Arguments and Counter-Arguments to my Trent/McMinnville Item

David Rudiak has, like others elsewhere, makes the point that hanging a mirror or anything on the wires in the LIFE photos and the original Trent photos would provide a sagging of the wires which is not evident.

It’s a valid, significant point.

But the “ladder photo” (that provoked so much antipathy when Tony Bragalia displayed it in his Trent piece here last year) seems to imply that the LIFE photographer was insinuating that he, the photographer, thought that maybe the Trents hung an object from the overhead wires to create their flying saucer).

While a few respondents went off on tangential Ford car information, no one has settled whose car that is in the photos.

That the Trents were poor seems arguable, when one sees their house – not a hovel, but a typical, middle class or lower-middle class house, that a working farmer might have.

Further, Mr. Trent was able to buy a nice camera and, although the clothes on his wife and son, are not New York chic, they are hardly burlap sacks. (Mr. Trent is dressed as a farmer might be, hardly fashionable and a little filthy but not ragged.)

No one has ever answered my point that the object shown in the photos was apparently chugging along as Mr. Trent was able to go into the house retrieve his camera, prepare it to shoot, and get two shots before the “saucer” departed or disappeared…Also, the tilt of the object; why would the object be askew in its trajectory? It's an odd aerodynamic.

Also, we have no other photos, from anyone, anywhere showing a similarly configured flying object. (The Rouen photo is argued, in some quarters. as a reworked Trent photo.)

Anthony Bragalia is attempting to locate the Trent son, pictured on the ladder (above). Let’s see what he has to say, if or when he’s found.

Meanwhile, the photos, like almost everything else involving UFOs, remain iffy to some, but a real ET craft to others.

(We received a few comments from believers attacking “debunkers” but not offering any counter arguments to the perceived “debunking.” Those comments were not added to my posting, just as the car asides were ignored. And, while I did allow Lance Moody’s templated attack on David Rudiak, let me say that Mr. Rudiak’s arguments have merit and I accept them as valid, even understanding that they are biased by Mr. Rudiak’s obsession with the ETH.)

So, we have settled little or nothing, but as French skeptic Gilles Fernandez often reminds us, “That’s ufology.”

RR