Kalispell, Montana, circa 1974: The tale of Playboy bunny

More from the deYong Museum of Cardboard Boxes and Plastic Crates:

What the hell, you may wonder, is going on in these photos? Who is this gorgeous, exotic creature and why is she sitting on hirsuit young Jim’s lap?

It’s a damn good story.

So I’ll tell it.

Back in late 1975 my cousin Ron got married up in Kalispell, Montana. We’re only a few months apart in age. I flew up from Los Angeles to attend.

I hung out with all his high school and college buddies the night before the wedding. There was a red hot rumor flying around that Playboy was doing a big Playmate photo shoot somewhere in the Kalispell area. Ron’s friends theorized — somewhat reasonably, I thought — that these goddesses would be unlikely to sit around their hotels rooms on a Friday night and that if we hit enough bars we would eventually run into them at one local drinking establishment or another.

We spent the night going from bar to bar to bar but had not so much as a single Playmate sighting. Oh, sure, the bars were filled with local girls built like, but not as pretty as the horses they may still have been using to plow their fathers’ fields, but nary a scantily-clad Bunny was spotted.

The wedding was beautiful. My cousin had lucked out and convinced a really smart, really beautiful girl to marry him. I was convinced I would never be so lucky.

The next morning I had an early flight back to Los Angeles. I had already established my now routine habit of arriving at the airport early and boarding as soon as possible in order to people-watch as other folks board and walk down the aisle to their seats.

The plane was gradually filling when I saw the exquisite creature shown in the photo (above) approaching. She hadn’t noticed me because (a) I was not particularly noticeable, and (b) she was busy checking out the numbers posted above each row. I, on the other hand, gawked unabashedly, immediately realizing that she had to be one of those Playmates who had so successfully eluded us in the town’s bars. Much to my surprise she paused when she got to my row, carefully looked at the row numbers on one side and then the other to make sure she sat in the seat to which she had been assigned, then put her carry-on bag above my row, and demurely seated herself next to me.

We started talking and I told her the story of the previous evening, how we had tried unsuccessfully to track her down.

“Well,” she answered, “you found me now.”

We hit if off immediately and talked all the way to Salt Lake City and then hung out together in the terminal while waiting for our connecting flight to Los Angeles. As we walked past one of those coin-operated photo booths on our way to our gate she excitedly said, “Let’s take some photos together.”

Damn straight, I thought. Let’s take some photos together because no one will believe this without photographic evidence.

So here it is — proof that I once had a very close, personal relationship with a Playboy bunny. So close, in fact, that she eagerly sat herself right smack on my lap.

As our plane touched down in Los Angeles she scrawled her name and phone number on a piece of paper and said, “This was fun. Give me a call and we’ll do it again.”

I could at this point delve into explicit details of the torrid affair we immediately launched into, make some veiled references to a series of kinky sexual exploits, and describe how this insatiable little manx could not keep her Playmate paws off of me, but unfortunately that would be complete bullshit. The truth is that we never went out. I just couldn’t get up the nerve to call her. She was a freakin’ Playboy bunny and I was a rube farmboy pretending to be a sophisticated advertising copywriter. I do not mind telling you that she scared the hell out of me.

I don’t even remember her name.

I wonder what ever happened to her.