I recieved this story from Mitchell Nord via email. He is describing a meteor falling to the earth near his home in New Jersey. If you have any questions about this event, please send email to him not me. I have provided his email address at the bottom of his story.

It was a school-night, late afternoon, sometime around the late 1960's. I was about 8 or nine years old at the time. My good friend Steve E. and I were doing what 9-year-olds do well at that age; Blow up things. We were making enough racket around the 1.5 acre property for my mother to catch us with firecrackers. Mom, not being too harsh of a disipliner but hate explosions, gave me a sentence of 3 hours in my room to think about what I did.

Steve, having the persistence of gravity, came by my house about an hour later and asked me if I could come back out. I leaned out the 2nd story window and yelled back: "I don't think so Steve. She's pretty pissed!"

Our brief conversation was interrupted by a faint whistle coming from the sky. This wasn't the same kind of whistle that the planes on final approach to LaGuardia made. This was somewhat different. Like if you're driving at about 30-40 mph down a hill and turn off the engine and just hear the wind wisking by the car. That kind of whistle.

We looked up at the sky. It was round. It was orange. And it was on fire and sailed right over our house. The size was nothing for us to be afraid of. Take a 12" ruler and measure from your eye to the back of a 3.5 floppy. That round hub in the middle is about the size we were seeing this meteor from the ground. Now, not knowing how far away from us it was, we had no idea how big it was. We had about 3 seconds to view this thing before it went out of sight and into the Atlantic Ocean, off the NJ coast.

"What was that!" my friend Steve shouted, probably hoping I had a degree on astronomy at that particular moment. "I don't know!" I shouted, confirming I don't know Jack about astronomy or anything that hurls through the sky with no visible propulsion. "I gotta go!" I shouted and ran downstairs.

"Mom! Mom! Guess what I saw! It was a fireball, in the sky!....." Mother had raised my 2 older brothers and wasn't going to put up with any attention getting devices I could pull. "I told you to stay in your room, young man!" Mother countered. "But it was round & orange & on FIRE!" I continued.

Well, the short of the story was that someone at the local newspaper, Red Bank Register had clipped a photo of it and that saved my tail from having been accused of lying. My mother did apologize for not believing me.