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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 26, 1979)
o rri o g fn C3 cannot n oar, he’s unhandicapped in life (Continued from page 1.) As public relations officer, he is in charge of the dorm news letter. “I haven’t written one lately,” he said. “We have two big parties coming up — been too busy.” He is also in charge of publicity for all of Moses Hall’s social functions. Coombs said he doesn’t just publicize the events; he attends them all, too. He especially likes the dances, he said, be cause dancing is one of his fa vorite hobbies. So is reading science fiction books. Coombs, whose deafness was caused by spinal menin gitis, said he didn’t know how to dance when he came to Texas A&M. “I didn’t dance when I first came here, but I learned fast. I guess I’m just a natural,” he said with a laugh, “I’ve got good timing.” Coombs said he watches other people to get the initial beat and then continues on his own. Country-western is his fa vorite kind of dancing and he also likes rock-n-roll. But not disco, he said, be cause he’s never heard that kind of music. “I don’t have any idea what disco sounds like. I can re member going places with my parents and playing the jukebox, before I went deaf, and I heard rock-n-roll and kicker music. “But disco didn’t even exist.” When asked about his nickname, “D.G.”, Coombs said, ‘‘I like to think that it stands for ‘damn good’.” Actually, he picked it up when he went out for the dorm football team his freshman year, he said. “Some dude named Big Jake kept saying, Tell that deaf guy to come here!’ And the in itials just stuck.” Coombs said his biggest problem is getting people to be lieve that he really can’t hear. Once Coombs and some of his friends went dancing in Houston with a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, he said, and she wouldn’t believe that he was deaf. “Then, while we were doing the two-step, they (the band) changed to a polka — but I didn’t. She believed us after that.” Even though he can’t follow professors in lecture classes because they talk too fast, Coombs was named a Distin guished Student last semester. “I don’t understand a word they (the professors) say. I copy other people’s notes, but sometimes they don’t write ev erything down because they can remember a lot of what they’ve heard.” As for studying, he said, “I hate to study — never do. I just cram before exams.” Coombs was asked if he knew of any other deaf stu dents here. He said that he knows one other “deaf guy” who lives in Davis-Gary Hall but that he doesn’t know him very well. “I don’t like to fraternize with deaf people,” he said, laughing. “I’m like the dachshund that thought he was a great dane.” Galveston Bay oystering will never be the same United Press International TEXAS CITY — Theodore “B.B.” Hillman’s calloused 55-year-old hands squeezed as suredly as his knife dug into the knot on the out side of a long-empty oyster shell. He punched it open to expose the gray-tan edible muck of a baby oyster. “There’s a small oyster. See? He’s growing right there. That’s a spat,” Hillman smiled. “It’s just a small oyster that’s growing on some other shell. It starts out as a microscopic organism. “Each oyster will put out a half-million to a million seeds every year. In two or three hours, if it doesn’t catch on something hard — an old shell, a tin can, a bottle — it’s dead.” The recent failure of Galveston Bay spats was the reason the oystermen who gather for morn ing coffee at Hillman’s dockside cafe — as well as related businesses —just ended their hardest oyster season in recent memory. It was virtually a non-season. Last December, shortly after the November-to-May oyster season started, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Depart ment closed Texas’ most productive bay to oys tering. Parks and Wildlife partially reopened the bay in February, but only to oystermen with private leases, small stretches to which the state leases them exclusive rights. Non-leaseholders working public reefs remained excluded. “It was thought necessary because we had had about three years of poor spat setting,” ex plained state biologist Bob Hofstetter. “The oys ter population was down to about its lowest level in 25 years.” He said production on the increasingly indus trialized bay peaked in the mid-1960s at 4 million pounds of shucked meat a season. In 1977, it dropped below a million pounds. “We’re not really sure of all of the reasons,” said Hofstetter, who said human activity has both good and bad effects. “I think it was mainly be cause of the fresh water coming into the bay at the wrong time (largely due to flooding).” Oysters are brackish water creatures, requir ing a mix of salt and fresh water. “In the latter part of 1978, we finally had a good spat set with young oysters coming along,” Hofstetter said. “We wanted to protect as many of those as we could and increase the harvest for the coming year.” But good reasons were not much comfort to Dwayne Forque, 28, of Pearland, who made $7,000 during the last open oyster season in 1977-78. Or David Gillis, 24, of Dickinson. Or Bobby Collins, 29, of Texas City. Each finished high school and went straight to the boats. They have oystered and shrimped most of their lives. They figure loss of an oyster season cuts a third from the $20,000-plus in come they enjoy in good years. "You can’t put no price on the loss,” said For que, who took his boat to bays further down the Texas Coast which were not closed but which accounted for less than one-fourth of Texas pro duction in the best years. “I lost living expenses, time around the house, not getting as good oysters.” Still, though winter was economically tight, all three expect to survive their oyster loss through active shrimping from now until autumn. Forque made $15,000 last year on shrimping alone. Lloyd Gaston, 52, a retired carpenter, will join them “chasing shrimp like a wild bull,” although for the past three years he had relied solely on oysterig.1 “It (closing of the bay) just knocked me in the dirt,” he said. Stanley Rutland of the SBA’s Houston district office said only nine applications had been pro cessed completely but “about 50” more were expected before the October deadline. Hofstetter conceded the oystermen had been hurt economically but said most appreciated the long-run wisdom of a temporary shutdown. “I think most of them believed what we were doing is the proper thing,” he said. “You’re al ways going to get a difference of opinion, espe cially among individuals like fishermen. Some are mad because we didn’t close the bay soon enough.” Hillman agreed there were many more oysters back when he was hand-tonging — using the now outdated posthole digger-like device — in stead of dredging for oysters as oystermen do today. “It’ll never be like it was years ago,” he said. “When we first started in business down here, it was good. Them oysters was 40 to 50 foot deep, solid oysters.” Even though Bill “D.G.” Coombs, deaf since the age of eight, can’t follow professors in lecture classes because they talk too fast, he was named a Distinguished Stu< dent last semester. Phot ° 8 by Lynn Blanco focus THE BATTALION Focus is published every Thursday as an entertainment section of The Battalion. Policy: Focus will accept any stories, drawings or photographs that are submitted for publication, al though the decision to publish lies solely with the editor. Pieces submitted, printed or not, will be re turned upon request. Deadline is 5 p.m. the Friday before publication. Contributing to this issue were: Doug Graham, Lee Roy Leschper Jr., Kris Wiese, Mindie Rolfe, Judie Porter, Jeanne Graham and Lynn Blanco. Editor: Beth Calhoun