Man, "like everybody got to be somewhere."

This is a fact.

It's what the hippie said when his "lady" friend's husband caught him hiding in the bedroom closet.

This was a popular expression back when America's "flower children" were in full bloom.

It was true then, it's true now and has been a fact of life since the beginning.

Sometimes life just comes right up and gives you a smart slap in the face.

Life as we know it often twists, turns and convolutes in the most capricious manner imaginable.

Best example of this we can think of off the cuff was illustrated in the life and times of the late Greta Garbo.

Try as she would during her lifetime there was no way the minions of the media would allow her the privacy she so very diligently sought.

All that Garbo really wanted was anonymity, a life apart from the glitz she had been subjected to in the atmosphere of Tinsel Town.

This she never accomplished.

Instead of becoming just another face in the passing throng, life put some reverse English on her druthers.

Rather than fading away into a sort of nothingness, the Garbo mystique, like Topsy, just growed and growed as time went by. It "growed" to enormous proportions, swelling almost to the bursting point.

Greta has been quoted as saying "I vant to be alone" and "I t'ink I go lay in the lake."

She was restless and daunted by the attention showered on her life via an unfeeling media that disregards entirely one's right to live one's life unmolested and without comment.

Particularly was this so in the case of Garbo who had scaled the heights of stardom.

Recently, much of the Garbo memorabilia was auctioned off, with many of her personal effects selling for ridiculous prices.

For example, one of her intimate handwritten letters sold for $30,000.

What in the world would anyone want with such a private and personal piece of correspondence, except to maybe use it as a conversation piece?

I have in my possession a whole slew of private, personal letters I'd dearly love to auction off if I could be assured of a hefty payoff.

If my "originals" were put on the block for bid, it's doubtful they'd fetch the original mailing cost, and many of them required only three-cent postage stamps.

C'est la vie, mon ami.

The cost of notoriety boggles the mind.

'Everybody got to be somewhere,' 'tis true, but regardless of station all mankind has a right to his privacy.

In our opinion, Greta Garbo had her priorities in their proper order.

In last week's column James T. Beeland's name inadvertently was ommitted fro the Starke University School's list of local alumni. The late probate judge's daughter, Mrs. Ewing Carter, pointed out the ommission.