It's Good For You

           
         A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go
         down, in a most delightful way.

                     Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman





    Cod liver oil.
   
    The words make me cringe as they did in childhood. Those
who are familiar with this elixir know what I mean. For those
lucky enough to have escaped cod liver oil, get down on your
knees and give thanks.

    The product is what the name implies; it's oil extracted from
the liver of codfish, rich in vitamins A and D. Mothers believed
that a daily dose warded off, cured, or lessened the severity of flu,
colds, colic, coughs, croup, headaches, warts, boils, piles, mumps,
styes, scarlet fever, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough,
dandruff, head lice, bedwetting, heartburn, growing pains, polio,
constipation (or the reverse), or anything else that ailed you.

    "It's good for you," Ma claimed as she poured the liquefied
fish into a spoon. We kids scattered in all directions.

    "You can take sugar with it," Ma promised, trying to
persuade us to come out of the locked bathroom.

    "It's the smell that's so bad, not the taste," she tried as Poppy
pulled one of us feet first from under the bed. "You won't taste
it if you hold your nose."

    Lies, lies, lies. Nothing disguised the taste. Think of the
vilest thing you have ever tasted. Cod liver oil is a zillion times
worse.

    We tried this ploy: "There's no use making me take it; I'll
throw it up."

    Ma replied, "I'll give you another dose until you keep it
down."

    It was better to take it once and be done with it. It didn't
help to gulp the oil down fast -well, you really couldn't. The
goop coated your tongue, teeth and throat like a layer of glue
and the taste and odor lingered all day.

    I have a hazy memory of standing in line in grade school to
take a spoonful of cod liver oil. I must have dreamed it; I can't
believe they could have made children do that-lambs to the
slaughter, so to speak. I need verification from someone who
remembers that this actually happened.

    Imagine teachers saying, "Boys and girls, right after the
Pledge of Allegiance the school nurse will give us our cod liver
oil so we'll stay healthy."

    They would have had a mutiny on their hands, even in those
days when children were seen more often than heard.

    I recently checked the shelves at the pharmacy. Cod liver
oil now comes in mint flavor. Mint flavor? Who do they think
they're kidding?

    The bottle has a warning: Keep this preparation away from
children.

    Sure-now when it's too late for me.

    Time marches on; I now take daily fish oil capsules. They're
tasteless. Really, they are. They're good for you.

    Every fifteen minutes, MeN eill interrupted with "Let's all
march around the breakfast table." He, the cast, the audience, the
guests, and folks across the country did just that. The program
ended with a hymn and a silent prayer, led by McNeill. "Let's bow
our heads in prayer. Each in his own words, each in his own way."

    McNeill signed off with, "Don't forget Don McNeill and his
gang saying so long and be good to your neighbor."

    He died in 1996 at age 88. I still recall the booming voice
that woke me five days a week when I was a child.

    Another voice that stressed being a good neighbor was that
of Wynn Speece. Several years ago, while listening to National
Public Radio's All Things Considered, I heard a woman reading
a recipe and knew at once it was Your Neighbor Lady. The
occasion was her 6oth anniversary of broadcasting from
Yankton, South Dakota's WNAX 570, The Great Station of the
Great Plains.

    Although the show was called Your Neighbor Lady, Speece
was usually referred to as The Neighbor Lady. She began
dispensing household hints and recipes in 1941, before the term
"stay-at-home mother" was coined. That's where most mothers
were, at home, tuned into their radios while working. On July
14, scores of women across America's north-central prairie
found a new companion, a confidante, and a neighbor in Wynn
Hubler (later Speece). Her greeting, "Hello there, good friends,"
reached ten states and Saskatchewan.

    For women isolated in the country or in small towns, The
Neighbor Lady offered a connection to the world. Proof came
in truckloads of letters.

    Mrs. H. J. Larson, Sturgis, South Dakota, wrote, "You're
the only neighbor I can visit with each day, for out here on the

western prairie, people live much farther apart. Sunday is the only
visiting day. Now, since gas rationing, there's little visiting. You can
understand how glad I am when your visit comes each day."

    Those in households without electricity often saved
their radio batteries for favorite programs. Women chose
The Neighbor Lady over the polka music of a young WNAX
accordionist, Lawrence Welk. Alma Davis, Wessington Springs,
South Dakota, wrote, "I never realized how much I would miss
your program until the radio battery ran down." One woman
wrote that her husband conveniently managed to take his coffee
break when the program was on. Future homemakers heeded
TheN eighbor Lady's advice, too. Esther Enders, Winner, South
Dakota, wrote that her young daughter explained to her brother
how to set the table, "The way The Neighbor Lady told us."

    Winifred Hubler was born in 1917 in Marshalltown, Iowa. At
Drake University, she wanted to major in Home Economics but
Drake did not offer that program, nor her second choice, a radio
major (wary of this passing fancy they didn't want students
pursuing hopeless futures). Hubler opted for drama and minored
in broadcasting. After several disappointing auditions for soap
operas in Chicago, she returned to Des Moines and landed a
role on a WHO Radio soap. Also beginning a career there was
a young sport's announcer: Ronald "Dutch" Reagan.

    In 1939, Hubler accepted a job at Yankton's WNAX as a $20
a week continuity writer. Later, she had a fifteen minute Sunday
morning program called Ways To Win With Wynn Hubler,
offering premiums from advertisers. That did so well that she
was given another fifteen minute, six days a week program
directed at housewives. The title, Your Neighbor Lady, came
because of Hubler's bit role on the station's western soap opera,
where she was referred to as the main character's neighbor lady.
Although single and only twenty-three, housewives accepted
her because she made them feel their work had value.
 
    When Hubler became engaged to Naval aviator Harry
Speece she kept it a secret. Returning from her honeymoon
in 1945, she revealed the news on air by calling herself Mrs.
Neighbor Lady. Beatrice Lovick, Wallace, South Dakota, wrote,
"My Dear Mrs. Neighbor Lady: I want to congratulate you on
your marriage. You seem a little more like one of us."

    Now a war bride, Mrs. Neighbor Lady identified with
women whose husbands were away. Harry Speece became
known as HH (husband Harry). With Speece's first pregnancy
in 1947, she began broadcasting from home. Over the years,
fans celebrated the births of three Speece children and the
addition of a teenaged foster daughter. Now their radio friend
was a housewife and mother, practicing what she preached.
Listeners were amused when one of the children disrupted the
broadcast.

    The program was a vehicle through which women shared
love and concern for family, friends, and strangers. Speece
read notes from listeners in which they asked for prayers or
cards for someone who was ill or in need. Women responded
by forming prayer circles and sending cards and gifts to those
mentioned.

    By the late 1960s, clutter of other stations meant that
WNAX reached only parts of South and North Dakota, Iowa,
Nebraska, and Minnesota. In 1973, with radio having lost
much of its audience to television, and the women's movement
convincing housewives that they would find more satisfaction
outside the home, Speece decided to end her thirty-two year old
program. She was barely off radio before she was on again. As
Marketing Officer for First Dakota National Bank, one of her
public relations ideas was an interview program called Market
Basket. In 1984, WNAX officials asked Speece to reprise Your
Neighbor Lady. She said, "I never ceased being Your Neighbor
Lady, in spirit at least."

    The annual Your Neighbor Lady booklet gave women a
chance to contribute recipes, quotations, household hints, and
pictures of themselves and their families. Letter excerpts were
included: "We are three generations listening to Your Neighbor
Lady. I have memories of listening to you over a cup of coffee
with my mother, as my little girl and I are doing now."

    Each issue of the book opened with pictures of the Speece
family, but recipes were its heart and soul. Those vintage books,
which originally sold for thirty-five cents to a dollar, now bring
as much as a hundred dollars at auctions.

    Speece said, "The recipe books are an important record of
those special years. We printed a thousand the first and second
years, then five thousand and finally twenty thousand."

    The content and pictures within the books are a nostalgic
and historical portrait of the past, with wartime recipes for
meatless meals, tips on raising children, conservation ideas,
and a fashion parade of clothing from feed sack dresses to
miniskirts and hair styles from tightly-permed to elaborately
constructed beehives.

    In 1999, CNN featured Speece on its Sunday morning show:
Across America With Larry Woods. Woods learned while
researching his subject that she was America's longest-running
radio personality. He and his crew spent two weeks filming
her routine. Speece commented, "We started at eight in the
morning and went to eight at night. I wore 'em out."

    While recovering from a heart attack, Speece taped another
week of shows from her dining room table. "I'll retire only
when I have to," the great -grandmother said. "I'm grateful for
all these good years, knowing I was in the right place at the
right time."