"Give me your tired, your poor,

- Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Such are the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty. I find them more than a little ironic now and then, and especially today as I drove by the Statue of Liberty this morning, who by this time tomorrow will be out of a job. No I am not talking about that big copper one in New York, I am referring instead to the one who stands outside the Liberty Tax Service where Mary and I get our taxes done every year, waving a paper mache torch and hailing cars into the parking lot. This year She has a beard.

The tax service hires out-of-work actors every year to fill this role, as well as that of Uncle Sam who wears a top hat that looks like it has been run over by a truck. The actors are intrepid sticking to their posts no matter what the weather, from about November on through tax season. On more than one occasion I have seen Lady Liberty standing in the snow in hip boots and icycles hanging off the points of her crown.

Obviously she is going to need a new gig. This is not the only time of course that Liberty has had to sell herself for a cause, in browsing the internet I can see that she has shown up in all sorts of less than dignified roles. I particularly lilke the one where she proudly stands for the right to Pall Malls. I do have to wonder if she signed onto this one blindly - and if in fact that accounts for the complete cosmetic overhaul she had to have done a few years back.

The fact that this year's Liberty had a beard seems seems appropriate to me, as it throws out the preconceived notion that She has to be a she. In fact now that I think of it, I am not so sure that Uncle Sam has been consistently a he. Last year, Sam wore a pink-flowered sweater most of the season. No one seemed to care much, and He did have a great deal of enthusiasm, periodically tossing coffee cups at the drivers that refused to wave back at him.

And what about shoes. As I mentioned above, I have seen hip boots but I also have seen a purist version, choosing to remain barefooted through even the nastiest of rainy weather. True to the original, I suppose, but I do recall that by the time the snow hit that year, Liberty was out of commission for a while leaving Sam on his own. Presumably Liberty was someplace nursing away the pneumonia she had brought on for the sake of her art. Had she only looked a bit more closely, the original wears a pair of Birkenstocks, which would have been a massive saving grace if the Portland Liberty had only paid attention. Actors.

Growing up in Seattle, I remember seeing the Statue of Liberty on a fairly regular basis. She stands on the beach on Alki Point, and is a massive eight feet tall. She seemed pretty spectacular to someone standing next to it. I also did get to see that one in New York Harbor from the Newark airport. At the time she was sheathed in all the scaffolding that was necessary while she was being scrubbed, and really all that I could see was the top of the torch. From three miles away it was less than moving.

But as of tomorrow, the street will be bare, and Sam will have hung up his battered striped hat and Liberty will have hung up her mold-green bedsheet. These two will have to cash their last checks and check in at the local Actors Guild, hoping for a new opportunity. They do have the Fourth of July coming up; maybe someone will take pity on these sorry icons...maybe I will drive by Costco or WalMart and see them there hailing in cars and waving menacingly. Maybe that's what was meant by "I lift my lamp by the golden door"....? Oh one can only hope.