The Waterbury Democrat., 1933-08-10
? IN : III { NEW II YORK
By PAUL HARRISON

New York.-Racing at saratogL Springs is GA years Old now. witb fine recent opening of the Friday season at the famous resort. But this month also marks another an- niversary there, and of an institu- tion even more widely known ana more truly American than racing. This is the eightieth birthday of the crisp, crunchy and thirst-provoking potato chip.
 Now that the gay days of pre- prohibition are back in Saratoga with a bang, or at least with a popping of the corks, and the night clubs and roadhouses have sprung into new life. and the long, shiny
 bars have been restored to the
 United States and the Grand Umon hotels. it's likely that there1l be d great revival of potato-chip eat ing. But so far nobody seems to have planned any tribute to the chips themselves.
 You remember, perhaps, that they used to call them Saratoga chips. It was there that they were invented, or perhaps just discover ed, in 1853. Saratoga was just a quiet town then. and not a society racing center full of mansions and casinos. There was, though, an establishment called Moons Lake House, which was a fashionable place to have dinner. There was also a chef named George Crum,
 cook in the days before the Civil War.
 It seems that one of the rheticu-
 lous dandies in the dining room sent back an order or fried pota- Swt too thick. Crum, who had a very uncertain temper anyway arl-
 nounced that, by, golly he would fix the fine gentleman's potatoes thiE
 enough this time, so he shaved of some fragile slices and dropped them into the boiling fat. The chef yanked them out in 6 minute, and soon found himself eating one and liking it. Mrs Cary
 Moon, who ran the place, liked them too and called them Saratoga
 chips. She ordered a lot more
 made, put them up in white paper
 cornucopias, and they became pop ular at once. Gentlemen munched them at the bar, and ladies bought them to nibble-while riding in
 their victorias.
 | Things are looking up these days | in an unusual branch of the ad- vertising business. This is skywrft-
 ing, which had become almost a
 lost art since the boom days, when
 manufacturers didn't seem to care
 how much of their money went up in smoke.
 The Skywriting company of America has managed somehow to
 keep alive, however, and now it is | beginning to get orders again from
 all over the United States. Planes are being fitted out with smoke
 apparatus, and skywriting pilots
 are being rounded up to take over
 the high responsibility of educat-
 ing the public in it's buying habits. The company admits that good
 skywriters are hard to find, be-
 cause they need a lot more than
 mere flying ability. Novices usu- over the sky, like scrambled anal
 gram blocks. And more than onea l beginner has dashed off sign thats
 would look all right from Mars,
 but would be written .backwards'
 for people gawking at it. from bed
 low. Sometimes, too, a word iH
 misspelled in letters a mile 1ona
 and that always. makes the advef
 Using client pretty angry. | Skywriting was started commer
 cially by a Captain George Ling-a
 ham, back in 1922. He was Brit
 ish war flyer who perfected the ap-)
 paratus holding the burning chemi-
 calls, and now is running the Eng
 fish branch of the company anal
 trying to produce smokes of dif-I
 ferent colors.
 Most of the pilots prefer to dol
 their work in script, though a few7
 of the experts print the letters ini
 capitals The letter w is the most
 difficult, and next hardest is cross
 ing T. They work at about
 10000 feet, and don't mind a wind
 as leng as 1t is steady one. The
 most important requirement. is
 cloudless sky. and their statistics
 show that only two days out, of five
 are clear in New York city