ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, May 22, 1996                TAG: 9605220005
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1    EDITION: METRO 
COLUMN: ben beagle
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE

UNA LINTERNA DOESN'T FARE WELL IN A WASHING MACHINE

After my favorite four-cell plastic flashlight that has been in the family for years went through a complete heavy-load cycle in the washing machine, I started writing like Ernesto Hemingway again:

It is too much for an hombre to accept, the old man thought. One day everything is normal. The birds are singing although the spring still has a cold feel to it. The bulls are waiting for the matadors to join them in a dance of death on the sand. And all seems well.

All seems bueno and then one learns that one's favorite linterna had been washed with one's underwear.

The old man began to doubt he could live in a world with such cruelty in it. One's linterna being washed with one's undergarments? It was not thinkable. It might be better to lie in frozen dignity with the great cat on the mountain.

"Mujer," he said to the woman, "is it not strange that la linterna should be washed along with my boxer shorts? The boxer shorts will live another day, querida, but la linterna may never again dispel the darkness in the basement that allows me to see how much is left in the tank of the oil that warms us."

The woman looked sadly up from her jigsaw puzzle of many flowers.

"Viejo," she said, "I do not know for a certainty why the light was in the washing machine. It is my belief, however, that thee left it there. I do not know why thee did this. I hope it was not a matter of strong drink."

"Only a fool who has been damaged in the brain by running with the bulls and losing would do that," the old man said. "It was not strong drink. It was fate. That is the way it is. Some force we poorly comprehend put la linterna in the washing machine."

"It was thee who put it there and forgot about it," the woman said. "It is good, I think, that thee were not in charge of the blowing of the bridge in `For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Thee might have misplaced the dynamite."

"Ah, mi corazon," the old man said, "you must know that the presence of the light in the washing machine is unexplainable - like the reason the frozen cat was on the mountain.

"Even Gary Cooper would have no control over such forces."

"Whatever," the woman said, "but Gary Cooper would never have put una linterna in a washing machine."

And the old man was silent because he knew deep in his heart that Gary Cooper wouldn't have done such a thing.

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