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LARRY CAMPBELL, "Cactus Jack"
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LARRY CAMPBELL, "Cactus Jack"
AN ARCHAEOLOGIST'S BRUSH WITH HISTORY:
William Lawrence Campbell, also known as Larry Campbell and Cactus Jack, spent most of his life drifting throughout New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona, basically not much more than a mere gadfly or old-timer to most people. However, he was quite an accomplished rock hound and a one-time unknowing Pothunter turned high-grade amateur archaeologist, and, in the pursuit of same, had a brush with history --- and almost fame --- twice.
Not a whole lot is known about Campbell's early years. According to author and researcher Thomas J. Carey, Iris Foster, a former cafe owner near Taos, New Mexico, reports that during the mid to late 1970s Campbell used to frequent her establishment --- and had more than a few tall tales to tell. Although she knew him as Larry Campbell, for lack of anything else to call him, he became known to most of the locals around the cafe simply as "Cactus Jack." Foster recalls he lived out of an old camper truck when she knew him. She thought he looked like a character out of a grade-B Western, with long, thinning white hair, scruffy beard and a beat up old cowboy hat, who could have passed, except for the lack of a mule, an old time prospector. Campbell mentioned on occasion that during World War II he had personally seen some of the mysterious flying objects that harassed flight crews and aviators on both sides of the action called Foo Fighters. He also said following the war he spent some time scavenging meteorite scraps from the Canyon Diablo scatter field surrounding Meteor Crater. From there he met Dr. Harvey Nininger, founder of the American Meteorite Museum, the first meteorite museum in the world. He said he helped Nininger catalog meteorites for a while along with an old Army buddy named George Donald Thompson, but ended up more like Igor was to Dr. Frankenstein than anything else.
FOO FIGHTERS as seen by pilots and
flight crews in WWII. Notice the delta or
wedged shape to the fighter on the left.
Foster had a sister, Peggy Sparks, also of Taos, who remembered Cactus Jack and even sort of befriended him. Agreeing with her sister, she recalled that Cactus Jack reminded her a great deal of old western movie sidekicks like George "Gabby" Hayes, shown in the photo above. She says Cactus Jack, also known as Larry and sometimes Bill depending on who he was with or who he was talking to, the postmaster or the gas station mechanic down the street, appeared to be in his late 50s when he was a customer at the cafe. According to Sparks, a lawyer friend of hers in Taos said Cactus Jack was last seen sometime in 1990 or so in the city of Las Vegas, New Mexico. The lawyer said that he heard Campbell was burned in a fire in his camper and wound up in a nursing home somewhere, possibly out of state, but did not know where. Campbell would be approaching his mid 80s if he was still alive today.
Back in the days when he frequented the cafe, Cactus Jack usually arrived alone and would have his coffee alone. Sometimes though, when favorably enticed and the coffee kept flowing, he would regale customers with his experiences and tall tales. Once or twice he was seen to have long quiet conversations with a well known but highly elusive medicinal plant and hallucinogenic mushroom hunter from the Santa Fe, Taos area that stopped in on occasion. Known on sight by many because he was semi-notorious, the bio-searcher, who had several plant species named after him, was nearly as mysterious as he was unapproachable. He was married to a Native American woman thought to be a powerful curandera that was held in awe by most that came within her presence. Tall and straight-backed, with perfect posture and beautiful skin, instead of taking steps she appeared to almost glide when she walked. People were reluctant to sit near her table and the help was afraid to serve her. Some said they had seen a glass of water slide across the table to her hand without her even moving her arm.(see)
The fact that Cactus Jack seemed to know the bio-searcher and sat at his table even with the curandera there underlined the possibility of the truth to at least two of his stories, stories that, according to Cactus Jack, involved the bio-searcher.
The first of those stories revolved around the infamous Roswell UFO wherein an unidentified flying object, a UFO, allegedly crashed in the mountains west of Roswell, New Mexico late one night in July, 1947. Some reports have an archaeologist on the scene. Most agree now that archaeologist was William Curry Holden, then a professor at Texas Tech University, known to work archaeology sites around the general Roswell area. He and some students apparently stumbled across the object nearly sideways and fully positioned against the rocks, describing it as looking like a crashed airplane without wings with a flat fuselage in more of a delta or wedge shape than circular. However, Campbell was known to tell a tale of being "out there when the spaceship came down" and seeing a "round object but not real big."
What drove him to be "out there" in the first place was initiated by his work with Nininger. Campbell developed a nearly fanatical interest in the Winona Meteorite, a meteorite discovered by archaeologists buried by prehistoric Native Americans at an ancient village complex called Elden Pueblo located not much more than thirty-five miles northwest of the Meteor Crater impact site. What intrigued Campbell's imagination the most about that specific meteorite was how it had been secreted in a specially built stone cist hidden away from prying eyes below the floor of one of the pueblo rooms for over seven hundred years. More importantly, it wasn't anything remotely like the nickel-iron meteor scraps he had been collecting in the scatter field around the so-called Meteor Crater. It was instead a very, very rare class of meteorite, called a primitive achondrite, of which many are thought to have originated from the highland regions of the farside of the Moon or from the surface of Mars. Just the thought of Native Americans burying objects from Mars in ritual style drove him farther and farther into the field. It was that drive, it is said, that placed him in the area of Roswell on the night of July 4, 1947.
The aforementioned bio-searcher, however, was not only known to be associated with the Roswell Incident, he WAS ACTUALLY associated with the incident. Within two days of the suspected crash down the bio-searcher arrived on the scene, walking much of the fresh debris field himself, wanting to see if there was any truth behind the so called Hieroglyphic Writing reported embossed on some of the metal scraps. Two months later he was back, officially recruited for "saucer business" by the famous astronomer, meteorite hunter, and former research mathematician at the New Mexico Proving Grounds, Dr. Linclon La Paz --- who himself had been recruited by the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. The bio-searcher was tagged by La Paz to help figure out the trajectory of the downed object because plants and foilage along the suspected trajectory were found to be burnt and wilted as well as moved or replaced in an apparent effort to cover up the alledged crash. Because of same La Paz thought what better help than an expert in the indiginous plants of the desert southwest.
On Tuesday, July 8, 1947, two months before the start of the La Paz investigation, the local Roswell paper printed a story that a crashed flying saucer had been found on a nearby ranch. The very next day the same local newspaper, the Roswell Daily Record, July 9, 1947, after what has been reported as influence from the military, basically retracted the story, saying it was not a saucer, but a weather balloon. Now if Cactus Jack himself was actually involved with the Roswell Crash at the level of the bio-searcher as Campbell seemed to indicate he was, is not really known. However, Campbell never changed his story and most thought it interesting that the two seemed to know each other. Campbell swore the bio-searcher had a piece of metal-like foil from Roswell in his possession and that he, Cactus Jack, had seen it. He said the so-called Memory Foil could be folded into a small little square or crumpled into a ball and it would unfold on its own leaving no creases, wrinkles, or folds. He also told about being at a place associated with the crash where the sand had been fused to glass, the plants wilted, and the ground turned blue. Most people would just look at each other and roll their eyes with such stories, but, interestingly enough, although not widely reported at the time, it has since come out that the team La Paz put together for the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps to investigate the object's trajectory located a previously undiscovered site some two months after the crash --- with the exact same characteristics.
Late one afternoon close to sunset when the cafe was being drenched in the red orange glow of the setting sun the bio-searcher came in unaccompanied by the curandera. He was traveling instead with a Native American, quite easily indentified as a tribal spritual elder and another man, very strange, tall and thin with his hair pulled straight back in a ponytail, and who, unlike the curandera, everybody seemed to want to see. The waitress said when she made eye contact to take his order she forgot who she was or why she was there. Later Cactus Jack retold the story to the waitress and others in the cafe that he remembered the man from when he was a boy, that the bio-searcher was his uncle and that he had seen the two of them at Roswell together within a few days of the crash.
Cactus Jack's second story, although almost as wild as the UFO concoction, seems more credible, especially in the light of him seemingly to know the bio-searcher. The bio-searcher was notorius for a number of reasons, but the fact that he was known for his role as the Informant and Carlos Castaneda was perhaps the most notable.Long before anybody ever heard of Castaneda and long before he became famous, Castaneda was a struggling undergraduate student studying anthropology at UCLA. In the late spring of 1960 he was in Arizona conducting field research in medicinal plants native to the desert southwest. Before the semester was over he decided to give up on his studies and head back to Los Angeles because of being so discouraged by critical high ranking professors in disagreement with his pursuits. Although nowhere near being a full-fledged Shaman, Castaneda kept finding himself having fleeting flashes of intuition in an almost primordial inkling of future events. Following a series of incidents that were considered Omen like in fashion by Castaneda, a not nearly so high ranking working stiff and seat-of-the-pants ground-pounder versed in four-field anthropology (Ethnology, Archaeology, Linguistic and Biological) --- we are talking a very highly regarded field experience amateur, albeit non-academic-affiliated archaeologist here --- that was sometimes refered to as Bill by Castaneda and sometimes left unnamed in his series of Don Juan books, stepped forward out of the blue and told Castaneda he intended to go on a Road Trip. His intention was to drive throughout Arizona and New Mexico revisiting "all the places where he had done work in the past, renewing in this fashion his relationships with the people (Native American or otherwise) who had been his anthropological informants," of which the bio-searcher was one of his informants. Bill told Castaneda:
"You're welcome to come with me," he said. "I'm not going to do any work. I'm just going to visit with them, have a few drinks with them, bullshit with them. I bought gifts for them-blankets, booze, jackets, ammunition for twenty-two-caliber rifles. My car is loaded with goodies. I usually drive alone whenever I go to see them, but by myself I always run the risk of falling asleep. You could keep me company, keep me from dozing off, or drive a little bit if I'm too drunk."
(source)
To show how it was Bill and ONLY Bill that was the major impactor of all future downstream events of Castaneda from there on out, in his eleventh and last book The Active Side of Infinity (1998), Castaneda lays out in his own words how his colleague Bill, that is, William Lawrence Campbell, convinced him to go on the Road Trip. Castaneda writes:
I felt so despondent that I turned him down.
"I'm very sorry, Bill," I said. "The trip won't do for me. I see no point in pursuing this idea of fieldwork any longer."
"Don't give up without a fight," Bill said in a tone of paternal concern. "Give all you have to the fight, and if it licks you, then it's okay to give up, but not before. Come with me and see how you like the Southwest."
According to the text, "Don't give up without a fight," are the exact words Bill told Castaneda. It was because of the total and complete insistance of Bill that the Road Trip together transpired, ending in nothing less than a direct meeting between Carlos Castaneda and the powerful Shaman-sorcerer, Don Juan Matus during the late summer of 1960 in the Nogales Greyhound Bus Station.
BILL, LARRY, CACTUS JACK OR NOT AT ALL?
Because of confusion arising from the use of a variety of names related to the person we are talking about here, the following is offered in an attempt to clarify some of what is known about him.
Apparently calling Bill by the moniker Cactus Jack is considered a sign of respect to grizzly old prospectors and desert types such as Campbell and apparently in such context, a fairly common nickname. Campbell was also known by some, most likely because of his moustache, as Handlebar Bill. His real name was William Lawrence Campbell, but typically he went by Bill and sometimes Larry. In the anthropological circles Castaneda met him he went by, was called by, and known as Bill. The Wanderling, who, in July 1947 traveling with his uncle at Roswell and not even ten years old, does not recall meeting Campbell, even though BOTH Cactus Jack and his uncle told him that they had met at the time. During a second visit to Roswell a few months later a man gave the Wanderling a prospector's pick as used by rock hounds and archaeologists that he admired from afar and afterwhich he carried around and treasured for years. He can visualize the man giving him the tool as well as showing him how to use and care for it but cannot make out his face. Cactus Jack claimed to be that man. The two DID cross paths briefly many years later in an impromtu meeting at the cafe near Taos sometime around sundown as mentioned in the above text. During that meeting, when talking directly with Cactus Jack his uncle refered to him as "Bill", but when the initial introduction was proffered the Wanderling is sure Cactus Jack was introduced as Lawrence --- thus then by inference Larry --- because he remembers associating his name with his own Mentor, the same person in real life that W. Somerset Maugham gave the name of Larry Darrell to in his novel The Razor's Edge. In that same introduction, Cactus Jack, making reference to his last name by driving it home with what has turned out to be an unforgetable mnemonic aid said in jest, which he no doubt had done many times, "Campbell, you know, like in the soup."
Even though the cafe owner Iris Foster recalls Cactus Jack lived out of an old camper truck when she knew him for example, and the Wanderling's uncle refered to Bill as "a cowboy that lived in his truck," it is not known with the utmost certainty if Cactus Jack was actually the Bill as mentioned by Carlos Castaneda in his writings --- mostly because he was not specifically introduced or so designated as such to the Wanderling by his uncle. However, from the gist of the conversation that followed and other conversations that ensued both before and after the meeting, such a result could be easily extrapolated. The Wanderling in the above linked article on the Nogales bus station meeting is quoted as saying:
"As a young boy a man that I was told was an archaeologist had given me my first prospector's pick, an item I had treasured way into young adulthood. Unexpectantly, about five years after the bus station encounter we are talking about here, while traveling with my Uncle and a tribal spiritual elder, I briefly crossed paths with Campbell when he stepped up to our table in a small roadside cafe near Taos, New Mexico. In the process of that meeting not only did he confirm he was indeed the man that had given me the prospector's pick when I was a boy I also recognized him as being the man I had seen that fateful day in Nogales. Although the subject of Castaneda came up and he talked openly about a number of things related to Castaneda with my uncle and the elder during the hour or so we were together that day, before I was able to turn the topic of the discussion to the bus station specifically, apparently done with HIS side of the conversation, he finished his meal and without any attempt to pay, got up, went to the mens room, then simply left." (source)
Which in the end pretty much underlines what has been written previously and substantiates that William Lawrence Campbell and the Bill in the writtings of Carlos Castaneda are one and the same person.
Additionally, if you follow the thread on Bill, that is, William Lawrence Campbell (AKA Larry Campbell) on all the various web sites, you will see when he worked for Dr. Nininger at the Meteorite Museum near Meteor Crater the implication is, or at least there is a high probability, he and the bio-searcher crossed paths as both were there at coinciding times. They both showed up at Roswell following the crash in 1947 as well --- and it appears by his comments that Campbell was at the fused-glass site at the same time as Dr. La Paz and the bio-searcher. Just at the beginning of summer 1960 he tells Castaneda he is going on a Road Trip and revisit "all the places where he had done work in the past, renewing in this fashion his relationships with the people who had been his anthropological informants." One of those informants was the bio-searcher, who it seems, from all that has been presented so far, Bill knew fairly well. Thus said, it would only be natural to seek out the bio-searcher during their Road Trip and in the process, since Castaneda was traveling with him, to introduce the two to each other.
AND NOW THIS:
A reader of the article on Campbell titled Pothunter --- an article that discusses William Lawrence Campbell from another perspective --- and for reasons undisclosed requested he remain anonymous, sent an email to the author of the article relating he was the grown son of of Campbell's longtime friend, mentioned previously, above, George Donald Thompson. He and his father, now deceased, had come across the obituary page on Thompson one day during an internet search. Thompson was reportedly an "old Army buddy" of William Lawrence Campbell who accompanied Campbell to Meteor Crater following World War II.
In the email the man said his father told him the man called Campbell only "adopted" Campbell as his last name from a nickname given him while in the military --- although he could not recall Campbell's real last name. After the military he continued to use it, making it his "real" last name for all practical purposes because, the man's father thought, of some possibly shady deals he may possibly have been involved in during the war. The man also said his father told him that it is most likely because of those shady deals that Campbell spent the rest of his life traveling around the desert southwest in an almost anonymous fashion.
According to the email writer the man called Campbell, at or just after the beginning of World War II attended the P-39 school at the Army Air Corps Technical Training Command at Camp Bell, N.Y., outside of Buffalo. From there he was assigned to the 57th Fighter Squadron. The 57th flew both P-39 Aircobras and P-40 Warhawks from an airfield carved into the side of Kuluk Bay on Adak, one of the islands along Alaska's Aleutian chain. From there the 57th launched attacks further down the chain against Japanese forces that invaded and held Attu and Kiska islands.
It was not long before it was discovered that not only were P-39s crapy combat aircraft, they were not able to take the cold, with, among other things, ironic enough, air coolers breaking right and left with no replacements. Soon most of the P-39s were out of commission making Campbell somewhat redundant. That is to say, the P-40s had all the staff and personel needed to keep them operating, while, as more and more P-39s became grounded, their pilots and flight crews began to sit around with their hands in their pockets. It was not long before they began seeking better climes to bide their time in. Soon they were wending their way down to Hawaii on R & R, specifically to Oahu and a USO hang out about an hour drive from Honolulu soldiers called Camp Bell.
So, here he is the man called Campbell, who had done his initial army training at not only a Camp Bell outside of Buffalo, New York, but he was now showing up as a regular at a Hawaiian USO facitlity thousands of miles from Buffalo, also called Camp Bell.
The story goes, according to the emailer, he had fallen so head over heels in love for a beautiful American Red Cross Doughnut Dolly at the USO facility that he began finding every way he could find to finagle a way to get back, and so hard did he try, that his fellow buddies began calling him "Camp Bell," which soon turned into Campbell --- the name he became known by.
The grown son who sent me the email said he knew what his father told him was true because the Doughnut Dolly Campbell was so head over heels in love with his father married.
The Doughnut Dolly was the grown son's mother.
THE POTHUNTER
POWER OF THE SHAMAN
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WITH THANKS TO:
THOMAS J. CAREY
IUR, Volume 19, Number 1; January/February 1994
International UFO Reporter, Copyright 1994 (see)
J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies
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