Remember little Mindy from the OFA band? Tiger allegedly does
One thing you can say about the north country is we love our celebrities. If you end up famous and grew up here, went to school here, vacationed here or stopped at a rest area here on the way to Ottawa, we love to tell the world about it.
When opera star Renee Fleming performs on A Prairie Home Companion, we'll be sure to tell you that she graduated from the Crane School of Music in Potsdam. When Viggo Mortensen gets mentioned as a candidate for an Oscar, we surely won't let you hear about it without adding the trivia that he is a Watertown native who went to St. Lawrence University in Canton.
That's the way we roll. Sure, you have to drive three hours to an airport to catch a one-hour flight. Sure, there are still some towns around here that don't have a Walmart. Sure, we might have more cows than humans. But we're not Podunksville as long as we have famous people to tell you about.
Frederick Remington. Kirk Douglas. Eric Cole. Tony Bennett. The guy who made Lifesavers famous. They all lived, learned or loved it somewhere in the north country. And they are all very famous in their various worlds. Now you can add Mindy Lawton to the list.
For a day or so, Lawton was just the fifth woman (yawn) to say she had chased the married gazillionaire golfer Tiger Woods around naked. Or been chased naked. Or tied up naked. Or something. It wasn't all that interesting or worth paying attention to until one of my reporters e-mailed me this message Monday morning. “Dude, I used to sit next to this woman in band. She graduated Ogdensburg Free Academy with me in 1994.”
That was when Lawton went from the latest floozie to come out of Tiger's closet, to Lawton – FORMERLY OF OGDENSBURG – the latest floozie to come out of Tiger's closet. Now she became worth talking about.
The Watertown Daily Times Web site and the Ogdensburg Journal ran the same photo of her in a red dress and red high-heeled shoes in a pose that is part seductress, part “oopsy doodle, I've fallen down and can't get up.” The photo, taken from the British Web site that first published her story, was probably shot as a promotional tool for use as she sells her tale to whatever media outlet wants to buy it. Or maybe it was put out there simply to provoke thought. That's the impact it had on me.
I thought that I surely would grab my putter and chase Ms. Formerly of Ogdensburg around any golf green in America if I had the chance. This is not just a woman with big hair willing to pose nearly prone in a provocative position. This is not just a woman famous for doing the freaky deaky with someone famous. She's all that and is from the north country, too. Be still my heart.
But my heart and everything else is 52 years old. I rarely use my driver anymore and I haven't sunk a meaningful putt in years. In short, I am no Tiger Woods. It's easy to see why a fat old divorced guy might find a 33-year-old glorified waitress worthy of a round on the links of love. Tiger, though, is ripped and rich. He is married to a Swedish model. He has two kids. It would seem that Ms. Formerly of Ogdensburg would have a better chance nailing a ticket to watch Woods play the Master's than she would of nailing him in his own master bedroom.
It is fascinating that she seems to have done the undoable. In the process, she became famous. It's all anyone in the north country is talking about these days. Afghanistan? Soooooo yesterday. The fraud that is the NCAA national football championship? Talk to me next year. Swine flu? Swine who? Did you hear that the girl with curly hair who used to play clarinet in the OFA band is saying she made music with Tiger Woods? Whooooo-hooooo, now you are talking. Now everyone is talking.
We love to talk about our north country celebrities. Thanks to Renee and Viggo and Frederick and Eric and Tony and the Lifesavers guy for giving us the chance. Ms. Formerly of Ogdensburg got herself famous and can't stop telling the world all about it. She is north country through and through. We'll be talking about that for years.
