Thursday, July 26,1984/The Battalion/Page 3
-Red-hot creamery
'cools off summer
:)f recoil
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►opulat:
By RENEE HARRELL
Reporter
1 Even the summer heat can’t com
pare with the red-hot “little
creamery in Brenham” this year.
Blue Bell Creameries, Inc., in Bren
ham, is freezing plenty of ice cream
this summer and proud of it.
I The praises from “Blue-Bell-aho-
■cs,” as one Houston man calls peo
ple like himself who are addicted to
Blue Bell ice cream, keep coming.
And every letter that is written to
Blue Bell is answered. That’s all part
of keeping the “little creamery in
Brenham” image.
I When one woman from Michigan
as asked what she liked the most
bout Texas, she replied, “Galves
ton, the Alamo and Blue Bell ice
ream.” Another girl from League
City, Texas, wrote the following let-
er to Blue Bell:
“Dear Blue Bell,
Your ice cream is so good my pup
won’t eat anything but your ice
cream. Here is a picture of Toshie
Lyn eating her dessert.” (Of course,
this doesn’t mean that Blue Bell is
going to the dogs.)
One of the latest Blue Bell flavors,
caramel turtle fudge, came out in
April.
“When we have a new flavor that
comes out, we order the number of
cartons we think we’ll need,” says
Jennifer Hall Eckermann, Blue
Bell’s public relations assistant. “Car
mel turtle fudge was so popular we
ran out of cartons. We’re going to
bring it back at the end of August.”
Honey vanilla, which uses honey
as its only sweetener, came out last
year. This flavor has all natural in
gredients, Eckermann says.
Other new flavors include straw
berry cheesecake, which came out in
May and pinapples ’n’ cream, which
came out in June. Eckermann says
the latest flavor, chocolate mousse,
be introduced in August.
The most popular flavors, as you
might have already guessed, are
cookies ’n’
Sales have increased this summer,
Eckermann says.
“Sales usually pick up around
spring,” Eckermann says. “When it
starts warming up, sales pick up.
They usually continue real nigh un
til it starts to cool off.”
Blue Bell has 16 flavors that are
on the market all year.
“We average about 40 different
flavors in all and that changes from
year to year,” Eckermann says.“We
nave about 36 flavors in the half gal
lons.”
She says some flavors are seasonal
and others are rotated year round.
Blue Bell is a regional brand, serv
ing 87 counties in Texas and one in
Oklahoma, which is serviced by the
branch in North Dallas. Blue Bell
also serves one parish in Louisianna.
■math
t, mim homemade vanilla an
: of sudl
[noted i
| cream. And, no, Oreo cookies are
not used in the cookies ’n’ cream al
though they have been used in the
past.
“Last year we started using our
Sown Blue Bell cookies,” Eckermann
| says. “We wouldn’t have changed if
, in M ,'f it wasn’t going to be the same or bet
ter.
creamery in Brenham. This year
they’ve been an ever bigger part.
“Last year we had about 14,000
people tour the plant,” Eckermann
says. “As of Tune we’ve already had
13,500.”
In the spring school groups and
senior citizens tour the plant. In
June, Eckermann says, there are
usually vacationers. The plant em
ploys four tour guides.
Wednesday afternoon, 17 soccer
players from Scotland and their
American hosts from Bryan were
touring the creamery. After walking
down long cold corridors, they were
taken to a glassed-in walkway. From
there, they could see a maze of mix
ing tanks, conveyor belts and pipes
in large sterile rooms where the ice
cream is manufactured. At the end
of the tour, the visitors were given
complimentary ice cream cones.
The Scots said Blue Bell ice cream
was good. But, they also said it is
hard to beat Scottish ice cream.
One of the Scots, Morgan Cas-
sady, said that cookies ’n’ cream was
his favorite. “It’s good,” Cassady
said. “That’s all I have to say.”
Chris Warren, one of the Ameri
can hosts, said the new strawberry
cheesecake flavor was his favorite.
“If you haven’t eaten Blue Bell ice
cream, you’ve missed it all,” Warren
said.
amber I
gnored
i when
ing dial
Ukraim
Maink
Charlie Wilding, a senior finance major
from Bryan, delves into an orange sherbet
cone on a hot Wednesday afternoon. Wild-
Photo by Shelley Hoekstra
ing said Blue Bell’s chocolate marble is his
favorite flavor, but the orange sherbet runs a
close second.
Ferraro
blasts
Reagan
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Democratic
vice presidential nominee Geraldine
Ferraro accused President Reagan
Wednesday of shirking a duty to the
needy while fueling “a national
shopping binge” by letting the fed
eral aeficit mount.
“We don’t need government on
any citizen’s back in America,” Fer
raro said, “but we do need govern
ment on every citizen’s side.”
She spoke to more than 2,000 state
lawmakers in her first campaign
speech since she was nominated for
vice president by acclamation at the
Democratic National Convention
last week.
Before flying back to Washington,
D.C., Ferraro also made a brier stop
in Boston’s largely Italian-American
North End neighborhood, where
she was greetea by a throng of
cheering, flag-waving admirers in
the shadow of the historic Old North
Church.
Rep. Ferraro chose the occasion to
lash out at Reagan’s insistence at his
Tuesday news conference that there
is not “one single fact or figure” to
prove he is unfair.
“There are some things that the
president should be told,” she said,
reeling off the results of four studies
showing otherwise.
She said a Congressional Research
Service study released Wednesday
showed 560,000 people dropped be
low the poverty line oecause of 1981
budget cuts in means-tested federal
aid programs.
Another independent study by
the General Accounting Office this
year said cuts in welfare left 500,000
more families without benefits.
“This is not an attack,” she said, to
some laughter from the audience.
“It’s the facts, that’s it.”
She said the first thing Mondale
would do as president would be to
tackle Reagan’s “greatest failure” —
the $180 billion federal deficit he
g romised to eliminate. Bitterly, she
lamed Reagan’s tax cuts ana sug
gested the economic recovery is a
sham.
Today’s
Almanac
On this date in history:
In 1847, Liberia was declared a
Irepublic — at that time, the only sov-
Jereign black-ruled democratic na-
Ition in Africa.
In 1941, General Douglas MacAr-
ilthur was named commander of U.S.
Ijforces in the Philippines.
In 1967, four days of racial rioting
jin Detroit ended with 39 dead.
| In 1982, Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi arrived in the U.S. to meet
President Reagan, the first Indian
■head of state to do so in more than
one decade.
Contempt charges against parents dismissed
A thought for the day: Aldous
Huxley said “There is no substitute
for talent.”
United Press International
HOUSTON — The Texas Court
of Criminal Appeals in Austin
Wednesday dismissed contempt of
court charges against a Houston
couple who refused to testify to a
grand jury investigating their son in
the shooting death of a female letter
carrier.
Harris County District Attorney
John Holmes said the ruling dealt a
serious blow to the state’s efforts to
investigate the June 7 killing of
postal carrier Debora Sue Schatz.
In a 6-0 opinion, with three
judges not participating, the appeals
court dismissed $500 fines and in
definite jail terms assessed against
Bernard and Odette Port, who were
cited for contempt of court last
month after refusing to testify be
fore a grand jury investigating their
son, David.
The 17-year-old high school ju
nior is charged with murder in
Schatz’ death.
The court found fault with the
contempt order and the way it was
processed. It decided the case on
procedural and jurisdictional techni
calities, rather than ruling on de
fense requests to firmly establish
whether parents can be forced to tes
tify against their children.
Holmes said the ruling allows the
Ports to snub justice.
“We still have options, but I think
the practical effect of this is that the
Ports have said to heck with you and
gotten away with it,” Holmes said.
Defense attorney Randy Schaffer
had asked the court to use the case to
decide on the existence of a parent-
child privilege, much like a husband-
wife privilege in which spouses do
not have to testify against each other
in most cases.
The court, however, declined to
“Considering the alterna
tives, this is the best reso
lution at this point short
of the court reaching a de
cision on the parent-child
privilege. ”
address the issue and instead fo
cused on legal technicalities.
“Considering the alternatives, this
is the best resolution at this point
short of the court reaching a deci
sion on the parent-child privilege,”
Schaffer said. “That is a constitu
tional question and they did not
need to address that because they
found other errors that precluded
them from addressing the issue.”
The court decided that the con
tempt order was invalid because it
held the Ports in contempt of the
district court instead of tne grand
jury.
Holmes said the ruling contra
dicted previous rulings on similar
cases.
“It is perplexing to us,” he said.
Both sides agreed, however, that
the ruling left open the possibility
for the state to pursue the Ports’ tes
timony via other legal channels.
Holmes declined to reveal the
state’s strategy, but said the state was
considering several options.
The grand jury considering the case
expires next week. Holmes said the
grand jury could be extended or the
case could be presented to a second
grand jury. If the Ports still refused
to testify and the matter was sent
back to the Court of Criminal Ap
peals, the earliest ruling on the issue
could come in October — which
would push the state beyond the lim
its of tne state Speedy Trials Act in
prosecuting Port, Holmes said.
Regardless of the state’s actions,
Schaffer said the Ports are adamant
in their refusal to testify against their
son.
Port remains free on $20,000
bond. The youth is named in a crim
inal complaint for murder, but he
must be charged in an indictment or
a felony criminal information before
he can stand trial on the charge,
Holmes said.
Meanwhile Wednesday, a small
group of letter carriers staged a
f iicket outside the downtown post of-
ice in request of an armed guard to
accompany those who deliver mail in
the Ports’ neighborhood in west
Houston.
Spokesman John Smith said the
agency had studied the proposal but
determined it unfeasible.
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