Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 12, 1994 TAG: 9410130009
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Then, the greatest station wagon driver of them all was dusting one of the family Bibles, and out dropped this picture of a girl in a bathing suit.
This may be the first instance in the history of Christianity that a picture of a girl in a bathing suit dropped out of a family Bible. It's true that this a very modest bathing suit - not one of those disgraceful thong things - but it's still unsettling.
I think the picture was in one of the driver's family Bibles.
When girls are photographed wearing bathing suits, young males usually write identification on the back: "Sonia Bitzer - Far Rockaway Beach, 1945." Give me a moment, and I'll remember old Sonia.
But there is no name on the back of this photograph of what we used to call a "looker" before that kind of thing could get you into a lawsuit.
The driver wanted to know who she is or was.
"Why do you burden me thus, my little turtle dove?" I asked. "Am I not now bowed down by the struggle for mere survival? Am I not now an aging vessel sailing in harm's way?"
"I had certainly hoped we wouldn't be getting into this harm's way garbage again," the driver said. "I just wanted to know who the girl is."
"Tut, my little wind flower," I said. "You mustn't refer to girls as girls anymore."
"All I want to know is who she is," the driver said, desperation growing in her.
"Perhaps," I said, "perhaps she and I once loved madly but not well and the result was a star-crossed romance that I have spent a lifetime forgetting."
"Hear me, my children," the driver said. "From where the sun now sits, I wish I had burned this picture and gone to the Piece Goods store."
"It might be this girl I had a date with one time at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland," I said. "We rode around in my buddy's car and somehow ended up at a nunnery in Anne Arundel County. But I don't recall her wearing a bathing suit. I remember the nuns were kind of startled."
"Why didn't I just burn the picture?" the driver asked. "Why? Why?''
"It can't be the girl I took to the prom," I said. "I'll never forget her."
"I hate to drag this lunacy out," the driver said, "but who did you take to the prom?"
"I have temporarily forgotten her name," I said. "But I don't think I ever saw her in a bathing suit. Her name wasn't Sonia. I guess."
by CNB