'I think it’s one of them Scud missiles'

A man who said he was city constable at Bogata called the newspaper on a spring afternoon in 2000. He said, “You know where (Name) Trading Post is?” I said I did. He said, “Well, they got some kind of rocket there. I think it’s one of them Scud missiles.”

I managed not to laugh. All kinds of people call with all kinds of stories, and you treat them all with open ears.

The constable said he had called Fort Sill, Okla. “They’re sending an explosives team down here,” he said.

I said I would be out to take a look. I asked if he would be at the trading post.

“Naw,” he said. “I got things to do.”

John Conrad, one of the newspaper’s two photographers, looked up when I opened the photography door office. I said, “You want to go to Bogata with me and get a picture of a Scud missile?”

“Do what?”

“I’ll explain on the way.”

We went in my pickup. I had driven past the trading post many times. It would have made a good story, but no one was ever there.

It was the same when John and I stopped. I went up on the porch. The door was locked. I knocked. No one answered.

John said, “I think I see it.”

I went down the steps. John pointed at a tree off to one side. Against the tree was a cylindrical object about three feet long. It was green. John and I inspected the thing. Wires hung out the back end.

John said, “I don’t think it’s a Scud. It’s a few feet short.”

“Yeah,” I said. I picked it up. “From the pointed end, I’d say it’s some kind of jungle penetrator. I don’t know what the wires are for.”

John took a few pictures of the thing against the tree and lying on the ground.

Next day I called Fort Sill and talked with an EOD sergeant. I said, “Some dufus in Bogota said he called about a Scud missile.”

The sergeant laughed. “Yeah. We sent a team. The thing is a people counter from Vietnam. The Air Force dropped thousands of them to keep track of people moving along trails. They had a transmitter and sent information somewhere.”

It was good to know what the thing was. A good story would have had it a Scud. But as John said, it was a few feet short.