THE GUARD YEARS.(The Talk of the Town)

If this keeps up, the period between May, 1972, and May, 1973--the year in which almost no one seems to remember George W. Bush performing his duties as a member of the Alabama National Guard--will one day rank up there, mystery-wise, with the lost years of Shakespeare, or Chuck Barris. A few people have come forward to offer recollections of Bush reading through magazines in their offices or working for the senate campaign that brought him to Alabama. But down in Birmingham there is a lawyer who remembers him distinctly, not only because she spent part of that year with him on the campaign but because she dated him the following summer, in Texas. Her name is Mavanee Bear; at the time, she went by Nee Hudson.

"I dated George Bush, Jr., all summer long," she wrote to a friend in the spring of 1974, after Bush had gone up North to attend Harvard Business School. "He swears he will never again take an active part in politics--Ho Ho--Tell me if you believe that please?"

Reached by phone last week at her law office, in Birmingham, Bear groaned at the memory, then good-naturedly tried to fill in the picture of Bush's life during and after that controversial year. The two met while working together, in the summer and fall of 1972, on Winton (Red) Blount's losing campaign for an Alabama Senate seat. A friend of the Bush family had got young George a role in the Blount campaign, and the Texas Air National Guard had granted him permission to continue his service in Alabama. "I know he served" in the Guard there, Bear said, but "I didn't see him in uniform." She does claim to remember "plenty of times" when he had to reschedule meetings because, he said, he had Guard duties to perform. Later, when they were both in Houston and had started dating--and when no one disputes that he was serving--she frequently saw him in uniform. "I think he was mostly just flying in ...