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C 5 age 10 THE BATTALION
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1980
How to be happy
woi
64 years in Daylight, hid., give some perspective on how
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United Press International
DAYLIGHT, Ind. — He rubbed
the palms of his hands on his yellow
ing jacket and leaned back against a
shelf of motor oil cans and chewing
tobacco and the microwave oven that
can heat you a burrito or cheesebur
ger for 80 cents.
“It’s been the best life there ever
was,” said Vaughn DeWeese, happy
American of Daylight.
The doings of Tehran, Afghanis
tan, taxes, elections, inflation and
murder — one killer sought for
slaying a family of four and one man
admitting he drowned a mother and
then her three children in one of the
fast creeks above the Ohio River —
lay chronicled in the Evansville
newspaper spread by the service sta
tion’s cash register.
But Vaughn DeWeese has lived
his 64 years in the precincts of Day
light, this crossroads north of Evans
ville and life has not scared him. Un
happiness is complex. The life of a
happy American is simpler.
“We never did have a high school
here, so I went to Millersburg. I
played four years on the grade school
basketball team and four years on the
high school team and started every
game for all eight years.
“I played forward and in 1934 we
went to the sectional and only got
beat by Evansville’s Bosse High by
10 points. They went on to the state
finals. But we were mighty happy
that Millersburg had gotten as far as
we did.”
Evansville’s suburban march has
reached Daylight. Ranchstyle
houses sit above Highway 57. More
sites are for sale. Gone are the har
ness shop, the two original feed
mills, the grocery, the buildings of
what the community was when De
Weese was born.
“The Louisville and Nashville
Railroad came first and farmers used
to drive their wagons up on the
Greenriver Road to meet the train to
send their produce to market. There
was no community then and the far
mers used to tell each other they’d
meet at daylight at the train crossing.
“Folk got to calling the place Day
light after that,” DeWeese said. The
community grew. The DeWeeses
came. So did the Youngs and the
Erwins.
“Still, it was three miles to school.
So I used to walk a mile and get
picked up by the horsedrawn school
wagon. ”
The service station has its credit
card register. It has taped-up signs
keeping up with rising gasoline
prices. But Vaughn DeWeese was
thinking of yore and he plucked the
bill of his blue cap.
“Maud, Gin, Jck and, let me see,
Jolly. Yes, they were the horses that
pulled the school wagon. We had a
Model T Ford garage 60 years ago
but when I got out of school in the
depression, we still had the horse
bus and my first job was driving it, at
$1.50 a day.
At war’s end, DeWeese bought
Daylight’s grocery for $9,500. “I had
wanted to be the grocer since I was a
boy. Now I had the makings ofhappi-
Besides the store, the other mak
ings involved Florence Miles, the
Boonville girl who in 1934 so
admired the six-foot forward on the
visiting Millersburg basketball team
that she waited outside the dressing
room door after the game.
“This lovely girl introduced her
self and said I had played so well.
Oh, mercy. So I asked her if she had
a way home and she didn’t and I had
my brother’s Model A and so we got
married and had two children and
two grandchildren and lived happily
ever after.”
DeWeese bent and peered
through a window. Next door, in
front of a stone house, stood a mail
box and carved sign saying this was
the residence of Vaughn and Flor
ence Miles. A home that is a nest.
A decade after buying the grocery
he had to close it. “People were driv
ing in to Evansville to do their shop
ping. But I had no woe. I became the
southern Indiana distributor for
Archway cookies.”
He patted his waistline. “My bas
ketball playing weight was 140
pounds. Now I weigh 250. I do like
cookies.”
But not liquor or tobacco. “Don’t
smoke and don’t drink. Never had
my first puff or first swallow. Don’t
need it in Daylight.
“Ah, I once went 15 years without
missing a Sunday at the Methodist
Church. It’s all been happy.”
DeWeese removed and cleaned
his eyeglasses. “I do miss old Tom
Jarvis. He used to come in and talk
about his fighting roosters. That ain’t
legal, 1 think, but I can talkatxj
because old Tom is dead.’’ !
He put his glasses on. "Sai
day ever in Daylight was, I sui
when the train hit that ModeliJ
rying six cowboys. HadtopicU
up in bushel baskets. Really Jit;
Unil
B-OKYO
“Happiest day was whentiprohibite<
built the highway in from Eva navy
le. He retired from the biisifik of a st<
side of cookies in 1978. He »5pise polic
parttime at the station untilhisti U.S. D
is ready to try out the winter (Brown’s r<
dominium they have bouraHining e
Orlando, Fla. Res, Jap
“In Heaven I’ll be abletomeelF.V. IlU 1 ! > ‘ l
brother and sister, my motherJr ai ' ”,
dad, my grandparents, my aJf 0 a
tors.” The happy Americansmll 1
“It will be Daylight forever.' Althoug
us prom
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U.S. ‘warns’ Soviets in Afghan
by sending SAC bombers to area
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United Press International
OMAHA, Neb. — To urge Mos
cow to show restraint in the Persian
Gulf after Soviet troops invaded
Afghanistan, the Strategic Air Com
mand was directed by the White
House to dispatch B-52s bombers to
the area as a warning to the Russians.
In announcing the barest details of
the move, the Pentagon said last
month that several B-52s were flying
sea surveillance exercises with the
U.S. ships stationed off Iran in the
Arabian Sea.
However, the B-52’s primary mis
sion is as a long-range bomber and
that fact prompted speculation —
never officially confirmed — that the
planes could carry bombs to the area
if they could operate that far from
their U.S. bases on surveillance mis-
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She was programmed to
accomplish the impossible
^7AVCO EMBASSY PICTURES Release
AVCO EMBASSY PICTURES CO**
MSC lO#
CEPHEID ***"
VARIABLE
Thursday, Feb. 21
7:30 & 9:45
sions.
A recent visit to Strategic Air
Command headquarters here has, at
last, confirmed that speculation and
added some new details.
“I think probably the most suc
cessful part of that flight,” says Gen.
Richard Ellis, commander in chief of
the Strategic Air Command, “was
the way it was handled PR-wise.
“I think it left a lot of questions,
and maybe all the questions are in
the minds of Americans — which is
not what we wanted.
“It did demonstrate the flexibility
and possibility of force application, ”
he acknowledged in a recent inter
view.
It was believed the bombers over
flew several countries without
obtaining advance overflight permis
sion. They may have passed unde
tected, however, if they turned on
their “electronic countermeasures”
which confuse ground radars.
Following the Washington mini
mum comment policy, Ellis declined
to go into details.
But he noted the Air Force has
developed a number of “collateral
roles” for the B-52 force, including
keeping track of ships on the world’s
Susan Anton • James Coburn
Rudder Theater
$1.25 w/TAMU ID
“We’ve been doing this sort of
thing for four years,” Ellis con
tinued. “We have flown against Rus
sian ships in the Atlantic off the coast
of England.”
■
wtenymcmirifak.
Other senior SAC officers were
willing to be even more explicit.
One officer noted the United
States sent B-52s to the borders of
the Soviet Union during the 1962
Cuban missile crisis as a warning
signal.
Brandishing the B-52s is a warning
the United States has employed very
rarely, this officer continued.
Sending them to the Indian Ocean
was intended to tell the Russians:
“Watch out! Wherever you go in the
world, we are right behind you.”
The bomber, which flies at the re
latively slow speed of 650 miles an
hour, has a range of 12,000 miles. Its
range can be extended by aerial re
fueling.
The limits on its performance, ex
perts say, are the stamina of the crew
and durability of the oil which lubri
cates its engines. Some experts esti
mate the planes can stay in the air
about 40 hours if needed.
These three “collateral missions”
have been developed:
—Sea surveillance. In this mis
sion, B-52s fly in pairs, one at low
altitude, and another at higher alti
tude to scan the seas systematically
for the adversary's ships."'
—Air-ship warfare. The B-52 can
be equipped with special television-
guided glide bombs which are effec
tive in sinking surface ships.
—Mine-laying. B-52s can carry
naval mines for closing off harbors,
and narrow maritime choke points.
The worsening of Soviet-
American relations does not appear
to have caused SAC to order any dra-
That m
ible to tin
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Inhere
Bisters
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pntinuin;
pokesma
ion Presi
• Asked i
U.N. foi
matie heightening of its usui
state of readiness.
But there have have been min Afghan
firmed reports of shifts in key tfiaven’t g(
sonnel. flegatioi
Ellis declined to comment spthannelec
fically on SAC readiness. (onsbutt
ave to be
Beeth
-Vashingt
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UNIVERSITY SQUARE SHOPPING CENTEE
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STEVE
MARTIN,
a drama by MARK MEDOFF
Feb. 21, 22, 23; 28, 29 & March 1
Rudder Forum
Tickets: MSC Box Office or Door
Theater Arts Section, Dept, of English, TAMU
CAMPUS
7:45 & 9:45
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H AN tmWBno norc-ru
THE
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7:15’4’
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MSC
Political
Forum
presents
John Sharp
Texas
Legislator
speaking on
"The Permanen
University Fund:
What It Means
Texas A&M and
You"
Roll i
Rol
February 20
Noon in 206 MSC
Admission: FREE