Sweet Ginger eclipsed by Mary Anne

A three-minute tour of that longstanding question

Guided by “Skipper” Banholzer

Originally, I intended on floating my boat here, over the unshifting sands of my favorite Gilligan’s island gal. A woman in a heated tropical environment, from which man never has wanted to escape. A woman like Ginger Grant.

Steve always said I was nuts. But now people wouldn’t just suspect it –they would know I was crazy. Mary Anne Summers is the correct gal for modern summertime man -Mankind he meant. He said that she stands for everything good in this lagoon of life. Steve went as far as hacking into my computer and saving a sweet farm-gal photo of Mary Anne topped with cowgirl hat, onto my laptop.

First, I thought the photo silly, but while preparing to erase it, a sultry scent of something tropical seemingly emanating from the GPU caused me hesitation. After a few days of warming up to the photo, it sailed into my coco-nut island head -like one of Mary Anne’s coconut cream pies fortified with love - that there was no reason under the sun, any sensible man would ever want to delete that photo. Mary Anne with her eternal sunshiny smile. A down to earth gal from Kansas, who stops the earth on its axis from her beam. She’s enough to make generals and majors want to halt a thousand warships.

Actually, Steve said that she was from Nevada. Miss Nevada actually. How could I be so blind? Had I gambled badly by letting the seashells shimmer off Ginger’s glamour refract a blemish into my eye, causing me to overlook the girl next door?

“Moreover, Mary Anne is now an Idaho gal”, Steve supplemented, “and she runs a spud-tacular film school, under the name Dawn Wells, from her ranch in Driggs, along with an Idaho film festival. What do you think of that, Professor Longhair?”

Well, sink my minnows. No wonder why Driggs was rated the best town to live in America by Men’s Journal. (Ketchum was 16th in 2002) Driggs even has a drive in theatre. Cute little Mary Anne, now fully blossoming through a three decade tour, while directing humanity’s acting passions, to uncharted heights. I had been dumber than Gilligan on a bad day.

Survival class mentors in Gooding would do well to teach young men to spare themselves from the primitive snares such as the one I caught myself in over Ginger.

Two pamphlets I had ordered arrived at the bookstore the next day; “Pulitzer Prize Editorials” and “Inside Gilligan’s Island” by creator Sherwood Schwartz. The Pulitzer waited second, as I imagined Mary Anne occasionally winking at me, while I wildly consumed her pages. Sure enough, Steve was right, I was crazy. But now, more so passionately about Mary Anne, after getting to know the down to earth principles she represents in real life. Adam West’s Cat wimmin’s are swimmingly fine, but Mary Anne’s the purr-fect superhero, ultimately divine.

I needed to write her a letter of admiration. But how will she ever see it amongst the piles? Perhaps a colossal potato shaped valentine? Think about the Poor Postmaster in Driggs, with all those rigs backing up to mammoth collating tables to bundle together Mary Anne’s fan mail.

All of Idaho should all feel richer than Simplot, or even Thurston Howell, just knowing that Mary Anne is rescuing poor starving actors, who act as though they can’t collect enough spuds dropping to sideshow roads.

I reckon I’m still as star struck as ever about Ginger. It’s just that for me though, now Mary Anne has eclipsed Ginger’s limelight.

If there was a polling booth today and I had already voted for Ginger, I would risk arrest for mutiny, by fumbley stumbling in backwards like Gilligan used to do, and then trying to tell them that I was actually really leaving, to cast away a second vote for my new favorite castaway, Mary Anne.

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Next time around: Betty or Wilma?

I Dream of Royalties