Dear Editor,

In genuine heartfelt support of Mountain View's BRAND-NEW Buck Nelson Festival... last night I was thinking, "This has so much more appeal and possibility than Pioneer Days, it could be/will be a great success!" 

Granted, "Pioneer Days" is important to the locals for the sake of our immediate history and celebration of culture.

However, this new Buck Nelson Festival has a much broader base and general appeal to a vastly wider area. For goodness sakes! Do you think anyone would give a "flying pig" if Roswell, New Mexico, celebrated Pioneer Days? If that's all Roswell had to boast of.... no one outside their surrounding county would have EVER heard of that little podunk town! BUT ADD THE ELEMENT OF ALIENS, OUTERSPACE, UFOLOGY, GOVERNMENT COVER-UP... and suddenly that tiny village is known around the entire world!

There is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between Roswell, New Mexico, and Mountain View, Missouri... except they have a goofy "gimmick" AND WE DON'T! Something else they originally had was people with VISION that saw a niche "based on nothing more than a rumor" that could be capitalized AND THEY JUMPED ON IT!

I don't care whether or not flying saucers are real... I don't care if Buck Nelson was an eccentric little man... I CARE THAT MOUNTAIN VIEW HAS FOUND A "GIMMICK" THAT IS MARKETABLE TO THE ENTIRE COUNTRY/WORLD! I have been preaching to a deaf audience that Buck Nelson is a GOLD MINE that God (or the aliens) graciously dropped in our laps... but in the past, no one cared until now!

My family has been in the Mountain View area ever since 1860 on the eve of the Civil War and I can authoritatively say that many people in Mountain View have lacked the vision to see their noses in front of their faces! Over the course of 66 years, I have watched gorgeous old buildings - treasured landmarks slowly rot down to be replaced with parking lots. Yes, NO VISION! You can only "replace heritage with parking lots" for so long... before there's NO ONE LEFT TO PARK! You and I both know that "Where there is no vision, the people perish!" Proverbs 29:18

For all those responsible in planning and developing the Buck Nelson Festival... GO, GO, GO, AND DONT LOOK BACK! Maybe we can actually clone you for some other worthy, promising ventures... before the community dries up on the vine and blows away in the wind! A small town CANNOT live on Walmart alone!

GOD BLESS MOUNTAIN VIEW'S BUCK NELSON FESTIVAL. 

Most hopefully and anxiously yours,

Edwin Woolsey