In the battle of the Arlingtons, there's only one king

A liberal dose

March 04, 2008

Just for a while it looked as if the mayor of Arlington, Ore., -- the honorable Carmen Kontur Gronquist -- had really figured out a way to publicize her city in the context of posing for MySpace.

She struck a muscularly buff pose in black lingerie on a firetruck, the amount of skin exposure being mildly interesting but considerably less so than lots of bikinis would have revealed.

For two or three months Gronquist picked up more personal ink than any mayor of any Arlington in the country, not bad considering that Arlington, Texas, is the site of such future events as the Super Bowl and World Series and thus gets lots of newsprint and ink

OK, OK, maybe the World Series is a stretch. Hope springs eternal.

For the record, there are 16 Arlingtons in the USA -- 19 if we count two Arlington Heights (no connection to the Fort Worth neighborhood) and one Upper Arlington. The Arlington in Texas is by far the most populous at 370,000, way ahead of Arlington, Ore., which contends for the country's smallest Arlington with 524.

The Oregon version probably would have grown bigger but a dam on the Columbia River put the town under water, and it was relocated. Flooding definitely has urban renewal potential. Just ask anybody who used to live on Johnson Creek.

Most Arlingtons, by the way, are named one way or another after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's residence in Virginia, Arlington House. The Oregon version isn't, being named indirectly in honor of attorney Nathan Arlington Cornish, who some historians suggest offered up the name without revealing it was his middle name.

Arlington, Texas, dates from 1884; Arlington, Ore., from 1885.

Not to be outdone by some small-town Arlington mayor, Texas Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck also posed for a calendar this year. He's Mr. November in the 2008 Theatre Arlington calendar, but alas got nowhere near the media coverage of Gronquist despite some creative camera work by photog Martin Durbec.

This is probably because Cluck wasn't on a firetruck. Or maybe because he didn't wear lingerie. Not even Speedos. In fact, let us dismiss that particular picture entirely from our mind.

The calendar theme focused on posing local personalities as characters from past Theatre Arlington Performances. Quirky UTA Prof. Allan Saxe, for instance, is the nerdish suddenly Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors. See January.

Cluck ended up as Henry VIII, encased from the neck down in a royal robe while brandishing a turkey leg. Henry VIII was supposedly Shakespeare's last play. The calendar demonstrates just how difficult it is to be both sexy and the mayor. The pic didn't exactly swamp the Internet.

Theatre Arlington did, however, recover its costs and even made a few bucks on the calendar.

At that, Cluck did considerably better than Gronquist. One thing led to another in little Arlington, Ore., and voters last week recalled the mayor by a scant three votes, 142-139. So maybe Cluck in Speedos was a bad idea after all.

It's not too late to grab one of the calendars, though. While they last, Theatre Arlington will give one away to anybody who buys a ticket to Aladdin Jr. this weekend. Order at 817-261-9628.

I know. You want to see the Gronquist picture, don't you? It's a family newspaper.

Try Google.

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