Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 10, 1993                   TAG: 9311110479
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HERE'S A NOVEL IDEA - `MYRNA LOY' COMES TO THE RESCUE

It just so happens that I intend to write my own novel called ``The Leaves of Highfields.'' Now cut that out. You know I'm not going to do any folk singing.

Those of you who know my reputation for conservative thinking and squeaky clean morals will know that this book will have nothing to do with sex - at least not enough to inspire a folk song.

This is a story about an aging, semihysterical semiretiree who is struggling to keep the grounds of his modest estate presentable, in case a buyer comes by.

His name is Tyrone Steelworthy and he and his wife, Ursula, always wanted a wooded lot, but the side yard has come to resemble the Black Forest.

All the leaves on these trees fall off every year and these, and other leaves borne by restless winds, fall on the scruffy grass beneath. This means the scruffy grass will die unless these leaves are removed.

Every day, Tyrone lets himself into the kitchen quickly to avoid it filling up with blown leaves.

``They're getting the best of it, Ursula,'' he says grimly.

``Nonsense,'' Ursula says. ``Get out there and fight them like a man. If the scruffy grass dies, I am out of here and back home in Shawsville where real men don't let a few leaves defeat them.''

The autumn deepens. Tyrone goes through the ordeal of resetting the clocks on the VCR and the microwave and thinks a lot about life.

One day when he is out fighting the leaves - and wearing the old hunting coat with a single button clinging to it - a woman who looks like Myrna Loy drives by in a new Volvo.

When Tyrone wears the old coat, his tummy doesn't show as bad, and it gives him a certain virile look, he thinks.

As the leaves swirl in a mad dance occasioned by the wind, the woman gets out of the Volvo and starts a conversation with Tyrone, who is looking more rugged by the minute.

(This is going to make a great scene when they do the movie. All those leaves swirling around and everything. Sort of ``Wuthering Heights.'')

Although it's kind of difficult to do so in the middle of a leafstorm, their eyes meet and the woman plucks suggestively at the sleeve of Tyrone's hunting coat.

Tyrone glances back at the house through the curtain of leaves, shrugs his shoulders and gets into the Volvo with the woman who looks like Myrna Loy.

The Volvo is next seen parked at the Bide-A-Wee Motel and Cafe.

Only it's not what you think, you dirty-minded bunch, you.

The woman and Tyrone are not having an unholy alliance. She is the sales rep for the Leaf-No-More yard vacuum and shredder - a powerful self-propelled killer of leaves and branches - and she is merely showing Tyrone the literature on this little marvel.

I'm sorry all of you dirty-minded people are disappointed.

You might want to read on, however, to find out what happens when the woman brings the machine around for a demonstration - after Ursula has returned to Shawsville in a huff.