up to travel. Her suitcase is leaking little bits and ends of clothing and over her shoulder she's got a knapsack with her lunch in it. Always practical, Miss Alice was.

"You aren't really thinking of leaving are you, Ma'm?" I ask, thinking it would be a shame for a good-hearted, hard-working school teacher like Miss Alice to leave Fremont.

"I'll thank you to mind your own business, young man!" she says coldly, and marches into the booth and pulls the curtain shut. A moment later I hear a coin drop, there's a flash of bright blue light, and then dead silence.

I was the nearest one so I lifts the curtain and peeks in. Miss Alice and her suitcase and knapsack have disappeared. I look at the screen even though nobody needs to tell me that Miss Alice Markey has whisked off to a world where all the men look like Rudolph Valentino and have a fondness for old-maid school teachers. Sure enough, I was right....

About mid-August, Joe comes around and he's looking mighty worried. "Harry," he says, "Wally Claus has disappeared."

I mull it over for a minute. "It can't be what you're thinking," I says. "Wally's one of the most normal men in town."

We go down to see Wally's wife and I begin to get the picture. Wally was one of those hard working, hard drinking Dutchmen with a family about three times as big as his salary. He worked at Stellar Electric with Joe and, like I say, sometimes he used to help Joe in his lab.

"When was the last time you saw Wally?" Joe asks gently.

Mrs. Wally is blubbering in her handkerchief and trying to hold a kid on her lap at the same time. Two more are hanging onto her chair, and about six others are standing around the room sucking their thumbs and looking wide-eyed at Joe and me.

"It was p-payday," she blurts, the tears streaming down her fat cheeks. "Wally c-comes home drunk and all I do was quietly ask him for his paycheck. And that's the last I see of him. I d-don't know w-what got into him!"

Anybody with half an eye, I thought, could piece together what had happened. Wally probably had one or two at Schultz's bar and got to feeling sorry for himself and then when he got home, he walked into a hornet's nest. Nine kids bawling or running around and Mrs. Wally nagging the life out of him. He must have wondered if it was worth it, then found a quarter in his pocket and walked around the corner to the nearest Paradise booth. Whisht—and Wally's worries are a thing of the past.

Joe and I get the idea at the same time and we chase down to the nearest booth. I took one look at the screen and blushed. Wally had some pretty wild ideas.

On the way home, I tried to talk Joe into tearing the machines down. "How do you know where it's going to end, Joe?" I argues. "You can't tell who's well-adjusted and who isn't any more. And besides, some of those who ain't have contributed just as much to life as those who are. Maybe even more."

"I'm going to leave them up," Joe says grimly. "The world will be better off without a lot of neurotics running around."

"You won't think it over, Joe?"

"No," he says, "and to prove it, I'm going to spend the next two weeks in New York looking for backing to put up Paradise booths all across the country."

"What does Marge think?" I ask.

"Hang Marge!" he says.

Well, I just stood there in the middle of the block and watched him get smaller and smaller in the distance. I couldn't think of anything more to say and he wouldn't have listened to me anyways.

I packed and left town that same night. The strawberry season was just coming on and I ain't never missed a harvest yet.

bout two weeks passed and I couldn't stay away any longer. I got back to town, took a look around, and then went down to the station to wait for Joe to come in on the flyer. I figured somebody