Free Overdrive by William F. Buckley Jr. Page A

the closet, and most of them with declarations as to which brand they were enslaved by. One letter interested me in particular, because it was accompanied by a case of peanut butter labeled "Red Wing." I tasted it skeptically—and forthwith put all competitors aside.
    It is quite simply incomparable. Charlton Heston, who had sent me a jar of his favorite stuff, just plain surrendered when I introduced him to Red Wing. But Pat told me her problem, and so I wrote to my benefactor, at 196 Newton Street, Fredonia, New York, "Dear Mr. Marcy: The manager of Grade A Market, a huge concern at which my wife does the shopping for our place in Stamford, Connecticut, (a) never heard of Red Wing, and would like to know (b) where he might order your product. Could you give me information on this subject?" He could, and he writes now to inform me that it sells under various names in various places—nearly always with the house label of the store selling it. But you can tell if it's the real thing, because the screw-on cover is yellow plastic.

     My "detail sheet," as they call it in the lecture trade, disclosed that no one would be at the airport at Tampa to meet me, that I was to hail a cab and direct it to take me to the Don CeSar Beach Hotel in St. Petersburg.
    There are advantages and disadvantages in being met for lecture engagements, of which this would be my forty-fourth (out of forty-eight) this year. If you are met, then there is no possibility of confusion. Moreover, during the car ride you will learn something about the social or political auspices of the speech, and such stuff is not only interesting but useful, particularly in angling the opening remarks of the talk. On the other hand, being met imposes social burdens which can be tiring. Not unusually, the forty-five minutes between arrival and deposit in the hotel are devoted to answering questions to which in any event you propose to devote yourself during the talk, and this lets a little air out of the speaker, who may very well need all the air he has.
    The airport at Tampa is proud of its automated trains that run you from the skirt around which the airplanes gather, one thousand feet into the terminal. Thus you avoid the long walks characteristic of so many airports. Florida is sunny and bright, this November 17, and, briefcases in hand, I locate a taxi. At the Don CeSar Beach Hotel there will be only one hundred people, invited to pay two hundred dollars apiece to attend a day-long program sponsored by Jack Eckerd, the retail drugstore entrepreneur who ran a losing race for governor of Florida in 1978. Fie has begun an educational institute which, in cooperation with Hillsdale College, is sponsoring today's event. There are several speakers, including Robert Bleiberg, editorial director of Barron's and a trenchant libertarian analyst; George Roche, president of Hillsdale College in Michigan and a keeper of the libertarian tablets; and Frank Shakespeare, formerly head of the USIA, with whom I was associated as a member of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Information, an ardent anti-Communist now serving as president of RKO General.
    Old friends these, and today I'll be speaking to men and women of kindred economic inclination, and they include Perry I. Prentice, former publisher of Time mag, who has written to tell me he hopes I will devote my talk to an examination of the principles of Henry George, as he knows me to be an admirer of George's single-tax theories. (H. George, 1839-1897, believed in taxing the rental value of land to protect society against land-grabbing speculators.)
    In his letter, Perry had been quite specific. "In these clippings [Prentice enclosed several] I think you might find it most interesting to note that Governor Graham [of Florida] and all but one of his cabinet members are big land owners who owe their personal fortunes to the way nearly 95% of all the land in Florida is almost tax exempt! And in the story headlined '70% of Pinellas'