MARIGNY DUPUY, New Orleans, Children’s Book Columnist for The Times-Picayune

   I have already written a piece for the last Maple Street Wag about the influence Mary Faust had on my life. Looking back, I see that her daughter Rhoda had an equally strong (but perhaps not quite as wholesome) effect herself. Chris Wiltz reported in an earlier Wag that on the day in 1965 when she and Rhoda came into the shop to give me, Mary’s new employee, "the business." Well, this is what it looked like from my side of the desk.

   It was late afternoon, and I was done with my classes at Newcomb for the day. Mary had gone out on an errand, leaving me in charge of the shop. I was sitting at the desk dressed, I think, in a floral print Villager dress with a Peter Pan collar and, most likely, a matching cardigan. I was probably tiding up or filing something, anything to be extra helpful because I was practically beside myself with pleasure to have such a wonderful part-time job at age seventeen.

     The shop was quiet. I heard the front door open and close and I looked up to see two very tall and definitely cool college girls. I remember Chris’s height but not exactly what she was wearing. I will, on the other hand, never forget what Rhoda had on. Rhoda wore black jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, black boots, black finger nail polish, and she had blond hair that hung to her waist. I had never before seen anyone who looked like that.

   Rhoda made it clear that she had come in to check me out. We had spoken on the phone a few times when she called her mother from away at college, but this was the first face-to-face. She asked a few exploratory questions in a slightly mocking but faintly humorous tone. Chris went into the back of the shop to look for a book, and Rhoda hit me with the big one, "So, does your family have money?"

   I remember being dumbfounded by the question, but I don’t remember my reply. I think that I must have been quick enough to shoot something back at her, and I think we both began to laugh. It was the beginning of a friendship.

   Within a few months, I had shed my floral prints and was wearing blue jeans and boots myself and learning under Rhoda’s careful tutelage how to walk in a cool, hip way. Chris was already cool, and Rhoda was beyond cool, so now we could pal around together being cool and doing cool things. And we did.