Lovely Lori (Reta Gene)

If I could remember the exact date that I met the woman I was to marry, the presentation of the astrology behind it would be even more dramatic. I do know I met the woman I'll always remember as Georgie in June of 1975. I'll just have to approximate the date for the middle of the month, using June 15^th to check for the solar arc positions. I had SA Moon = Neptune, as well as SA Saturn and SA Mercury both = my MC.

This is a very difficult story to start at the beginning. As it stands now, there are so many factors that have to be weighed with the perspective of the lapse of many years between then and now.

I met Georgie at Press and Ima Roberts' Arcane Book Store in Portland, Oregon. Once after visiting his store one Saturday, Press suggested that I give her a ride home. I did and the next week I asked her out to dinner. On our first date, just to make conversation, I asked her if she knew any famous people. When she started stammering, I should have suspected something. Since she, herself, was extremely psychic, she probably just assumed that I was equally psychic, and suspected something. In reality, I am as psychic as the legendary bag of hammers. Later when I discovered her to be a compulsive chatterbox, I concluded that my simple, innoocent question must have really shaken her if it made her clam up so tightly. Later, it took a lot of work on both her part and mine, but we eventually got to know each other, somewhat. After experiencing a number of supernatural occurrences, it came out that not only had Georgie met the Beatles, she was friends with some of them. In fact she had even changed her name in a court of law to Georgeanne Veronica Harrison to honor her favorite one (and one of her favorite saints, as well.)

As the months went by, and I got to know her and her relatives, I became rather puzzled why her 17-year-younger half-brother always called her “Sister” and never by her name. I was later told that it was to make it easier on him having to deal with her name change. But it turned out that she had a number of names floating around in the ether for her. Officially, her given name was Loreta Gene McClearen. Since Loreta has only one “T”, the “E” is lengthened, as compared with “Loretta”. Add to this the fact that since her mother's name was also Loreta, my future wife was called “Reta Gene” by her family members. She didn't like that because she wanted her own identity. So she had her friends and peers call her “Lori”. Keeping in mind that because she was a compulsive chatterbox, she gave this background to most of her friends--including Paul McCartney. When she told Paul that in the United States, traffic wardens were called “meter maids”, he thought that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. So what started out as gentle teasing, “Reta Gene the Meter Maid” morphed into the hook on which “Lovely Rita” of the Sgt. Pepper album was based. In fact the term “meter maid” was not used in England until the Beatles popularized it.

Here is a link to read about her in the Astrologers' Memorial web page: http://www.solsticepoint.com/astrologersmemorial/borkowski.html