Hot Dog in the Manger
To the Editor of The Herald
It is a pity that House Bill 319, giving
mission power to regulate the use of land along the
state highways in such a way as to save the beauty of
the scenery, has not been passed. It has, however, been
referred to the next General Court, and the fight to
a state com-
preserve one of the essential values for the creation of
which these great thoroughfares were built will not be
given up
Of the necessity for some such measure there can
hardly be a question. Any one who has recently driven
along the Mohawk Trail or almost any of the other
state roads through some of our most beautiful scenery
can testify that the most vivid impression brought back
from such a trip is of an endless procession of filling
stations, hot dog stands and other objects which have
not hitherto been classed as beautiful
And these embellishments are not merely, in their
kind, additions to the scenery. They have, psychologic-
ally speaking, become the whole of it. The skill with
which they have been planned to seize in every instance
the very eye and focus of the view, the point at which
the traveler is forced to look, and from that vantage
ground to shriek their wares-each enfevered canine
joining the pack in full cry upon the senses of the
traveler-constitutes a very miracle in advertising. The
effect is as though, in a public art museum, some similar
