Forever, with my mom and my big broth­er, maybe a year old sit­ting in my mom's lap, no seat­belt­s. Those were the 60s and chil­dren sur­vived be­cause lead poi­son­ing seems to be an an­ti­dote for sec­ond hand smoke and car crash­es.

Then, his car stall­s. That was hard­ly un­usu­al. Our usu­al av­er­age speed on long trips was about 20k­m/h once you ac­count­ed for the stops to add wa­ter to the ra­di­a­tor, change flat tires, get a me­chan­ic to see why the lights did­n't work, and ar­riv­ing at the wrong town. My dad liked cars, but cars hat­ed him.

But be­fore the car stalled, they had seen a light by the side of the road, up high. A light that seemed to fol­low them. And the car did­n't start. That road in those times was lone­ly, and dark, and in bad main­te­nance. So stop­ping in the mid­dle of it was a recipe for be­ing killed by a truck.

A lit­tle lat­er, the car start­s, and the light ap­pears again, and again it stop­s. Here, ac­cord­ing to my moth­er, my dad got out of the car, and start­ed shout­ing at the aliens to stop be­ing id­iot­s, that they were go­ing to get him killed. Af­ter that, the light dis­ap­peared, and they con­tin­ued trav­el­ing with­out fur­ther me­chan­i­cal is­sues.

And a few days ago, this hap­pened: A UFO ap­peared over a foot­ball prac­tice. The foot­ball team? Cha­co For­ev­er.

Ma_ama / 2012-01-14 01:05:

Principios del año 69... en la ruta que va de Santa Fe a Resistencia, lástima que no me acuerdo qué auto era, seguramente de la década del 50. En una ruta sin luces, en medio de una niebla espesa que no dejaba ver el camino, por lo que se iban a la banquina a cada rato (tengamos en cuenta que es una zona donde NUNCA hay niebla), los empieza a seguir una luz, cuando la luz se acerca el auto se para en seco y se apaga la luz, la radio, todo (y eso que los viejos no vieron X-Files), papá se baja y empieza a insultar el OVNI, seguramente empezando con "guam..., hdp...", según mi conocimiento del expectro impropérico de papá :)


Contents © 2000-2024 Roberto Alsina