Page 19 - Asheville NC Revised2

billions of dollars and eons of man hours spent on making and marketing just shaving products, you have to wonder.
Another time I gave Mom a large glass imitation diamond ring I bought from a bubble gum machine. She wore it to the country club Primavera Dance and said everyone thought it was real. This was partly because they trusted Mom so much, but it was also a fact most people can’t tell glass from diamond. The can’t distinguish a ten-cent bauble from a $100,000 treasure. The product of an everyday glass mold, from diamonds dynamited by Zulus and Pygmies slaving in collapsing south African mines and shipped through international jewel thieves and homicidal cat burglars, all so a groom can get in hock to a jewelry store to ensure his bride will feel adequately loved. I mean really, cubic zirconias are forever too.
Contrast the trillions spent on trivia in the buy-and-sell world with the priceless privilege of running for office in our great American democracy. It cost me just five dollars, payable to the Asheville Board of Elections. Next day the Patriot ran my picture on the front page of the local section. Secretary Wants to Halt I-26 the headline screamed. “The advent of thousands of smoking cares and frenzied development from I-26 could the biggest ecological disaster to hit Asheville since, well, since they plowed through I-40,” they said I said.
Grace and I were proud of my publicity hunger. It was a long way from those disastrous teenage years when all I wanted was to hide
in my lonely room
with magical
books.