Why Girls Walk Home.

Meyerhofer, Michael

A Hollywood short film from 1929
 SO these four flappers get a flat tire next to the beach--what to do
but shrug off a few pounds of cloth and go
skinny-dipping--which, in 1929, means splashing about in underwear
layered like a nun's habit.
Then this little black girl in a sail-white bonnet, peering out from a
few shy fingers of rock,
steals their clothes--then, it seems, their car. The women don't
care. They just laugh, hook arms and high-step
into the celluloid archives of my great-grandfather's time. But the
girl, that little savant with a jack
who could change a flat tire that left four white women all thumbs-- I
imagine her driving off
into some black and white sunset, feet barely reaching the pedals,
content to enjoy her trophies off-camera.