Two men loom large in my mind when I think of Devils Tower — Richard Dreyfus and Frank Sanders. Steven Spielburg's
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was one of the hit movies that came out in 1977. (A little cult classic called
Star Wars was another.) I watched it in the theater during some friend's birthday sleepover party and spent the rest of the
night decade worrying that I'd be abducted by aliens. I clearly remember spreading out my sleeping bag under my friend's baby grand piano in hopes that it would offer a small measure of protection in the event of an extra-terrestrial visitation. Richard Dreyfus' character briefly encounters a UFO and is then strangely compelled to keep building models of an unusual, mountain-like image he sees in his mind. An iconic scene occurs at the dinner table when
he heaps mashed potatoes onto his plate as his puzzled family looks on, then sculpts the mound with his fork.
