jean chronicles Urbane Legends: not quite as scary as Urban Legends, but so much more debonair

Halloween is coming up, so I thought I'd recount some of the Urbane Legends of my yute. I mean Youth. Sorry, I was chaneling Joe Pesci there for a second. He is not in any of the Urbane Legends.


Too bad, because he is wonderful in "My Cousin Vinny".
Anyway. So what is an Urbane Legend? I made the concept up, so I get to define it. Here is my definition:
"An Urbane Legend is the second cousin of an Urban Legend. Not as rustic as a Suburban Legend (also made up by me), an Urbane Legend embraces the devil-may-care 1930s and '40s in a slightly scary but not very scary manner. Occasionally Urbane Legends are set in modern times. That is because I don't know that much about the 1930s-'40s, just some films and stuff like that,"

Urbane Legend #1:

"It happened one night"

Some girl I knew when I was a teen told me this story. It is supposedly true and has been passed down and circulated by everybody and his brother. Here is how it goes. A girl was tired of walking one night, trying to get home to her house somewhere in New Jersey. She finally decided to risk hitchhiking. The road was dark and desolate. It had overgrown, creepy trees. However, she had hopes that a car would stop. She put out her thumb as she walked. First car that pulled up was driven by Douglas Adams. She shook her head ,"No", and walked on. He shrugged and disappeared in the darkness. The second car which stopped to offer her a ride was driven by Tom Robbins. She almost got in but at the last minute changed her mind. "Thanks anyway", she said, as she kept walking. She was getting pretty tired so she got into the car driven by the man with the hook for a hand, and headed off.
She just missed seeing the apparition of Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, right around the next corner:

Total bummer! She was never seen or heard from again.

So that is an Urbane Legend for you.
thanks for reading!