Miss Route 66

by Michael Lund

  Still, there were things for me to be pleased with. Greatest of all, of course, was the satisfaction I felt at having confronted Pierce. And having rejected his proposition. In the Miss Route 66 Pageant, I would go only as far as my own abilities and looks would take me.

  Not that the confrontation with that man in the changing room didn't chill my soul, young and basically innocent person that I was. I feared his interest in me, and I feared his disinterest.

  I had always assumed he could use his influence with the judges to hurt as well as help my chances to become Miss Route 66. But he might have been able to pursue me after the pageant as well, using his power as assistant principal at the school. Could he change my schedule, put me in classes I didn't want to take, even keep me from graduating? I didn't know, but I worried.

  Still, in the end, I knew I had to take my chances as his enemy, rather than become the kind of friend he wanted. For I sensed that, if I did this thing once for him, he would ask me to repeat it. And repeat it.

  Years later I would be able to imagine more concretely what might have happened had I closed the door behind me and the Pageant's Senior Consultant. Well, there was what he hoped would happen, and probably a different scenario in reality.

  Don't forget that Sally had been in there with him not more than an hour earlier. Later revelations would confirm that she had been willing to do what he asked (though what actually happened with the two of them was never confirmed by either).

  If Sally had succeeded in doing what he wanted, it's unlikely that he would have been ready for a second go-around with me. And if she'd failed, he'd have been less likely with a novice to, shall we say, rise to the occasion.

  Oh, why don't I be even more blunt: if Sally had failed, no female in Fairfield would have succeeded. Poor thing, she knew how to satisfy in those situations. But I'm coming to that unseemly part of the story. First, let me narrate the swimsuit competition, where I did so well.

  Not only did I impress the judges, but I actually enjoyed this event.

  "And now we have the part I like the most," joked Blind Bill at the beginning, as if he could see to rank us. "Our gorgeous contestants will model the latest in swimsuit wear, and our three judges will see who steps the proudest."

  This time I was near the end of the procession, so I watched others take their turns around the stage. At some points I even relaxed enough to scan the audience.

  "Sporting a traditional one-piece suit that you might see at Sunset Beach or down in Miami, here is Elizabeth Rogers."

  I watched Larry watch Liz. He seemed attentive but not excited. How did I want him to see me?

  How did Blind Bill remember what we were wearing, where we stood (especially after we'd changed our order for the different events), what he was supposed to say to keep the pageant moving along?

  "Mary Dunkin comes next, and her outfit has a patriotic flavor--red, white and blue."

  Larry watched her the same way he had Liz, about the way I would have expected him to watch the evening gown competition.

  He was sitting, by the way, next to my sister Tricia, I realized. Up until then, I hadn't known if she'd arrived in time, driving up from Springfield. A veteran of many public appearances, she was completely relaxed. My parents were next to her on the other side.

  "And in a two-piece suit, the rage on the French Riviera, I'm told--here is Sally Winchester."

  I watched Larry carefully here. Would he be mesmerized like all the other boys, like the three male judges? Would his mouth gape open, his eyes light up, his breathing increase?

  Hmm. He doesn't change. He looks, he sees, but he is not conquered. I like that. But he'd better look differently at me!

  As I think I mentioned, Sandy had recommended a change in the suit I was wearing. It was a standard one-piece, which my mother had insisted on. She wasn't ready for the one I had wanted.

  Most of the two-piece suits in those days had high waists, coming right to or above the navel, and they were cut like short shorts at the bottom, showing none of your derriere. The tops were large also, much bigger than the string and cups of future bikinis.

  But I'd found one suit with a low-slung bottom half. It was still full in the legs, but it showed two inches below my navel. I pleaded, but my mother vetoed. (Actually, I now agree with her decision.)

  Later, Sandy proposed a change in the traditional one-piece we'd finally purchased. Without my mom's knowledge, she cut a large oval out of the middle. It reached from two inches below my breasts to one inch below my bellybutton. The widest portion was above my waist, but that only accentuated the swell of my hips and the smooth plane of my tummy.

  A few years later I realized that this cut outlined the shape of my belly when pregnant, at least through most of the time I was carrying. My babies rode high until they were ready to arrive.

  Anyway, when I walked out on the stage I surprised the other contestants, the audience, and my parents, to be sure. I turned sideways several times so they could all see how flat my belly was. And I knew my bare navel rode in flesh never before seen in the Miss Route 66 Pageant. I was a hit!

  In retrospect, I see the swimsuit competition as the silliest in the pageant. Talent certainly makes sense. And wearing an evening gown well is something women can expect to do in adult life--that is, appear in public in the accepted dress for special occasions. But parade around in a swimsuit? Nothing could be more artificial.

  Yes, I know, girls go to the beach and hope to catch the eyes of boys there. But it's really a tease, offering something you don't value for something else you wish to secure.

  Magazines and television advertisers love to use the woman in the bikini to sell products. And the contestant showing the judges her figure matches a model displaying the latest attire on the runway of a fashion show. But neither of those occasions presents the individual, only the product she carries.

  So the swimsuit competition is really an exercise in fueling male lust. We titillate to arouse but not to satisfy. In a twisted way, Pierce was right to seek completion of the cycle. The rest of the men in that auditorium that night contemplated possessing the objects they saw without commitment to the larger cycle of human interaction it suggests. I mean, of course, some notion of domestic or marital love, the reproduction of the species.

  All this is not to say that we weren't proud of what we could show. Mary's swimming had trimmed the shape of her long legs and given her a firm rear end. I knew that when she walked back toward the rest of us her tight bottom had our three town fathers forgetting the heavier forms of their middle-aged wives.

  Sally's triumph was all up top, in the breasts that men in that era dreamed about. She jiggled them when she walked, she swung them in turning, she hoisted them in perfect profile with deep breaths and the pull of her shoulders. I even heard one of the girls down the line to my left gasp in admiration.

  And me too. I offered up my flat tummy to that gathering. And I wanted them--at least all the males--to like it.

  Well, I offered my tummy to everyone but Blind Bill. He didn't see it, and his praise was worth far more than first place in the swimsuit competition.

  "You walked proud, honey," he told me. "I could feel it."

  7

  Whew! Here I am back at the Holiday Inn, exhausted from the day's emotional intensity. The sesquicentennial celebrations of Fairfield's history are still going on at many locations in town, but the elaborate recognition of the Miss Route 66 Pageant I'd come to sabotage is over. And it was a revelation, I'll tell you, even though things didn't go exactly as I had planned.

  I just this minute got off the phone with my husband back in St. Louis, having told him everything that happened. But I know I'm also going to have to write down here what I've confirmed about this town and its past in order to close out a key chapter in my youth . . . and in order to be true to all the girls who competed against each other in a beauty contest so many years ago.

  You see, for two decades I've believed that Sally Wi
nchester won the Miss Route 66 crown unfairly. Sure, she looked good in swimsuit and evening gown, and her twirling was dynamite. But she did other things to come out on top, cheating Mary Dunkin, who was first runner-up, and Liz Rogers, who was second runner-up. The rest of us girls were robbed of our chances too, all the way down to the last-place finisher.

  I'm not just complaining that Sally did something for Pierce in that changing room backstage that he repaid by talking to the judges. I mean Mayor Rodd, insurance firm owner Mr. Pollman, and lawyer Systrunk all had special reasons to make sure she won. I learned it all that night after the performance, but I didn't think then there was a thing I could do about it.

  And I continue to believe that that much, at least, is right: there was nothing that could have been done then. It's taken years of social progress and my own maturing to make possible my confrontation with this ugly phase in Fairfield's history.

  My mission today was to tell all, to debunk the pageant's place in Fairfield history (though, of course, it's now the Miss Phipps County Beauty Contest) and to expose the individuals and deeds responsible for the reigns of town beauties over the years.

  I'd suggested my place on the program as a "former contestant," not, of course, as a winner. The turnout of past queens was small, and the organizers thought the view of one of the "regular" girls would be nice. My speech, however, was intended to be a shocker.

  I was going to tell them what I had concluded after we'd all congratulated Sally and her court: the contest was rigged. Only the naive ones like me had failed to see the clues along the way, the markers of favoritism and influence. We were pawns in a chess game arranged ahead of time by Pierce and certain town officials.

  However, before I stepped up to the microphone in the high school auditorium, ready to assert that the pageant had probably been fixed every year, I met Mary at the Dairy Delite (now called Fanny's Route 66 Delite) and we had a good, long talk. It was a talk that forced a change in my plans.

  "Sally didn't come?" I asked her, after we'd exchanged the usual hugs, exclamations of pleasure, and summaries of recent events in our respective lives.

  "No, she lives in Arizona now, the Phoenix area."

  "Shoot! I wanted to see how she'd react to what I'll say."

  "What do you mean?"

  We were in a booth where I'd often sat with Sandy, though my best friend had, like me, been gone from the Dairy Delite and from Fairfield for years.

  "Well, you know," I went on, "Pierce helped her win that crown. And I'm going to do some truth-telling today. Say, where is that old pervert these days anyway?"

  It occurred to me I had never heard about Pierce after I graduated from high school. Sure, I repressed thoughts of him whenever I came back for reunions or to visit friends. But he had been pretty well known around town. And I had always assumed he continued to work with Miss Route 66 contestants.

  "Oh, long gone. In fact. . . ."

  "He should have been run out of town! You know, he propositioned me at the pageant."

  "Susan, he propositioned all the girls," she laughed, fingering the mug full of coffee in front of her. "You just turned him down, didn't you?"

  "Well, yeah, of course." I'm sure I couldn't conceal the blush I felt rise up from my neck. "But I should have exposed him. He should have been arrested."

  "Poor guy, he was all bark and no bite, if you know what I mean. And none of the girls took him up on his offers."

  "Oh, Sally did. She must have," I insisted.

  "Maybe, but not the way you think."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Sally actually felt sorry for him. Somehow she knew he wasn't able to function that way. And--not just for that, but for other things, too--his wife was getting ready to leave him. Sally wanted to help him."

  "Help him? By fooling around with him?"

  "Well, I know it sounds weird. It was certainly weird for those days! But Sally had a kind of a secret. She thought it might, um, excite him."

  "You're making this whole thing sound mysterious. Go on."

  "Did you know about Sally's car accident? Summer before junior year?"

  "I don't remember anything about an accident. She wasn't hurt that badly, was she? I would have heard about it."

  "A lot of bruises. But the one bad thing was her mouth. Her head crashed into the steering wheel, and . . . well, she lost her teeth."

  "All her teeth?" I remembered Blind Bill Martin talking about a funny sound in her speech, a hiss or a slurring. Would that have been caused by false teeth?

  Then I thought of something my husband told me after we'd been married a pretty good while, one of those things women of my generation couldn't imagine about men and their lust.

  "You mean . . . you mean she told Pierce she had no teeth . . . had false teeth . . . and could . . . gums . . . ?"

  "That's right," Mary agreed. "It's some man thing, I guess."

  "Gross!"

  "Sally knew his wife. Apparently she'd baby-sat their kids when they were much younger. Anyway, she thought just the idea alone might get him, you know, excited. And then. . . ."

  "But the pageant was fixed, wasn't it? I mean, Sally's dad was chairman of town council. It was all an inside game: the good old boys who ran Fairfield ran the pageant, and they chose Sally before the competition even began."

  "I don't think so, Susan."

  "Pierce told me he'd arranged things in other years, knew the judges, picked the winners."

  "There was a conspiracy, but it was more a scheme to get Pierce out of the way quietly, not a plan to pick beauty queens."

  "What! I don't believe it. How do you know all this?"

  "I was the one who finally blew the whistle on Pierce. I told Mr. Blue." He was principal at Fairfield High School.

  "When did you do it?"

  "About the time our rehearsals for the pageant began. Mr. Pierce came on to me. At first I laughed; then I got mad."

  This was a bit embarrassing. He'd tried to seduce me for weeks, but I hadn't done a thing.

  "Why didn't they drag him away right then? Charge him with . . . with whatever the charge would be, solicitation of a minor?"

  "Susan, you're forgetting how hush-hush anything like this was in those days. Pierce was clever in that way. He knew most girls wouldn't say anything about what he was doing. Some didn't even know what he was asking or hinting at. And, poor guy, he was driven, couldn't help himself."

  So the shock of the day came to me, not my audience. Sally Winchester, my most formidable rival, wasn't earning points with the judges by pleasing Pierce. She was some kind of juvenile social worker trying to cure a troubled man! I had not been cheated; the crown had been won fairly and squarely. How wrong about things had I been for so many years? I felt downright dumb.

  And then I realized: I had to have a new speech!

  8

  So, what did I tell the gathering in Fairfield High School's auditorium, those former contestants, judges from the past, fans of beauty contests who turn out year after year? Ooh, I'm embarrassed to admit it! I'll have to confess, but let me at least delay with one digression--a note about Sandy Johnson.

  There is one good thing about my performance today, as far as I'm concerned. I didn't have to say what I said to an audience that included Sandy, who would have known how phony I felt I was being in my address to the Miss Route 66 crowd.

  I'd corresponded well ahead of time with my best friend growing up, hoping she could be there to offer moral support. After all, she had been my chief fan on the night of the pageant, and she was the first one I had complained to that the contest was a sham. But she was in Europe on a business trip right now and couldn't be here, though she phoned me several times to encourage me in my exposé.

  In fact, Sandy, who never entered the Miss Route 66 Pageant, has traveled a lot farther from Fairfield than I did, for all my aspirations that year. Her national and, I suspect, soon-to-be-international experience grew out of her part-time job at Fanny's Dairy Delite.r />
  Mrs. Hamilton and Miss Powers thought Sandy had considerable business sense, and they tried to teach her all they'd learned from setting up and developing an ice cream/sandwich operation.

  "It all has to do with traffic," explained Sandy to me one of those vacations when I was back from college. She had gone a year to South Central Missouri State in town, one of the few girls to attend there. All those months, though, she continued to work part time at Fanny's. Then she dropped out of school completely to concentrate on expanding their operation.

  "Traffic?" I wondered.