Welcome to the new Advocate! You no longer need to worry about getting that messy newsprint on your fingers from our newspaper because now we are a magazine, and magazine smudges stay on the page, not on your fingers.

Of course, I have suggested to Big Daddy Wamre that, as a magazine, we should get more respectable mug shots. Personally, I am thinking about an “ascot, smoking jacket-look,” designed by Gittings and suitable for autographing.

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If you order now, I’ll throw in a bottle of silt dredged from White Rock Lake, which should begin sometime later this century.

Speaking of the Lake O’ White Rocks, I recently completed an exclusive interview with the famous Lady of the Lake, about whom many legends and stories have been told over the years.

The Advocate’s serious journalists publish an unedited interview every year, and the 1996 installment was with new RISD Superintendent Carolyn Bukhair, which appeared in last month’s issue.

I thought I would start a similar tradition, and publish an unedited interview of some “hard-to-find” folks — sort of a Barbara Walters-type thing.

Surprisingly, the Lady of the Lake wasn’t so hard to find. I caught up with her one morning while she was jogging around the Lake.

Keffer: So, I’m a little surprised to see a ghost jogging. What’s the point?

Lady: Humans are so self-centered. They think they are the only ones with weight problems. Let me tell you something: If I’m a few pounds up, I no longer float on the surface of the water, I sink — and the whole effect is gone.

 

Keffer: Do you intentionally try to scare people? Or are you trying to convey deeper messages from another dimension?

Lady: Are you kidding? I love to scare people. The expression on those faces — they are priceless.

 

Keffer: Wouldn’t you be more fulfilled if there was more purpose to what you do?

Lady: Listen, I’m plenty fulfilled when I see guys scrambling down the street, leaving their dates behind to fend for themselves. What a riot!

 

Keffer: Why are you the Lady of the Lake? I’ve heard lots of stories. What’s the real story?

Lady: It’s not that dramatic. I was working Bachman Lake back in the ’60s, and then the whole hippie thing developed, and I was pushed out by the Bluebonnet Lady.

 

Keffer: You mean the Bluebonnet margarine lady?

Lady: Yeah. Don’t let that bonnet fool you. It’s covering up her dreadlocks.

 

Keffer: So, the ghost and the lake legend is a product of the butter and margarine industry?

Lady: Sure. Doesn’t everybody know that? Chiffon has Lake Ray Hubbard. Imperial has Lake Lewisville. The competition is there, but we try to let everyone have their own territory.

 

Keffer: Well, I thank you very much. This is quite a scoop.

Lady: No problem. Hey, you might tell everybody, I’ll be going on vacation during the dredging. I hate digging up the past.

So you’re thinking – the butter industry and ghost stories? I know what you mean, but I heard it with my own ears while I jogged right beside her. (Her pace was a little slow; butter is probably not the only dairy product she consumes.)

After the interview, I did a little research. It turns out that nine out of 10 nightmares occur after consuming dairy products late at night.

Hence, we have phrases like “dairy dreams,” “homogenations,” and “bovine visions.” All these years of using those phrases in everyday conversation, and I never knew what they meant!

If you still doubt me, I urge you to go to the lake late at night and wait for a ghostly vision of a jogger who looks spooky in Spandex and doesn’t seem to be perspiring.

Jog with her if you dare, but be fore-warned that your midnight glass of milk or hot fudge sundae may just come back to haunt you.