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Friday, December 12, 2008

Death of Miss Bettie


I was listening to CNN blathering about Illinois politics when it scrolled across the bottom of the screen. "50s pin-up queen Bettie Page dies at age 85". The news of her death came as a terrible shock to me. Hell, I thought she'd been dead for years. For a kid growing up in the fifties, Bettie Page was the very definition of "naughty". She was on calenders in damned near very shop, gas station and garage in America. Everywhere men gathered without the women, the mothers and wives, to set them straight, Bettie was there. Even my straight arrow Uncle Duke had Miss Bettie in his shop in the basement, discretely on the inside of a cabinet door. I was just a kid, but I knew naughty when I saw it and Bettie was naughty, naughty even when she was fully clothed.
I remember reading later in life she found religion and left her notorious life behind. But not before she left 4,230,000 photos on Google Photo and a bunch of books on Amazon, to say nothing of a bazillion key fobs, calenders and playing cards. God bless her leggy, black lace, spiked-heeled soul.

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