Remember the movie, MIB, with Will Smith? The Men In Black impersonated other federal officers dealing with aliens in the name of galactic peace. In the early 1980s, Secret Service men really did arrive in Meeker. They came to question a suspect who had mailed multiple letters from Meeker with no return address. We are not privileged to know the contents. We can assume someone in Washington felt threatened. The Secret Service protects the President and their family.
The local police station was the agents’ first stop. Couldn’t someone tell them where to find this gentleman? Surely someone in this small town knew him! The frustrated agents finally showed the officers a picture of the suspect. “Oh! You want the Moon Man!”
The man known locally as the Moon Man was brought in for an interview. After determining he was not a credible threat, he returned to his tent site on China Wall above the Sage Hills subdivision. Galactic peace was restored… happy ending. Or was it?
I talked to several Meekerites about the legend of Moon Man or Spaceman, depending on who I talked to. He was a familiar sight in and around Meeker. He was almost always dressed in denim bib overalls, a blue and white striped engineer’s shirt and very large high-top scuffed leather walking boots, and a Boonie hat. A Boonie hat is a floppy cloth hat worn by the military and other people in hot climates. It had a chin strap that often dangled against his head. The hat covered his thinning red hair. The walking boots were well-used. Moon Man walked everywhere. He often wore a small backpack and carried books and supplies. He could be spotted along roads outside Meeker, the airport, Buford and beyond. Even though he was tall, he walked with his head down and eyes averted. It is believed that he came to Meeker because of his belief that Meeker was where the men from space would come for him. He spent summers in a tent located on China Wall near the water tank above Sage Hills. In one record, his address was given as “North West of Sanderson Hills.” Several people commented on how clean he looked.
Moon Man was not quite a hermit. He came down every day to the library, then located at the Fairfield Center. He would read magazines as soon as they arrived in the mail. If the mail had not been retrieved from the mailbox across the street, he would offer to bring it in. He wanted to keep current with Time Magazine and Newsweek, any news magazine. Several people described him as educated and intelligent.
He would often be seen at the Meeker airport just standing in the parking lot. At the airport, he was known as the Spaceman. Perhaps that was a potential landing spot for spacecraft? He could be found sometimes at the Meeker Café eating his favorite blueberry pie with coffee. That sounds like something I would love to do all the time! He would go to the grocery store and buy two peanuts. Two peanuts for 3 cents. If he trusted someone, he could talk for long periods of time. If you were an unknown, he pretended not to see you and ignored any greetings. He was a bit scary, being homeless, and sometimes he behaved erratically. He was acknowledged to be a “troubled person.” Some would say, “something is just not right with him.”
For several winters, Moon Man lived in a storage unit on Eighth Street behind what was the Circle K. It was said that he had light and heat. Not exactly the Ritz, but a lot better than a snow-covered tent on a cliff. There were at least two occasions after a big snowstorm when Moon Man failed to come down from his tent for days. Some concerned citizens took the time to trudge through the snow and check on him. Once, he was found safe and warm with his Coleman stove. Another time, they found him weak and sick and brought him down for care. I think this says a lot about our community: genuine concern about someone not part of the local “family.”
Si Woodruff was with the Meeker Police Department when the Moon Man stopped him by the county shop. He had something wrong with his head, he said. Woodruff got him to Grand Junction and into the VA hospital there. It turned out that he had a brain tumor. Some people in town knew his real name, Ron. This is where I insert a cliffhanger: buy next week’s edition and find out his whole name, and the rest of the story.
By ED PECK – Special to the Herald times
Check your facts. Meeker did not have postal delivery in downtown so Mr. Kenward could not have picked up the mail from boxes across the street from the Fairfield center. The library used an old mail box for after hour returns. Maybe confused.