Medicine: Colorado Interlude

Outside the little town of Merino, Colo., Albert Stark rattled along with a truckload of fertilizer. Some 1,400 miles away, in San Francisco, the World Security conference was scarcely two hours old; Mutual’s commentators were up to their ears in commentating, and the Blue was airing an ambitious Ben Hecht dramatization of “the little people’s” hopes for the world’s future.

Suddenly Albert Stark’s truck struck a soft shoulder, slithered 175 feet off the road and hit a telephone pole. Down came the pole, and the wires snapped. Everywhere east of Denver, San Francisco was off the air.

Mutual was silent for two and a half minutes, then carried on with recorded music from Chicago. The Blue was silent for about a minute and a half, then sloped into an organ recital. NBC’s Eddie Cantor show from Hollywood was also knocked off the eastern air.

For some seven minutes the dominant voice on the U.S. air was Frank Sinatra’s. The line that linked his CBS coast-to-coast hookup was on another pole.