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

DATE: MONDAY, November 20, 1995                   TAG: 9511220027
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HEY, IF IT WOULD HELP LOWER MY WATER BILL ...

It's the kind of a day in which the first thing that falls out of your mailbox is a recall notice that says your car's seatbelt bolts are nothing to brag about and ought to be replaced.

Another morning of sitting around your favorite dealer's waiting room with other desperate people. I may leave my seatbelt bolts alone.

Then, I read that a recent survey showed that 35 percent of Americans would approve of advertising on the one-dollar bill if it would lower their taxes.

Nobody asked me, but I can tell you right now I'd let 'em put massage parlor ads on ten spots if it would lower my water bill.

I have the greatest respect for the advertising industry in this country. I say right now that some of my best friends are in the advertising business.

They have made this country great. Where would our culture be without the memory of those television commercials with dancing cigarette packs and those ``Where's the Beef?'' spots?

I do doubt, however, that the adpersons can come up with copy for a one-dollar bill.

I've just paid the water bill, but I have a few bucks left over and I'm looking at one even as we speak.

There is some white space around George Washington's picture, but not enough for a Miller Lite ad.

The other side is pretty well taken up. There's that pyramid with the eye in it and all that writing we should have been taught to read in high school.

It's probably an indictment of the American education system that few people know what ``Annuit Coeptis'' means. Or ``Novus Ordo Seclorum,'' for that matter.

A lot of people, on the other hand, know how to say ``My father's cat is very cold'' in Spanish. Or ``I have lost my pen in the garden of my grandmother'' in French.

We have strayed somewhat from our subject of possible advertising on the dollar bill.

I just want to say that I did that on purpose because I don't have the slightest idea of what to put on there.

I trust the advertising people. I don't think they'll draw a balloon and have the Father of His Country peddling fast food or foreign cars.

Besides, any fool can see from Washington's sour look that he would't be caught dead in a modern drive-through. And he didn't trust foreigners.

Anyway, the first one of you who can translate that language on the dollar bill will get a nice desk set with a paperweight that resembles Martha Washington.

by CNB