BESS MESS '11

No love for Bess Myerson - or, for that matter, Gretchen Carlson - in the reconfigured Rose Walk in Atlantic City. Our annual visit to the gambling mecca coinciding with the NJEA Convention reveals no new plaques (the Walk stops at 1999), and still no return of the missing plaques for Myerson, who was Miss America 1945, and Carlson, Miss America 1989.

Notice that a garbage can is no longer covering up the blank space where Myerson's plaque had been. There is now a jump from 1944 to 1946. The only other place where there's a skip year is 1949-1951, because there was no Miss America 1950 - beginning in that year, the winner's title reflected the year in which they performed most of their Miss America-type service. Hence, the year AFTER they were crowned. Oddly, the 1950 and 1989 positions on the walk are represented by a blank spacer. Perhaps when the walk was put back together, there was meant to be a blank in the 1945 position rather than the non-existent 1950 position.

Wouldn't it be easy to take one of the existing plaques, make a cast of it, then make new text for both Myerson and Carlson and all the other winners who were crowned in AC? Then the whole story of the pageant as it existed in its Atlantic City era would then be represented.