It was a rainy night in Nashville when the lights went out. Barbara Moore was walking down Acklen Avenue when it happened. Zap! A bolt of lightning whams down about 12 inches from her pretty ankles. Streetlights are blinking and so is she, tiptoeing down the avenue, thinking, "I almost didn't live t
...o turn twenty-two." You might get a country song out of this popular local gal's brush with that bolt. Call it "One Foot Over and I'm Six Feet Under" maybe, or "You Can't Hide, You're Ionized." But Barbara never gave it much thought. She was busy setting Nashville afire with looks and charm, and anyway, a near-zap experience wasn't the first unusual event in her life. "A life full of excitement, that's a good life," says Barbara, now 24. Who else do you know whose earliest memory is of flying wingovers? Barbara's dad was a pilot in the Pacific Northwest, where she grew up. He'd often give the kids a thrill on family outings. Who else do you know who has worked a slime line? Barbara did, at a salmon cannery in Ketchikan, Alaska, where she gutted fish as they passed on a conveyer belt. She has been a flight attendant, a tournament polo player, a model and an actress who has made videos with Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, Jr., and Reba McEntire that have aired nationally on TNN and CMT. Now she is Miss December - a woman you're sure to love if you desire a little excitement. After American Eagle airlines brought flight attendant Barbara to Nashville in 1987, she tried her hand at modeling. Local TV ads and a national spot for Toyota - as the blonde in shades and a barely there red dress - led to videos with some of country music's biggest stars. During the shooting of Waylon Jennings' video "Wrong," Jennings jokingly called Barbara "double ugly." She was a cheating wife in Reba McEntire's "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" and spiced up Charlie Daniels' "Honky Tonk Life." It was heady work for someone who had once chased musicians. "My friend Jennifer and I went to concerts and never bought tickets. There was always a guy out back who got brownie points if he brought pretty girls backstage," she says. "He was the guy to show off for." Barbara still likes showing off, but she's more sophisticated these days. Rather than slipping through the stage door with a smile and a twitch of her hips, she now takes PLAYBOY's center stage as the season's star. "This will help my career because everybody everywhere will see me," she says, "but that's not the big thing." What is? "The fun. Talk about being the center of attention - I love having my picture taken." Her life was charmed already. When the airline offered a job in any three towns, she chose Nashville because her uncle Gene once spent time there and liked it. Or none of this might have happened. Unless, as Barbara believes, fate carried her to the centerfold: "I dreamed of this for so long, it had to happen." Remember that lightning bolt? It never had a chance.
