The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-01-31
SOUTH BRITAIN BRIEFS
By BILL GARRIGUs

L | N
 By BILL GARREGUs
 The town health situation might be better. Cold weather and low- cred vitality generally are making inroads into the community. Joe Evarts delivered a consignment of skunk oil to an ailing villager the same day an inexperienced Boy Scout patrol leader took his charges out to map thirty-acre lot. The medicine cabinet in Mo- Carthy's store is just about de- pleted, but a new soft drink sign makes the citizenry more hopeful.
 In . town where the state has built a 5H million dollar training school for subnOrmaI youngsters, we might expect . higher sanita- tiOn rating i'm the public schools. The town health OlEicer does his best but he has been hampered by lack of funds and by the regi- mentatiOn inflicted on the village by the state board of education, or the state health department. When classes were held at the town hall recently, citizens were shocked to see individual paper drinking cups lined up on the window sill, each cup bearing the owners name. In- quiry developed that each child could have but . single cup each week. That's fair enough during cold weather but when it warns up and germs increase and multi ply, its another story. The bac- teria count climbs skyward as the thermometer rises.
 Men are not as husky as they used to be. When the Deacon was only lad of fourteen, he gave a demonstration of strength that is still related here as an indication of what a diet of pork and beans will do toward muscle building. It seems that one of the elders was coming down of 6quaw Rock with 8 pair of Devons hooked onto 8 two-cord load of green hickory. The cattle shied, bolted, bumped @ rock 50 hard that 8 wheel came of. But the Deacon saved the day. He put one brawny paw beneath the axle and supported the totter- ing load while with the other hand he grabbed the tailboard in a death grip, set his feet, and slowly halted the plunging oxcart. If that boy had been nourished on packaged breakfast foods and cream, lives would have been lost, property damaged, and money wasted.
 A movement is afoot to form Q potato marketing co-op. Too many spuds are sold independently. Prices are too high. Sometimes people get rich and go to Florida after raising spuds for Q few sea- sons. It will be different when we get the new cO-op operating right. Folks will leither have to sell pOta- toes as we direct, or feed 'em to the hogs. Perhaps we can put through some legislation to create . job fer somebody as state potato commissioner. Maybe we can get . crew of spud inspectors organ ixed under the Merit System and get this marketing outfit on a scientific basis from the start. 1t all depends on whom we send to the General Assembly.
 Potato production will be care- fully regulated under this simpli- fled system and fines will be levied for over cropping. Spuds will be classified, not as to their market value or the demand, but accord- ing to the use made of the prodrct by the consumer. If we disco er that most folks boil spuds and feed them out warm, the coop will pay in Glass A, but if there's any indication that potatoes are warmed over, fed cold, or used in salads, we will place certain per- centage in each purchase in Class B and pay Q much lower price for them. When 8 grower signs up at the beginning of the year, that quota must be met to the last po- tato. Borrowing a few bushel from : neighbor won't do. Tests will be conducted regularly to determine the exact water content of potatoes under contract. Fertilizer and spray dope will have to be pur- chased through the co-op. A pre- mium of about cents per bushel will be paid for pirlk-skinned early potatoes. This co-op will not only stabilize the, potato market but 1t will aid materially in the even- tua1 elimination of unemployment through the new jobs created. (It works out in milk production. Why not in potato farmingO
 No sooner is the last installment paid for the publicity afforded by the 1889 mug book than a collec- ton Is started for Finnish relief. Maybe some day we will finish with relief; or maybe relief will finish us.