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

DATE: THURSDAY, February 23, 1995                   TAG: 9502230046
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HEY, ROANOKE! WE GET THE GAP!

So what makes the guy such an expert when it comes to confirming the oft-told - but oft-nixed - rumor that The Gap clothing store is finally coming to Valley View Mall in early May?

``I've seen the lease, and I will swear to God,'' says Ashcraft, the mall's marketing director. ``They're building the sucker right now, and they're hauling butt'' with construction.

Ah, Roanokers, we have finally arrived. The missing retail gap is finally being filled with the best $25 T-shirts consumerism has to offer.

We can wear 100-percent cotton outfits that look slapped together, but cost a week's wages.

We can perfect the look put forth in those cool black-and-white magazine ads featuring Sarah Vaughan, Truman Capote, Leonard Bernstein and George Balanchine - all extremely cool dead people who could make a pair of khakis absolutely sing.

``It's an exceptionally large Gap,'' Ashcraft brags. About 6,400 square feet full of pigment-dyed cotton and fabulous leather belts, the store will be located in the middle of the mall's lower level.

And the best news of all: The hot retailer's expansion comes with thanks to the burgeoning outdoor, rugged look. Meaning, bye-bye Western wear and all the boots, hats and wallets-with-chains that accompanied it.

Wonder how George Allen will look in khakis and hiking boots?

There Betty Leonard was, rummaging through her garage pantry in search of a few good spuds, concocting a kettle of vegetable soup for her family and friends.

``I carried my potatoes back to the kitchen, and then when I saw it I couldn't believe it,'' the Fink's Jewelers bookkeeper recalls.

The turtledove of tubers. The sweetheart of starch.

Betty Leonard was standing in her kitchen last week with a potato in the perfect shape of a heart. On Valentine's Eve.

Leonard spared the potato and has been carrying it around in her Longabarger basket ever since, showing it off to friends and co-workers, wowing people right and left.

And while it is NOT THE POLICY OF THIS COLUMN TO PROMOTE SURREALISTIC VEGETABLES - read: we are not the hotline for Richard Nixon-eggplant sightings - Cupid's karma was too good to resist.

Asked what her husband thought of the spud, Leonard said, ``He didn't say much.''

The couple will celebrate their 35th anniversary on March 17 with a meal. A shamrock-shaped food is planned.

People have hung up on me. They have shouted and called me names. They have screamed, "It's none of your business!" - all in the name of saying they'd rather not be interviewed for a story.

But never before has a person so creatively declined to comment. I profiled Marion Via's attorney, John Rocovich, last Sunday - a person so influential that many people refused to talk about him, especially if they couldn't think of anything nice to say.

Said former state senator Bill Hopkins, the lawyer who hired Rocovich out of law school: "I just don't want to comment at all. I wouldn't want to be Mr. Speaker's mother."

And I didn't even pull the old Connie Chung trick.

Beth Macy, a features department staff writer, loves Baby Gap clothes for kids - but prefers to buy them used at Once Upon a Child, for one-third the price.