The draw in Louisville

Louisville, Kentucky, TIMES, July 31, 1952, p.

Owen Kelly, 3008 Fifth, is skeptical about flying saucers. After all, he once managed one of them himself.

Kelly, a former racetrack detective, told how he and several friends 55 years ago (1897), attached a switch light to a 6-foot (1.8 m) kite and launched it on a trot line. So they made the whole city panic.

Kelly, who at 66 still has a sparkle in his eyes, recalled that the snake was launched at night in the woods near the Hospital Mary and Elizabeth. Then he and his friends walked slowly towards the old city limits, on Oak Street, dragging a lantern behind them.

"The people of 18th Street thought the world was coming to an end," Kelly recalled. "They all started withdrawing their money from the Schwartz Bank on Market Street and stated that they intended to return to Germany."

The fact that the German colony in Louisville remained and settled most of the city can be attributed to Kelly. Carrying the rope from one hand to the other, the little Irishman let it slip from his fingers, and the floating lantern eventually crashed to the ground near Spacesdale.

According to him, the citizens were outraged, "and a large policeman named Sheehan received a tip, gathered us, took us to the headquarters and scolded us."

Some alarmists at the time claimed that his flying lantern was a fugitive from another planet, Kelly mused, looking dreamily at the sky from his back door.