Education: Vegetables

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It was dinner hour at The Balsams, Dixville Notch, N. H. Ravenous tourists and contented residents were scooping vegetables out of their "bird's bath-tubs," calling for more butter and chattering happily all through the airy dining-hall. Back and forth between her table and the kitchen, plied Helen Albro Park of Brooklyn, whose summer as a waitress was drawing to a close. Soon she would be returning to Boston University to take up her junior-year courses. How good it would be to handle books again after stacks of trays and dishes. . . .

"Helen!" whispered a girl who had hurried through the swinging doors. "You're wanted on the 'phone. It's long distance!"

As she pressed the receiver tighter and tighter to her ear, Helen Park was more and more mystified. Some one was telling her she had to go to California the next week ... by airplane . . . stopping overnight in Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha, Wichita, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City ... all expenses paid . . . $50 spending money . . . See America First . . . glorious . . . winner . . . congratulations . . . 12,000 contestants . . . and a return ticket . . . who? . . . Cove? Kove? GOVE, Gove, GOVE? Lydia Pinkham? ... At last Helen Park remembered. She had seen a notice that, for the best 250-word letter by a New England college student or graduate telling why he or she wanted to visit California, a free trip by air would be given by a Miss Lydia Pinkham Gove of Salem, Mass. Helen Park could remember nothing of what she had written except the tremendous reason, "just for the ride." It was astonishing, disconcerting. . . . Helen Park took the fuming lady at her table a cup of tea.

"I asked for a cup of coffee, about 10 minutes ago!"

No matter. Helen Park was flying to California. (Another winner: Margaret C. Sheehan, of Manchester, N. H., Trinity '19. Winners of the return flight from Los Angeles to Boston: Paul T. Wilson and Henry C. Fowler Jr., of Boston, seniors at M. I. T.)

That night in the waitresses' dormitory at The Balsams they discussed the miracle far into the night. Who on earth was Lydia Pinkham Gove? Why should she be handing out free airplane trips to California? One alert girl remembered reading in the newspapers that a Lydia Pinkham Gove of Salem, Mass., had just flown home from California with the pastor's assistant of the Second Unitarian Church of Salem, one James Luther Adams. Both passengers had been wildly enthusiastic about their jaunt. The newspaper, a local sheet, had called it "an important epoch in aviation history."

But still, who was Lydia Pinkham Gove? Another girl spoke up. Once her mother had had woman's trouble, couldn't do the housework, father had got blue and grumpy. Mother had read an advertisement in the farm journal, got some big bottles and pretty soon been all right again. On the bottle it had said, "Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound." Nice tasting stuff, too. Lots of women swore by it.

Once the Atlanta Journal editorialized as follows: