Men in the Flying Saucers Identified & much more weirdness from Venice's most overstuffed thrift stores

Each Monday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets around Los Angeles.

Men in the Flying Saucers Identified

Author: W.V. Grant
Date: 1950
Publisher: W.V. Grant, Dallas, Texas
Discovered at: Bible Tabernacle Thrift Store, 733 Lincoln Blvd., Venice

Representative Quotes:

"They told me that they have no wars, that they have no strife, and no juvenile delinquency." (page 3)

"Some more of the communistic doctrine! Some more of the World Government doctrine! It is all anti-christ doctrine! They would like for the white girls to marry the negro boys, or mate with them without marrying. One world government idea!" (page 18).

Evangelist W.V. Grant is to interstellar evangelical anti-Commie what Burt Reynolds is to mustache-centirc '70s car-chase movies: he is its purest champion, the exemplar of the form, the stiff 7 per cent alcohol by volume that makes all imitators taste like O'Douls.

In Men in the Flying Saucers Identified, he denounces UFO believers. Not as liars but as unwitting consorts of evil beyond comprehension:

"You can easily see what planet they are from. It is from the planet below instated of above. It is from the pits of hell! Or it could be from Satan's headquarters, which is somewhere in the air at present."

But for 1950's America, Satan alone wasn't scary enough. Throughout the tract, Grant quotes the testimonial of a UFO contactee who attended one of his revival meetings. Then, Grant shows us why we should be scared. The believer reports of the saucer-men:

"They said they have luxury and there is no class distinction. They have a maid in their home, she said, and the maid is thought of as much as she herself."

Instead of questioning how a society can have maids and no class distinctions, Grand responds by pounding his face into the typewriter:

"RUSSIA IS NOT GOING TO INVADE AMERICA BECAUSE RUSSIA HAS ALREADY INVADED AMERICA. She has invaded America through the text books in our schools, which teach Evolution, dancing, sex-freedom, and free love."

Other evidence Grant cites of Russian trouble: dope, liquor, a new Bible, a one-world government, tricksters who promise "peace and safety."

But your Crap Archivist can't write another word about it until he's dished about the deep-dish ludicrosities of Bible Tabernacle Thrift Store, a Crap Shop so crap-stuffed that after two hour-plus visits I still haven't worked through all the available craziness.

Clothes have no prices and instead run you $10 a bag. There's no cash register, but a man named Johnny B. will eye your selections and name you a price - if you can find him.

Both times I found him outside, overseeing the younger men who haul great heaps of additional crap into the shop and perform odd tasks like picking through second-hand purses to remove any cash or drug paraphernalia.

One teen volunteer told me he once found $300; then he asked the time, looked pissed off, and complained that another volunteer who had been given $20 to pick up some pizzas must have just made off with the money.

Tough as he is to track down, Johnny B's more attentive than most thrift-store cashiers-- he knew to charge me three bucks, triple the store's usual book price, for a first edition of Thomas Pynchon's Vineland.

Among their treasures, I found this slim volume from the "If you have to be told . . . " department:


Bible Tabernacle boasts an impressive collection of '60s young adult novels published by the Moody Bible Institute. This one spoils season 6 of Mad Men.


And this one spoils the innocence of youth.


English teachers! Looking for an easy way to illustrate the importance of commas?


A coconut-frosting recipe book included this travesty:


I was tempted by this jockey plate . . .


. . . but I find it cruel on the part of the Franklin Mint or whoever to force the little guy to stand next to a magnifying glass.

Anyway, back to The Men in the Flying Saucers Identified!