Thursday, May 25, 2006

Wild Bore Harley

A reader in Michigan landed at my weblog by searching "wild bore harley." Most of my visitors are looking for the real actress, Ann-Margret. When I was five, my grandmother (Hazel Peterson), introduced me to a tall auburn-haired woman who had my same name. She and Laverne were Grandma's cousins, she said. Well, I didn't know an actress had my same name, so I would not have understood that this might be she. If it was she, indeed, then it never was mentioned again. I did like red hair after that and picked for my Barbie doll the red-haired one named Stacy.

Ann-Margret (Olsson)'s people are Swedes from Chicago, and we are Swedes from Minnesota. Her mother was the Folger's coffee lady on television. If we are related, I got my good old legs from her.

Once I walked up our street, Thomas Avenue, to the house at the top of the hill, where I had heard that Bee Bee Shoppe had grown up. Bee Bee Shoppe had been a Miss America. I was five. I asked the mother who answered the door about Bee Bee Shoppe's success. "Margaret Anne," she said, "Margaret Anne," go home. Well, that's not my name, I told her. Another time, I made entrance to their living room, and Mrs. Shoppe and her mother sat with me for a quiet time with our hands folded.

I moved back to Minnesota from Houston on May 24, 1996, ten years ago.

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