Flying Saucer, Space Travelers Spotted In Blountville

BY CLAIRE GALOFARO
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER

BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. – One day, some time ago, a flying saucer landed on Bruce Cooke’s lawn. A little man got out, knocked on the door and asked Cooke to exchange his alien money for the real thing. Cooke told him he had two fives.

“He didn’t think it was too funny,” Cooke said Thursday. “But he left his saucer behind.”

“He’s got a lot of tales,” said his wife, Gail, laughing.

The truth is that 30 years ago, he built the 8-foot-wide flying saucer out of three satellite dishes and an old furnace bonnet. In time, it became a Blountville landmark.

“I just wanted something different, something to do,” he said. “So many people are afraid to be different. Not me. I’m going to move to a high-class neighborhood and paint everything black. Even the car.”

On Thursday, Gail Cooke added two space people the pair made out of mannequin bodies and Styrofoam heads, to replace the saucer’s previous mannequin guardian, which was stolen years ago.

Bruce and Gail Cooke met at a Bluff City flea market 23 years ago, got married and made a living selling junk. They run GBC Electronics, Antiques and Collectibles, an off-the-beaten-path junk shop on Birch Street in Blountville. He worked as a security guard at the Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Kingsport, Tenn., and the two spent years collecting military memorabilia.

But Bruce Cooke always kept his eyes on the sky. He said he once saw a flying saucer in Kingsport, and he describes the one on his lawn as a decoy designed to bring it back.

“In our vast universe, there’s bound to be intelligent life out there,” he said.

Around a decade ago, he added a rocket ship, made out of PVC pipe and fiberglass. 

The Cookes live across the street from their junk shop in a little rectangular house with windmills in the front, a little garden in the back and two cats wandering the yard.

“That cat was in the flying saucer when it landed,” Bruce Cooke said.

“Oh, stop,” said his wife.

She spent Thursday afternoon making concrete pedestals for the flying saucer’s new alien inhabitants to deter the thieves who frequent their yard.

They have a backup plan if that doesn’t work. The Cookes have a high-tech video surveillance system, and they watch everything that happens on their lawn on monitors set up on either side of the TV.
On the porch, they’ve set up a huge spotlight because Bruce Cooke said he’d rather shine a light on burglars than shoot them.

The Cookes are proud of their saucer, and what it means to the neighborhood.

“They might not know our names, but they know where our spaceship is,” she said, “We’ve enjoyed it. We’ve had a good life.”  They were both divorced when they met and married. Between them, they have three children, eight grandchildren and half a dozen great-grandchildren.

Gail Cooke, a Blountville native, is 69 with rosy cheeks and big, curly blond hair. She makes quilts two at a time and sells off their junk on eBay.

Bruce Cooke is 80 years old, has Parkinson’s disease, and suffered a stroke in March. He has white hair and a white moustache and said he’ll put on clean socks if CNN ever comes by.

“He says he’s like an old ’57 Chevy that everybody’s trying to keep running,” said his wife. “He’s still got big ideas, he’s just not able to do much anymore.”

He has canes and walkers and a Hoveround chair, but he spends most of his time on the living room recliner watching Comedy Central and UFO shows.

“I wonder if aliens subscribe to your paper,” he said Thursday. “I wish one would land and take me up for a ride. Then I could come back and die peacefully.”

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