showed me that evening long ago.
But we still get some publicity now and then. The other night I was listening to my favourite newscaster and he had an item he had a lot of fun with.
'Is there really such a place as Coon Valley?' he asked and you could hear the chuckle just behind the words. 'If there is, the government would like to know about it. The maps insist there is and there are statistics on the books that say it's a place where there is no sickness, where the climate is ideal, where there's never a crop failure?a land of milk and honey. Investigators have gone out to seek the truth of this and they can't find the place, although people in nearby communities insist there's such a valley. Telephone calls have been made to people listed as residents of the valley, but the calls can't be completed. Letters have been written to them, but the letters are returned to the sender for one or another of the many reasons the post office has for non-delivery. Investigators have waited in nearby trading centres, but Coon Valley people never came to town while the investigators were there. If there is such a place and if the things the statistics say of it are true, the government would be very interested, for there must be data in the valley that could be studied and applied to other sectors. We have no way of knowing whether this broadcast can reach the valley?if it is any more efficient than investigators or telephone or the postal service. But if it does?and if there is such a place as Coon Valley-and if one of its residents should be listening, won't he please speak up!'
He chuckled then, chuckled very briefly, and went on to tell the latest rumour about Khrushchev.
I shut off the radio and sat in my chair and thought about the times when for several days no one could find his way out of the valley and of the other times when the telephones went dead for no apparent reason. And I remembered how we'd talked about it among ourselves and wondered if we should speak to Heath about it, but had in each case decided not to, since we felt that Heath knew what he was doing and that we could trust his judgment.
It's inconvenient at times, of course, but there are a lot of compensations. There hasn't been a magazine salesman in the valley for more than a dozen years?nor an insurance salesman, either.
