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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1948-12-09, Page 7There are quite a number of - • assorted, interesting—I hope—items which I've been saving but haven't got around to using, as yet. So it looks as though this week's column alight develop into a sort of hash. (Which remieds me of the old vaudeville act in which the waiter was taking the customers' orders, then shouting them out—in langu- age of his own—to the cook. One man ordered hash. "Clean up the kitchen for one!" yelled the -waiter promptly. • * * Over in Great Britain they're trying out a new method of storing apples and other fruits, as ,well as potatoes, using ordinary woodland moss to pack the stuff in. Until next June, when the 600 tons of apples packed this way as an experiment -are uncovered, it won't be known whether the system is suited to British climatic conditions — but they're hoping it will spread their home-grown fruit supplies over a nine -months period, instead of six, as at present. This system of moss storage was discovered accidentally some years ago. by a Swiss engineer, who want- ed to get some rare orchids he had found in the Himalayas home alive. He lined a wooden box with damp moss, gathered at random, then placed the orchids inside, and hoped for the best. When he opened the box in Switzerland, the orchids were in perfect condition x: * * So next he experimented with fruits, and found that the moss— according to its degree of dampness —had the power of releasing moist- ure, or. • of absorbing it from the atmosphere, thereby maintaining a constant humidity. Furthermore, because of the evaporation which took place, it had a endency to lower the temperature and hold it steady. In addition, it purifies and regenerates the atmosphere, be- cause the moss "breathes"—or ab- sorbs air. • * * Now, on the continent, railway trucks are equipped with the moss, system. of storage—and it has even been used successfully as a method of keeping cheese fresh. The Swiss engineer has developed it on a com- mercial basis and is meeting with great success- Sounds like some- thing worth giving a trial. �. * * Th "public opinion poll" boys are still at it—or maybe this one . took place before She Trunian4Dewey thing knocked them for a loop. Any- way, several hundred farmers were askd this qustion—How do you de- cide whether a man is a "success- ful farmer?" A good share of them replied, "He's the• than who does a really good job of soil conserva- tion." Men who "got big yields, or who made a lot of money, didn't rank nearly as high in the opinion of their fellow -farmers. • * * Which brings up the tale of the man who was driving through some very steep hilly country and, notic- ing cattle grazing, asked farmers in the neighborhood just how the stock did on such "pasture." "They don't get any feed," one man jokingly replied, "but they sure do get a lot of exercise." * * * But lettting stock graze on such land is just about the worst thing that could be done. The cattle crop the grass short; then the water slides off the slopes as if the hill- sides were greased. That water comes rushing down' to gouge out• new gullies on the good farmland below. a: a: * The same roan drove a little further along and cane to some hills that really had a lot of grass on than. He asked a Soil Conservation expert "How come?" "Those farmers fenced the stock off and let the native grasses do a come -back," was the answer. "Now they pasture those hills only about two months every other year." d: * * This might .be a good time for a reminder that water pipes less than three feet deep in the ground should be covered with straw or spoiled hay to prevent danger of freezing. Also that sparrows in poultry houses are parasite and disease carriers.. The higher openings in the poultry houses should have screens. • * * There have been many warnings in the past about the danger of , feeding treated seed oats to live- • stock. But there are always a few farmers who think they can get away with using just a few bushels as feed. * * * Well, recently at an American University a, test was made. Eight pigs , were divided into four lots. Two were fed untreated oats and water. The others were fed oats treated with one half ounce of Ceresan M per bushel for 'periods of 10, 20 and 30 days. * * * What happened? The' pigs that ate the treated oats for 10 days livedthrough the test. Pigs in the 20 -day trial lived through the test period, but died later. The 30 -day test couldn't be completed as the pigs died before the time was up. x: * * Which should be just about enough hash, I ineagine, for one* serving. Car Tires Made With Soap, Sugar - Motorists can look forward to 'bet • - ter tires of synthetic rubber, made according to new recipes- employ- ing soap and sugar, according to a prominent Illinois scientist. The quality of GR -S, the synthe- tic rubber blended with natural rubber in all tire treads, has been greatly improved by the recent de- velopment of an amazingly rapid 'redox" process, according to Pro- fessor Marvel, who directed an im- portant phase of the World War II research on synthetic rubber. This new method makes it pos- sible to manufacture rubber at freezing or subfreezing tempera- tures instead of at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, the conventional tem- perature, he said, asserting that the quality of GR -S and similar rub- bers seems to go up as the temper- ature goes down. GR -S is essentially a combination of two liquid petroleum com- pounds, butadiene and styrene, which are made to unite (pelynier- ize) by 'a chemical stimulant (a catalyst). In the redox process, the compounds are first emulsified with a soap, and, the reaction is started by a type of sugar, which is called the activator. Life's Like That "Everytime I come to one I just close my eyes and step on the gas I" TMAS WEEK BEDTIME Sy GLUYAS WILLI SAYS GooD-NIGHT TO WIFE IS JUST DROPPING OfF MUTTERS TO REMIND AND SETTLES FOR SLEEP, WHEN WIFE MURMURS HIM IN THE MORNING VERY TIRED.FPCOM HE'D BETTER GET SONO* AND GLASES EYES CHRISTMAS s c'''ING MORE OFtNAMES1TS ICOR ' (FIRMLY THE TRE, MOST Of LAST YEAR'S GOT BROKEN ASLEEP Y/ITSSHE'S ABOUT G Vt ItI41 T 1W Iron!! n !! TRYING TTTbbo EIDE If TO MR4.Ma t bi . WAKE Fav �R0AM NG A CARD 16 HOUGH To SOMRi1MES 0 V $ AT SHE'$ FORGOTTEN SEND THE WIMPLES SOMETIMES DOESN OUSIN 1cFFtE STRUGGLES 10 Cxfj' TO SLEEP 141-11t,W(F p CHECKS On'!alt' OF P0461811G�T9 0 COUSIN EP 1R ;VER ANI>Y RUR "ring That's Orson and Tyrone, All Dressed Up—While making a -movie in Rome—based on the life of Cesare Borgia, Orson Welles, left, and Tyrone Power, right, wear the colorful cos- tames of the Fifteenth Century. Actor between is unidentified. "Our Gracie" Works With All :'She Has Everyone knows Gracie Fields, "Our Gracie," the large -hearted, 'humorous character, who interspers- - es comedy songs with serious ones, sings Schubert's "Ave Maria", after "Turn Herbert's Face:to"the Wall, Mother 1;" and gets away with it; the Lancashire mill girl who, with no pretence at being a lady or "talking posh" has endeared herself to mil- lions of people everywhere by her inimitable personality and inex- haustible vitality. _ That is the Gracie 'heard on the air and seen ori" the stage. But what is she like at rehearsal? She is amazing when she is re- hearsing in a radio studio; she works hard, never questions the pro- . ducer's decision, sings each song as many times as he wants without complaint, and.. accepts cuts, or sings extra choruses , without a word of protest. When the orches- tra is reharsing alone she sits quiet- ly resting, sometimes . pushing her hand through her blonde curls, or perhaps playing with the black beret she often wears. But when she gets to the micro- phone the fun begins. She will prob- ably go up the'few stairs to the stage bent almost double, lifting her legs with her hands as she makes awful clicking noises to symbolize the creaking of her ageing joints; she will sing a serious song and, noting somebody passing at the back of her, will stick out her foot and trip him; she will fling out her arms in a graceful gesture when she gets the feel of a popular number and a moment afterwards sway from side to side like a woman hav- ing a fierce argument with her butcher. She cannot resist guying a straight number and for a really conic one will crush on the beret, wearing it at some peculiar and most unorthodox angle and, letting herself go at full ..+tilt, steps back from the microphone and screams raucously "What 'as SHE got, that I 'aven't got?" Immediately after- wards as she is singing a really sen- sational number, she will push the beret over her nose and pull a hide- ous face yet, so powerful is her con- trol over an audience—which in this case is the orchestra, a few engine- ers and one or two others, that no one laughs, although slie is lobking extremely funny. • Guying her songs is part of her personality and not just put on for the occasion, for when Gracie has an audience, no matter how small a one, she reacts to it like, a,flower to the sun. At rehearsal 'she doesn't .bother to put on any glamorous stuff; there she is, the strapping, big -boned Lancashire lass, singing away like a lark—or a jay. Audi- ences in the theatre, or on the air, can either take her or leave her; the vast majority take her. How "Swat -the -Fly" Campaign Began In the Kansas of 1905 there were too many cases of typhoid fever, too many deaths from it, and far too many flies. Residents of the State took flies for granted. They called them a nuisance, and let it go at that. How could any doctor convince them that the insect; carried typhoid germs, and could even cause epidemics? To persuade all Kansa}hs to join in a war on flies was the job of Samuel J. Crumbine, intrepid To- • peka public-health expert, who had learned `.through the Spanish-Am- erican War that flies meant to medicine. Crumbine published and distributed a "Fly Bulletin; ex- plaining:the menage of to inhsect. . He advocated house screens, and mailed ,out recipes for making fly paper. ,.A Slogan Born lien came what Crumbine calls "the •ntttist productive day of my life.", I'e' was watching the West- ern League baseball club's opening of the season. With one man out and a runner on third base, the next hatter came to the plate. Excited fans yelled "Sacrifice fly!" When the batter swung and missed the first ball,,a tentorian voice boomed: "Swat that ball!" An idea began to emerge in Crumbine's brain.. "I have it," he yelled. "Swat the fly!" Taking an old . envelope from his pocket, he jotted down the slogan that was to sweep the country and become part of the American vocabulary. Crumbine was born in 1862 in a log cabin. He worked his ivay through two years of medical school and then hung out his. shingle in the cow -country capital, Dodge City, Kansas. Always A Crusader In those days the West was the haven of tubercular Easterners. They travelled across Kansas in trains or wagons, bearing jugs of "rock 'n' rye," the only medicine prescribed for the disease. Crum - bine, as secretary of the Board of Health, began to investigate the cause and transmission of the White Plague. One hot day in 1901, while ,riding a Missouri Pacific train, Crumbine went to the water cooler for a drink. Ahead of hint was a tall, thin man with a racking cough, and a tow- headed 5 -year-old girl. The man filled the 'train's only drinking cup with water and drank. Then the little girl eagerly • swallowed from the same cup. Crumbine was on his way to in- vestigate a smallpox epidemic, but the scene on the train made that trifling. There should be a law for- bidding the tin cup, attached to the chain, iib every coach. The doctor went to work. The railroads ob- jected. It took two years, but in March 1909 Kansas passed a law prohibiting the common drinking cup. Soon after that, the roller tpwel also met .Its end. With the Movie nd Radio Folks By Grace Sharp Right after hearing Fred Allen's first radio program—the one In which he did that screamingly funny burlesque of "Stop the Music"—I wrote something to the effect that while that sort of thing was O.K. for a "single shot", keeping it up would he a mistake. Talking too much about your competitors' goods is a bad thing in merchandising— tending to "back -fire" on your own wares—and the same thing goes in show business. * * Now it's reported that "Baggy Eyes" may abandon his insurance plan which guarantees listeners against loss on "Stop the Music" payoffs while they're tuned in to the Allen. show—and I hope its tree because, from the way I look atit, such an offer should never have been made. No claims for such in- surance have been made as yet—at least not legitimate ones. More than that, Fred's stunt hasn't affected the giveaway show's popularity, which is still ahead of Alien's. * * And now they say that "Stop the Music" is considering a plan to offer just as a gag, of course— copies of all the best jokes Alien puts on the air -waves to its own listeners on request. Sounds to me as if both sides would be better to try and "act their ages." is * * They've xns.de movies about the doings of practically every famous personage, from Cesare Borgia to Al Jolson, now' comes one about a famous horse—the great pacer, Dan Patch. Charlotte Greenwood will have a big comedy role in the flick- er; and if the horse that playa the part of• "Dan Patch" is as good an actor as the original, Charlotte will have her work cut out to "top" him. * * * For _although I don't remember hint personally, those that know tell me that the real Dan Patch—be- sides being a wonderful pacer—had a huge streak of "ham" in him. After ' leading his opposition to the wire he'd parade past the crowded stands, actually "bowing" in response to the applause. Once, when he "broke" coming through the stretch—whatever that means—Dan Patch was so ashamed of himself that he refused to face the spectators but, instead, ducked through an exit and headed for the stables. And it is said that there wag a standing bet that no camera man. Just For Fun The teacher, explaining to her young pupils that the earth was round, asked questions to bring out her point. "Herman," she asked, "could you walk around the earth?" "No, ma'am," promptly re- plied little Herman. "l,Vhy not?" asked the teacher. "Because my mother won't al- low me. to leave the back yard." "No," the youngster replied, "but I have two brothers and they have a sister." And then she joyfully added. "And I'm the sister!" could take a picture of the horse that showed him otherwise thee: facing straight into the camera. Tele seemed to sense the presence of a camera—and try as they might to catch him sideways, before the shut- ter clicked, Dan would be staring proudly straight to the lens. So, as I said before, if the new Dan Patch is anything like the actor the original was, long-legged Charlotte Greenwood will have an awful time "stealing" any scenes from the pacer. Back to the screen, after an ab- sence of six years, comes Anna May Wong, one of my real favorites of yore. She'll be appearing in an opus titled "Impact" along with Brian Donlevy and Ella Raines. Just vehy she's getting a chance to do this comeback through one of those .queer switches that could take place only out in California. * The part was originally that of a Swedish maid. Then the producer decided to use San Fransico's Chinatown as a background—so in- stead of a "Yetta Yensen" type they decided to use the Chinese-Ameri- can darkeyed beauty. At all events I'm glad that we're to have another peek at Anna May, and imagine there are plenty more like me. Which will have to be all for just now. Great Lake of Pitch Source of Unlimited Supply of Asphalt One of Nature's strangest phen- omena is Trinadad's fafnous Lake of Pitch. During the past one hun- dred years or so, millions of tons of asphalt have been dug out front its surface and exported to pave the streets and highways of most of the world's principal towns and cities. Yet, for all this, the quantity of the asphalt in the lake shows no visible signs of diminishing. Up to the present, no satisfactory mechanical device has been found for extracting the asphalt. Every pound taken from its 114 -acre sur- face has to he laboriously dug out by hand -wielded pick and shovel. As the asphalt is removed ton by ton, pits and breakages are left in its even surface. Yet within a few days they are filled with new pitch, pushed up from below front some hidden and apparently inexhaust- ible source. The surface of this lake is al- ways on the move, although its movements are so slow that they escape the eye. Its mass turns and folds over upon itself continuously. Sometimes it claims for its own any object that may have been care- lessly left on its surface, and at other times some ancient fossil or long -lost treasure that had disap- peared many years before is ex- purgated. It is because of this dangerous movement of the lake's surface that the light railway which runs out across it to carry. away the asphalt as it is dug has to be relaid daily, so that it, too, shall not sink out of sight. Scientists have not decided on the origin of the lake, but they agree that the pitch is sufficient to supply the world's needs for many. generations. You Just Cut Them Out and Blow Them Up—It is customary for Canada. to import new ideas in children's toys from south of the border—but this time it's different. These new Walt Disney character toys not only show children how to use the scissors carefully but also furnish them with a lot of fun. Made of strong Vinylite plastic, each toy is equipped with a novel self-sealing valve. Of Canadian design and manufacture, the toys will soon be marketed in the United States as well ea throughout the Dominion. TTLE RE E. 6.00K ' AT MRS IGWTO%lER 5 kA - "1b10RIA NOT A LEAF ON 6T 0traAND 1,0.1EN 1 -GET 1: -YOU HAVE .,EAF GANG[