THE ADS AND I
Neuberger, Richard L.
The Ads and I ¦ By Richard L. Neuberger WHEN I drink milk I have my clothes on. But Mitzi Gaynor doesn't have her clothes on. How do I know this? The milk industry has sent me an announcement...
...Perhaps they were short of yarn...
...The milk industry has sent me an announcement heralding National Dairy Month...
...Naturally, I am torn by a conflict of interests...
...I'm off for the drugstore to search for her...
...I'll confess it sort of exasperated me when Saturday afternoon came, and she still hadn't put in an appearance...
...Sagebrush, yes...
...She is smiling happily...
...II Some of my friends josh me a lot...
...At least, she hadn't yet put on all her clothes...
...I looked again at the cover...
...I went right downtown and stood at the appliance counter in the largest department store until 5:30, when the store closed...
...the majestic and awe-inspiring Black Hills, yes...
...but the girls in the skimpy bathing suits—no...
...I've bought everything from toothbrushes to typewriters in the hopes of doing so...
...But there's been a terrible mistake," I countered...
...I read the volume from cover to cover...
...Now what has this to do with good old Republicanism...
...They'll talk about Idaho Power dams, firing Democrats, making social security pay-as-you-go and other Republican things...
...An eager-beaver Young Democrat confides that one of the gorgeous, partially-bare models is his girl friend—and a Democrat, too, he proudly adds...
...But I held up the ad and said all of us had been fooled by the Pullman company...
...The ad featured a picture of two showgirls in dressing gowns who were on the way to or from their berths, in the car aisle...
...There, sure enough, was the red-haired woman wrapped—or should I say "unwrapped'?—in the hand towel...
...I peered again at the clipping...
...They blamed the whole thing on me...
...In nearly all the pictures bathing girls appeared...
...The aisle of the Pullman car was jammed with traveling salesmen and one or two leathery chaps who looked like ranchers...
...After all, no publisher in his right mind would think of putting a drawing of a beautiful woman in a little, dinky towel on the cover of a book about Antarctic explorers...
...South Dakota has 64 counties...
...In fact, the toasters were in charge of a man—a big, belligerent fellow who kept asking, hour after hour, if there was something he could do for me...
...I guess the cover attracted me, particularly after my South Dakota failure...
...They had the toaster that was in the ad, lots of them...
...Step right this way," he replied...
...I guess I'm just unlucky...
...That night, in a motel in the Snake River Valley, I began to read the book...
...It was worth a week, looking for her...
...What was good for General Motors would have been good enough for me—but they refused to let me meet her...
...Furthermore, it was merely a hand towel, hardly more than a good-sized washrag...
...I was sent a folder claiming I should spend my vacation in scenic South Dakota...
...I motored into nearly all of them looking for those girls...
...That one shipment of books, sent to Idaho, had to be mixed up by some blundering fool at the bindery, so that the wrong covers got on this particular text...
...I suppose they refer to the time I saw that ad of the Pullman Company, urging us to travel on the night train between Portland and Seattle, along the Pacific Coast...
...And the paper tells us that beautiful models will be at the picnic...
...It was about Shackleton's expeditions to the Antarctic...
...I stowed the book ecstatically in the car...
...So I drove to South Dakota...
...She wasn't anywhere in the store, with or without clothes...
...I showed them the ad and they helped me watch for the comely models...
...They say I'm too trusting...
...I hurried to the station and got lower 4 in car 4012...
...Yet the Republicans out our way, on this Western seaboard, seem to have the same idea...
...The salesman haughtily drew himself up...
...And I pointed to the statuesque brunette with few clothes on...
...A person doesn't know what he can believe any more...
...They'll have to make good for me some time...
...I want to go to the picnic to see the models who won't be wearing overcoats or even dresses...
...I don't quite understand why the dairy industry thought I would pay closer attention to their product if I saw a picture of Mitzi Gaynor without a lot of clothes covering her up...
...Of all the bad luck, mine was the worst...
...My wife still accuses me of wasting an entire week because I went to a hardware shop and looked intently at the washtubs for sale...
...On the way home from my fruitless quest in South Dakota, I stopped at a news stand in Idaho and bought a pocket book, one of those paperbacked kind that sell for 25 cents...
...I know I didn't doze because I had drunk four or five cups of black coffee to be sure I stayed awake...
...Some day I'm going to get to see one of those fascinating girls in their filmy and sketchy garments...
...That's why I can't understand when people get so angry at me just because I believe the ads...
...But the showgirls never hove into view, with or without dressing gowns...
...But I never could find the girl...
...On the cover was a red-headed woman wrapped only in a towel...
...In the picture was a simply sensational blonde taking a bath in soapsuds...
...I want to see this one," I said eagerly...
...That'll be $3,300," the salesman said...
...But a horrible mistake had been made...
...Nor did I need 20/20 vision to discover that, somehow, swimming suits in South Dakota weren't quite as voluminous as elsewhere...
...the carvings of Teddy and Thomas Jefferson and all the rest on Mount Rushmore, yes...
...Anyone with a lick of sense realizes that advertising is responsible for our national greatness...
...The other day there was a photo in the press of a brand new blue Buick with wire wheels and a top that folded down...
...You should see the picture of her—wow...
...I threw the book down and went to sleep...
...They want the public to be aware of milk's marvelous nutritional qualities...
...Pictures in the paper contribute the pleasant assurance that the models won't be wearing overcoats or even dresses...
...They're to stage a big picnic...
...In half an hour I was at the local Buick agency...
...If she's there, in that gauzy costume, I'll buy a gross of that tonic, just to be allowed to stick around...
...There's a full-page display in our morning paper for a miraculous reducing tonic...
...Indeed, there was no mention of the female sex...
...But I don't want to hear Republican speeches...
...The young woman is not connected with our agency," he said in icy tones...
...The folder was full of pictures...
...I saw an ad boosting a wonderful electric toaster...
...Standing beside the Buick was a statuesque brunette in a bathing suit which approximated so-called "Bikini" proportions...
...Didn't I show my wife the advertisement for that particular brand...
...We know that "truth in advertising" is the slogan of all the people who write the ads and take the pictures for them, so I'm confident they won't go on deceiving me forever...
...I wriggled into the covers and lay there peeking out all night...
...The girl using the toaster in the ad had just got out of the shower...
...I didn't mean the car...
...I cut the clipping out of the paper and folded it into my wallet...
...Not one faint reference to the flaming-tressed woman au na-turel...
...I am constantly encountering these rebuffs...
...It wasn't far if you kept thinking about the pictures in that folder— about 2,000 miles...
...Yet what did she have to do with the Antarctic...
...Soon we stood beside a car that looked just like the blue Buick in the newspaper photograph...
...As a result, they were bleary-eyed in the morning and hadn't seen a showgirl...
...A woman in the photograph swallowed a barrel of the tonic and now she looks just like Esther Williams...
...I'm going to give the ads a few more chances, though...
...I meant her...
...I trudged disappointedly out into the sunlight...
...In her hand she has a glass of milk, although I must admit she seems to be dressed more appropriately for beach or bathtub than for the supper table...
...I showed the clipping to a salesman...
...Yet all my Republican friends refuse to tell me at what time the models leave off and the speeches begin, or vice versa...
...Radio, heater, and white-wall tires are extra...
...The dressing gowns were awfully pretty but they didn't entirely cover the girls...
...Part of the announcement is a picture of Mitzi, with very few garments...
Vol. 17 • August 1953 • No. 8
