Amy, Nancy, and Jill liked the liquor store the best. It was at the end of the string of shops, the farthest from the grocery store, and it was unexceptional except for two things: candy and the contest.

The grocery store had candy too, but not as big a penny selection. Only the liquor store had the Miss Reingold contest.

The election material was the ballot container was a cigar box. It stood on the counter next to the cash register. Its lid was permanently flipped open, displaying photos of the contestants. The six women pictured were luscious and near-nude; Amy and her friends were as fascinated by their suggestive beauty as they were by the illustrations in Amy’s father’s volume of Candide or by the pictures in Jill’s older brother’s hidden Playboy. They picked their favorites and several times tried to add their votes to the folded papers collecting in the box, but the store owner always fished theirs back out and told them they had to be grown up to buy the Reingold beer and they had to be able to buy the beer to vote.

In time Amy forgot about Nancy and Jill. They were never any closer than convenience, and Amy ended up moving away from Glen Cove shortly before her ninth birthday. But she never forgot the bright lips, shiny hairdos and ballooning boobs of the Miss Reingold contestants. She never forgot the song.

When she was grown Amy came to understand copyrights and advertising procedures, but at first she thought the tune was original for the beer. She had no idea then that the brewing company paid to use the music from “The Bridge On the River Kwai;” she just sang the words Reingold, the beer that’s extra dry so much her parents worried a little. She knew it so well that when a cereal company also paid for the song rights and slapped on the words Winners…warm up with Malt-O-Meal, she grew indignant and complained to her parents about infringement. That’s when they told her the music had originally been created to go with a movie about war; they even found the soundtrack and bought it and played it for Amy on the big phonograph in the livingroom.

When Amy was grown and reminisced about those times, she began to comprehend the shapes of the metaphors. She saw a suburban little girl, subliminally serenaded by a battle song which had been co-opted by a beer and a boxed cereal, respectively.

For Amy is grown now. She and her coworkers are mostly baby boomers so their trivia games concern the late 50s and early 60s. There’s always a lot of light and time, even after their 10 p.m. suppers; they often play. In recent weeks the recurring subjects have been sad, frightening, or really bad films.

Amy’s first scary movie was “The Blob.” Most of her friends got to see one of the Dracula movies at the Cove Theatre; her mother wouldn’t let her go. But what did Amy’s mother know about sci fi? So Amy saw “The Blob.”

It was a memorable experience. She sat between Jill and Nancy, their fingers stained and sticky with berry juice from the walk, their molars jammed with Sugar Babies. As the plot intensified she pressed her back against the plush theater seat, her eyes wide open and stuck on the screen. She wouldn’t have closed them for the world; she had to keep watching the oozing red goo, even while she wondered at her Dracula-experienced friends covering theirs and shrieking.

She took in the ending with deep satisfaction. Ever after she had a crush on Steve McQueen. The resolution reenforced her love of ice and snow and winter. Cold and clean.

When Amy was 13, four years after her family left Glen Cove for the west coast, she first read Rachel Carson. By the time she was 15 she was into conservation and aimed at a career in marine biology. She would have called herself an environmentalist if the term had existed.

But it wasn’t until she was grown, talking trivia with her coworkers after a long day of measuring sea ice, that she watched the movie with a seasoned brain. They always laughed when they played trivia, but recalling “The Blob” entertained them so much they ordered it and viewed it. So they were all up later than usual last night, and they were all sadder than usual, after.