"ENCOUNTER AT HAYSVILLE CORNFIELD"

In early 1999, I re-united with an old high school buddy who had been in contact with my younger brother.  I had not seen RH for about 19 years.  My last time seeing him was 1980.  We picked berries in the fields in early 1970's, hung out at the local skating rink, fun times. RH and I also decided to enlist in the military in 1974 together.  I did so in the USAF, and he went US Army.  After my initial contact made by phone early 1999,  I met up with RH at my home in Tigard, Oregon.
His first comment to me was "Remember the light in the sky over the cornfield?  That drove me to drink all these years!"  Like a rush of memories flooding my mind... it took me back to the summer of 1971 where RH and I were riding late at night on our bikes on Cordon Road, cross road of Haysville in East Salem which was rural farming.   The image of a cornfield, a large oak tree and a bright oval light hovering over the tree.  I was looking SSE direction as the tree was at a slight uphill direction in the middle of the field.  The scene is all I remember, I don't recall any sounds, any other aircraft or individuals, and don't have any memory of what happened after that event.  What transpired that night so many years ago?   RH stood there after making that comment holding a flask, which I presumed was alcohol.  We sat on the deck and talked about that night... neither of us could really make out what happened, but it was evident, it had a severe affect on my friend. For me, seeing this light is all I remember.
RH and I kept in touch until his death in 2001. In the spring of 2019 I was in Salem and went out to the crossroads of Cordon Road and Haysville Rd. trying to pin point the area where we had the sighting... a flash back in time as the land, buildings have changed.  There was no longer a cornfield, but the barn was still there to the right and the oak tree was gone.  What happened that evening to scare my friend as bad as it did I don't know...
As for me, I was not affected, but my journey into finding answers started in that cornfield in 1971! I hope here sometime in the future to make another trip to the area and talk to some of the residents living there to see if they have had any sightings like mine during the early 1970's.
To analyze what we saw, from my experience in the USAF, it was not a conventional aircraft, nor the moon, or a street light, or vehicle headlights because it was in the air at about 30-35 degrees hovering over that oak tree. So at this time, its an unknown.