Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1948)

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Chest Cold Misery Relieved by Moist Heat of ANTIPHLOGISTINE SIMPLE POULTICE The MOIST HEAT of an ANTIPHLOGISTINE poultice CHEST COLD CflRF THROAT relieves cough, tightness of DDnur-uini chest, muscle soreness due to BRONCHIAL chest cold, bronchial irritation IRRITATION and simple sore throat. Apply SIMPLE ANTIPHLOGISTINE poultice — .... _..■..« iust hot enough to be comSPRAIN, BRUISE for table— then feel the MOIST SORE MUSCLES HEA 7" go right to work on that «0U o cough, tightness of chest, DUILO muscle soreness. Does good, feels good for several hours. The MOIST HEAT of ANTIPHLOGISTINE poultice also reduces swelling and relieves pain due to a boil, simple sprain, bruise, or similar injury or condition and limbers up stiff, aching muscles. Li^lItipiIlOglStll] Get a tube or can at your drug store NOW! The White Package with the Orange Band POULTICE 76 years, but it's still a lifetime — which has been punctuated by shows. I went into my first one at the age of fifteen. My father had promised "'if I was a good boy," I would be permitted, when fall came, to take our show flock to the Ohio and Michigan state fairs. He sent me out alone. The lambs and I traveled in the same freight car. At night, I huddled up among them to sleep, and in the morning I woke up when my pets started nuzzling me with their noses. I WAS a frightened, homesick kid when I unloaded them at strange fair grounds and drove them into an exhibit barn. In the excitement of the show that feeling evaporated, but when I came home with blue ribbons, I owned the world. I've won many such prizes since. As a high school freshman, I had the grand champion Southdown wether lamb at the Wisconsin Junior Livestock show, took a similar prize at the University of Wisconsin's "Little International," won stock judging contests which sent me into national competitions. Through them all, winning has brought me that same lift of spirit. I might even stretch a point and say I won my wife in a contest. We met at a state convention of the Young People's Christian Union. She was on the committee which nominated me for president. I won the election — and the girl, Mary Jean Beigel of West Allis. We were married April 22, 1945, and now have a boy, Bruce David, three. Aside from the personal sense of achievement gained from winning on R.F.D. America, there's the added satisfaction of contributing toward better understanding between farm and city. Radio, as much as good roads, ended the day of the "hick." The isolation of farming, which in Europe grew so intense that the language of one valley could not be understood in the settlement on the other side of a mountain ridge, has broken down. Farmers today know what goes on in cities. The opposite, however, is not always true. To many city dwellers, farming is still a remote occupation. They still see it in terms of ox carts and asafedita. R.F.D. America lowers this barrier. Radio listeners, rural and urban, meet those who produce the food the world needs, they discover scientific farming is in practical, everyday use, and that the men and women who work at it are interesting individuals who can spice their exhibition of knowledge with quick wit and pleasant humor. There's Ed Bottcher who took over as Country Question Editor when the show moved to NBC and Joe Kelly found he could not quiz Quiz Kids and farmers at the same time. Ed, although he does today a professional radio performer's job on a big network show, is as much of a dirt farmer as his great grandfather who settled the land in Cullman County, Alabama. Entering Alabama Polytechnic Institute at fifteen, he took his Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture. Working for the Bureau of Entomology, he helped farmers fight boll worms, later became a county agent, and was county supervisor for the Farm Security Administration. Like me, Ed loves a challenge. He first came to R.F.D. America as one of three contestants from Alabama, and emerged from his first contest as runner up to the title of Champion Farmer of the Week. He got his second chance when the winner, a woman from Georgia, announced she couldn't return. She was "expecting" and her doctor would not allow her to travel. The defeat had sharpened his wits. During the intervening week, he crammed like a freshman studying for his first exam. He was not going to get licked again. He wasn't, either. He set an all-time record by winning eight times in succession. His prizes added $600 to his income tax, and he retired undefeated when he topped professional radio performers in the audition for Country Question Editor. As a five-day farmer, he now has less time to grab a fly rod and fish for the blue gills and large-mouth bass in his one-acre pond, for he has one of the longest commutation trips on record. Each week he travels 1,342 miles to spend his Saturdays and Sundays in Chicago. By this time he knows every pilot, stewardess and Pullman conductor en route, and he also has a large number of farmer friends from every state in the union. In contrast to Ed, there's Wayne Hardison of Carters Creek, Tennessee. Wayne is a Farm Bureau leader, and vitally interested in PTA and church work. Until R.F.D. America summoned him to Chicago, he had never been outside his state. He was so excited when the telegram arrived that he climbed on a horse, raced to tell a neighbor, then forgot the horse and walked home. His wife put a fruit cake in the oven to warm and let it burn to a crisp. Later, he asked when dinner would be served and had to be told he had already eaten it. Hardison told the R.F.D. America staff, "I've worked hard all my life. This is the first thing I didn't have to earn by the sweat of my brow and the toil of my hands. It's the most wonderful event that ever occurred to me." Mrs. Gertie Moody gave listeners a new insight into a woman's work. She has the man-sized job of managing an 80,000 acre property belonging to Delta Securities Company. In charge of grazing lands, farm tenants, trapping, hunting, camp site leases, oil leases, she is equally at home on a horse, driving a truck, rounding up cattle, behind her desk in the office, or solving school problems with her local PTA. DICK Heckendorf of Littleton, Colorado, is another one whom R.F.D. America sent back to his books. He won his title and held it through five shows until Clyde Rowe of Chandler, Arizona, took it away from him. Heckendorf compensated by staging his own version of R.F.D. America for the 4-H Clubs in his own community. If the show could stimulate farmers on a national scale, he reasoned, it could be equally exciting for the kids in his neighborhood. Robert Sawyer of Leland, Illinois, one of my coming opponents for the "Oscar," is going to be a tough man. He had years of coping with questions when he taught vocational agriculture, and he now does a good job of putting those theories into practice on his own farm. We'll have two other competitors, who, through run-off contests, earn their right to compete for the title of Farm Champion of the Year. We don't yet know their names (as this is written) but we already are certain of one thing — to go into that final contest, they will have to be good farmers, good citizens and good talkers.