Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 10, 1990 TAG: 9003122952
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This didn't strike me as an odd assortment of junk - people carry all sorts of things around in the trunks of their cars - until I had to open the trunk for a fellow to put in a box of computer paper I'd just bought.
And there was that stringless ukulele, just staring up at us, and I thought, on behalf of the fellow loading the box of paper, "What kind of woman carries around a useless ukulele in her trunk?"
Well, there's a story about how I came by that ukulele; and there's a story about the plastic Christmas wreath, too. The tire chains are just a piece of necessary Floyd County equipment, and the steam vaporizer box - a nice heavy one, with a solid handle - is there for the chains to ride in.
One summer, my sister and I traveled to Radford to spend a few days with the daughters of one of our father's co-workers. Charlotte and Carolyn were about the same ages as my sister and me, and we knew each other from company parties where we'd had a good time together.
Back in those days, Radford seemed a great metropolis to us two Fincastle girls. In Radford, we could go to a swimming pool where all the girls wore two-piece bathing suits, and we could visit department stores. There were neat little houses everywhere we looked and all of them had carports. Streetlights shone into our bedroom windows at night. Everything seemed exotic, including Charlotte and Carolyn.
Carolyn had - and could play well - a baritone ukulele. She was also tall and willowy, and she wore her two-piece bathing suit a good deal more effectively than anyone else at the pool. That summer, I wanted a baritone ukulele like Carolyn's as much as I wanted to wear a two-piece bathing suit as well as she did. The uke is what I got. With Green Stamps, as I recall. Back in Fincastle, I learned how to play "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley," which only requires two chords, and cajoled my mother into making me a two-piece bathing suit, which didn't make me look like Carolyn at all. So I put them both away and tried not to think about them.
Papa changed jobs, and we lost track of Charlotte and Carolyn. But every now and then the ukulele would resurface. Finally, Mama got tired of shifting it around in her house and gave me what was left of it. I put it in the trunk of the car, and remembered it was there every time I hauled trash (and that's where I got the Christmas wreath: I retrieved it from a green box. A perfectly good Christmas wreath someone was throwing away!) and I remembered the uke again when that fellow was loading my paper.
What kind of woman carries around a useless ukulele? The kind of woman who buys silly things with Green Stamps to make it up to herself for not having the kinds of things that Green Stamps can't ever buy.
I won't throw the uke away. But I'll likely not repair it either. There's not much call anymore for "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley." But neither is there such peer pressure these days to look great in a two-piece suit.
by CNB