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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (May 28, 1986)
Page 2/The Battalion/Wednesday, May 28, 1986 Classified ad reading becoming a fine art Thanks to the uncertainty abroad, m a ny Americans have put their overseas travel plans on hold. Instead they are desperately trying to rent houses in the U.S. mountains and at the seashore. Art Buchwald Newspapers are chockfull of classifieds for summer rentals. The problem is the properties are not necessarily what they are cracked up to be. Because people rarely get to see the summer homes they rent in advance they have to take the de scription in the advertisement on faith. Sometimes this could be a mistake. It took me seven months to break the code for summer rentals but it was worth it. For example, when you read, “Charming two-bedroom, one-bath ranch house in forested area. Sleeps twelve, 20-minute drive to town,” they’re really talking about a matchbox in the woods that sleeps twelve, if every body takes turns sleeping through the day and night. The house is indeed 20 minutes from town — if you drive 100 miles an hour. Here’s one: “Magic cottage overlook ing the sea. Always a cool breeze blow ing. Five thousand dollars for season. A steal due to minor work going on this summer.” The minor work is an addi tion to the breakfast room and a new kitchen. The breeze is blowing through a hole in the side of the house. This is one of my favorites. “House for rent by owner. Completely redone, f ive bedrooms and playroom in base- ment. Color TV in family room. Swings, wading pool and sandbox on lawn. Fenced in back yard. No children of any kind.” Copyright 1986, Los Angeles Times Syndicate A real moving experience The end of the school year marks a time of change. A change of weather. A change of classes. A change of friends. A change of loca tion. Those students who have grad uated get to go out Karl Pallmeyer into the “Real World.” Some students are fortunate enough to get to travel to exotic places. Some students are less for tunate and get to go home or other equally non-exOtic places. Other stu dents, myself included, are not fortu nate at all and have to go to summer school. Summer school in itself is not too bad, especially since it doesn’t start for an other week, but there other factors that tend to add up to a bad time. The worst thing about the end of a semester is hav ing to move. The biggest hassle of moving is furni ture. Beds, couches, tables, desks, chairs, dressers, bookcases and chairs seem to have put on some weight in the past year. It is impossible to move these items by yourself and the fact that my apartment is on the second floor doesn’t help matters. Friends become suspi ciously absent when it comes time to move. I’ve been moving for a week now and I still haven’t dealt with most of the furniture. You don’t realize how much junk you have until you have to move it. When it came time to move my books and mag azines I was suprised to discover I had enough to start my own library. Unfor tunately the books aren’t worth any thing. Most of them are textbooks from the past four years that the bookstores won’t buy back. For some reason profes sors always decide to change texts after I take their class. Moving is time consuming. I had to thumb through all the record reviews in back issues of Rolling Stone. That took a long time. Moving is also a time of discovery. I discovered a shirt I thought I had lost, several dozen pens and pencils, a couple of beer cans left over from a party some time ago and a few other things that defy identification.' One of the most startling discoveries had to do with the coffee maker. During the winter I am a coffee fa natic. During the summer I become a tea fanatic. Since the weather has been pretty warm since February the coffee maker hasn’t gotten much use. It is easy to forget to empty the coffee grounds out of the coffee maker when you are not using it everyday. It’s amazing how many shades of purple, green and white coffee grounds become if they are left on their own for four months. As long as I’m on the subject of mold, cleaning out the frig was a new experi ence in slime. Eggs, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, oranges, pears and strawberries begin to look like something out of a bad Japanese horror movie after a few weeks of neglect. My roommate and I had fun getting rid of the stuff though. Our apartment faces a wooded area so we had a pitching contest against some of the trees. This is not pollution since everything we threw was biodegradable and had degraded somewhat already. We have to be out of the apartment at the end of the month. If we keep going at this pace we might just make it. Karl Pallmeyer is a senior journalism and a columnist forPhe Battalion. The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board l-'.ditoi Opinion I’nge Editor t'ii\ Editor Yen s Editor Sports Editor Michelle Powe Loren Stef fy .Scott Sutherland Kay Mallett Ken Sury ci vice to I cy .\J(:M mid Hi \ nn-Cnl- Editorial Policy 1 he Baiialion is .1 non-pntth. scII-'U/jihh ting new s/i.i/h'i tt/tcnilcd ns ;i coiiniuiniix lege Siminn. Opinions expressed in The Battalion nic those ni theUditoiinl Bonid 01 the nnthoi and do not necessarily represent the ttjiinitnisttl Texas .\tK:M adniinisti atoi >. I.h nli\ 01 the Board of Regents. The Battalion also selves as a lalioratoi \ new spapet toi students in 1 epoi ting, editing and photography classes within the Dcpat tmciit ot Join nalisni. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday din ing Texas ASs.M regular semesters, except Tor holiday and exami nation periods. Mail subscriptions are SHi.Jo per semester. STH.2a per school year and 5.T3 per full year. Advertising tales Tinnishcd on t eejnest. Out addt essTVhe Battalion. 2Id Reed .McDonald Building. Texas AXr.M L Diversity. College Station. IX 77B4S. Second class postage paid at College Station. I X 778-43. POS TMAS'TF.R: Send address changes fo The Battalion. 21(i Reed .McDonald. Texas A&.M L niversitv. (.ollege Station 7 A 77843. Opinion People, when advertising homes, use the word “dramatic” quite a bit. “Dra matic four-bedroom house in town, few minutes from beach.” What makes this house dramatic is in order to get to the beach you have to run by a Hell’s Angels clubhouse on the corner. Beware of an advertisement which claims the house is “on the water” be cause that’s very likely where it is. A property that has the word “seclu ded” in the ad means no one will be able to find it. I am not sure what a “sparkling” home means, but the word is usually used when an owner has little else to brag about. “Spectacular” is the same as “spark ling.” The only difference is “spectacu lar” has one-and-a-half baths instead of one. A “new contemporary” is a house that was built in the early Sixties. An “old contemporary” could mean anything and usually does. If you see an advertisement which re ads, “Unusual house built by owner,” it means the dining room is in the base ment and the washer and dryer are lo cated in the bedroom. Some people prefer the word “quaint.” Now quaint could mean hav ing to stoop to get into the front door or a climb up to a two-room apartment over the garage. Here’s one to look for: “nestled,” as in “Nestled in the forest by a stream.” Houses like these always have plumbing problems, and because they are “nest led” no one will come out from town to fix them. Even if you’re not renting a summer place it’s worth reading the real estate ads, because some of the best fiction in the country is now being printed there. !g a pi artment oi y $125.9 n J rally at lepanment ew appro ors, most < hat said, “I' H'lie Joard of 1 )n propose witnesses h; Hrn. Clr Rep. Lena ' others add ooiis popp ^cial airl Bie rema Burn oi < exte Marriage to a state the most 0ec ' ^ H<eo. Io< binding form of matrimony _ e P- _ the I exas MOSCOW —In the evening I went to a party. The guests were jour nalists, diplomats and a woman who was neither. She was young and slight, with dark hair cut short. She spoke English with an American ac Richard Cohen cent. As she drank wine, her V’s became W’s and vice versa. It became apparent that she was Russian. A diplomat, diplomatically excusing himself for prying, asked her who she was and she said, “Maybe you have heard of me. I am the Russian wife of an American who is trying to divorce me because I can not leave the country.” Of course. Like a newsreel in the mind, the stories ran across my screen and I recalled — did I see it on TV? — the California courtroom where an American had come to ask for a divorce. After seven years of marriage, seven years of separation, he apparently had enough and wanted out. A letter from his wife arrived from Moscow begging the judge not to grant the divorce. Her argument was plain tive: “My life will be in danger . . . di vorce will leave me helpless and without protection.” The U.S. Embassy could no longer intercede on her behalf. She signed the letter with her married name — Elena V. Kaplan. With that, Kaplan’s husband, a ski in structor who for some reason changed his last name to Talanov, retreated from the courtroom. That was August and since then Kaplan herself has not heard from him. The letters that used to come three times a week have ceased, the tele phone calls, too. With a freedom that is unheard of here, Gary Talanov, 31, has disappeared — a free man shackled only to his conscience. But Elena Kaplan is shackled to the state which, for its own reasons, will not let her go. The bureaucracy says that her parents oppose her emigration and the law requires their approval. It says that her parents, both mathematicians, know state secrets. If so, the secrets are now seven years old. Kaplan says she has not seen her parents since her mar riage. Elena Kaplan, having been refused permission to emigrate, is a refusenik — a rare non-Jewish one at that. By either relative or absolute standards, there are few rufuseniks of any kind —Jews who are supposed to be able to rejoin rela tives in Israel, spouses seeking to re unite a marriage. Numbers aside, they define the character of the Soviet Union. In some ways, the revolution re stored the status quo and democratized: Now everyone is a serf tied to the land. “What would you do if you were my husband?” Kaplan asked me. I tried to duck the question. “What would you do?” she persisted. I said I was glad not to be him and have to make such a deci sion. She eyed me coldly. “You know nothing about this country.” There was no “decision” to be made. The question was not of only love or separation, but survival. Without her American hus band, she would be lost. Immediately after her marriage, Kaplan had to leave Moscow University where she had met her husband. For a time, she said, she could find no work and the government — the only land lord there is — would not give her an Sh apartment. She she lost weight She found work in a distant Kalinin. Now, m trams 1 , was hospii textile faci hack in M gents anc Tuesday d runway ex terwood A ! gHai ton that resul runway ex the A me i she had crossed the line, become blown refusenik. She works wb can as a translator and rese; sometimes for American publican In two of my talks with refm there was a moment when tki seemed to water and they apf overwhelmed by their own pi thought that happened with Vli Feltsman, the celebrated pianisK been a Jewish ref usenik for seven'! For most of the interview he wasii! of the authorities. “I am notate them,” he said. runway w type comrr B'A flrsi means a t the Bryan to attract Barton sar g Lie said suLmitted an additic provemen eluding a i But when asked if hewasevei come with depression, he saidTH mood seen# ( Se of mes” and then change. His wife ms —'‘/TKLALYI encouraged him ties receiv more. “ I alk about it,” she said,I are;i really would not. “The (list yean for a T< dif ficult,” was about all he woulfbloodied < His eyes seemed to moisten andi! Wa y- slant 1 left, Feltsman mirst to the piano. Music seeped throiiJw,j n( | nv door and spilled down the stairwell | Something similar seemed to to with Kaplan. She was strong andi j nant, often able to laugh atthesid ■ I life had played on her. But forij ment she seemed overwhelmed!! plight and here eyes appeared to* Stones h . n The reality, afterall, is awful. Hei fit concert riage had turned out to be a shat football st; loved a man. But she was ahead' Tuesday, ried to the state. ; Luitaris <>fa show t Copyright 1986, Washington about 14 1 Writers Group recording ■i‘They s for Mick n / MJSTI “■'lead United Feature Syndicate M&R6UUES ©Wgfc HOUSTON POST singei | farm A |9 million been spen times. A^»a.i.P-