Once there was a young woman - Ruth Ericsson was her name - who worked at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel filing the nails and pushing back the cuticles of people she imagined were on their way to glamorous nightclubs, expensive restaurants and elegant society affairs. One day, John Robert Powers, of the famous modeling agency, was passing through the hotel and spotted Miss Ericsson.  "You are the most beautiful girl I've ever seen," he said to her.  "You must be my Miss Subways."

She was perplexed, but he placed her photograph in every subway car in New York.  She received 258 proposals of marriage, an orchid a day for six months from one smitten rider and, from an adoring bakery truck driver, a lemon meringue pie three feet in diameter.  This may sound like a fairy tale, but it's true.

The Miss Subways 2009 Reunion