CHAPTER 33

Esmeralda often thought of Jane Withersteen, the heroine of Riders of the Purple Sage.  As a  student in MIHF (the Missoula Institute of High Fashion) she had decided to style her persona based on the unflinchingly optimistic Woman of the West.

She had, however, only read the first third of the book when it was thoughtlessly left on top of her car and lost forever.  And, though she hoped there was a great library of lost books somewhere, she hadn’t ever pursued finding out how the story ended.  This was just as well because, when calamities arose, she always had the image of a luminary with an outlook as cheery as her own.  And Esmeralda’s path was not all waltzes in the moonlight.    

The most recent setback had been the tornado that dropped ten inches of rain in five hours and flooded the entire downtown area.  But for starters, just as her original-design western wear had started to take off, disaster struck. While California was turning a blasé eye to them, the hippies invaded Montana.

Esmeralda was in despair, all her work would be for nothing.  But she thought of the first third of her favorite book, and before long, Esmeralda realized that - except for a few hairy, wild-eyed gypsies, rattling through in their VW mini-buses and raving things about “back to the land,” - all of Jerkwater’s hippies were home-grown.  Mostly high school kids who had grown up reading Life and Look Magazine.  

These kids had been in first and second grade in the Summer Of Love.  And they shopped.  They shopped after school, on Saturdays, during vacations.  They brought their younger and older        siblings.  Patchouli Oil became a top-seller.  Esmeralda had struck gold.

Her window displays were the talk of the teen-aged set.  And now, after two years, she saw it as her personal obligation not to let people down. To that goal: the female manikin in her front  window was dressed in red patent leather high-heeled boots, bloomers striped in see-through lace, and a feathery, gaucho coat that revealed there was nothing beneath it. On her head was a patent leather red cowgirl hat with a cluster of white roses on the side. 

Likewise, the male mannequin was no longer an average cowboy.  A  psychedelic headband held back his collar-length hair and the bottoms of his jeans were now belled with red and yellow paisley inserts.  It was the only “hip” male attire for a hundred-mile radius.