Eddie’s Wrecker Service
Special Student Rates
Page 1 OAThe Battalion/Friday, February 8,1985
$18.50
Call Mobile Unit
Evenings
anywhere in
Bryan-College Station
8 a.m.-7 p.m.
779-0422 (unit 3119)
779-6525
Sunday Night
Special
$9 95
fORT
iSTEAKHOUSE i
2 chicken fried steaks, salad bar,
homemade rolls, choice of baked
potato, french fries or rice
5-10 pm 2528 Texas Ave. S.
College Station
693-1164
Texas Ave. between Southwest Pkwy & Kmart
Muslim Students Association
OF
T&XA6 A4M University..
Invite.6 You To A Lecture
On
Why You
Look
Should
At
Islam
99
By
Steve Johnson
^ An 'American Bopn Muslim Scholar
ft PATE : 9 TH EeSy H0S
^ Time : 3 pm
^ PivXCg.: Ruppe^ T^wer Rcom toi
^ V 9 ^ Grand Opening
BEER
Thursday & Friday
5-8 p.m.
Buy One Get One Free
Pizza-By the-Slice
Thursday & Friday
11 am-5 pm
Delicious Homemade Italian foods: Lasagne Meat
ball Sandwich, Italian Sausage Sandwich and
other fine foods.
846-TAMU
317 Patricia
Next to Kinko's
Northgate
DO YOU KNOW
SOMETHING
WE DON’T?
OOO
WHY MOT TEACH IT FOR FUM S. IVIOMEY?
MSC AFTER HOURS is looking for new instructors,
of non-credit courses for Spring Session II.
If you think you have something worth teaching
call Karen Hronek at 845-1515 or come by room
216 of the TAMU Memorial Student Center. The
last day for teacher registration is Feb. 15,
1985, so hurry!!
We especially need instructors in these areas:
BALLROOM DANCE
MASSAGE
CPR
BARTENDING
COMMUNICATIONS
AUTO REPAIR
GUITAR
SELF HELP
POCKET CALCULATOR
LANGUAGES
PHOTOGRAPHY
FIRST AID
{•MSC AFTER HOURS-!
Slouch
By Jim Earle
“It’s a watch that commemorates our new bell tower. It
seemed like a better idea when it was on the drawing board. ”
Woodpeckers
have a secret
Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Study
ing a woodpecker’s tongue may help
researchers lick the problem of pro
tecting the human brain from in
jury, a Wright State University pro
fessor said.
R. Fred Rolsten, professor of en
gineering, is looking at woodpeck
ers, anteaters and karate experts to
discover how they are able to hit
hard surfaces without brain damage
or broken bones.
It may help researchers develop
better protective gear for athletes,
soldiers and accident victims, he
said.
Rolsten said woodpeckers appar
ently can use their unique, barl>ed
tongues as a sonar device to help de
tect bugs under the tree bark and
then to spear them.
The woodpecker’s tongue wraps
around its brain to buffer the con
cussion of hammering, Rolsten said.
Items such as football and motor
cycle helmets would protect better if
they were softer on the inside in
stead of harder on the outside, he
said.
“The helmet is basically a rigid
shell designed to minimize injuries
due to spear impact—that is, the
penetration of a sharp object,"
Rolsten said.
"But in my opinion, the nurabe
of blunt impacts—someone hitiit,
the pavement or crashing intoatdt i
phone pole—far exceeas the nur,
her of spear impacts,” he said.
If the foam liner inside thehelnit
were doubled, impact protects j
would also double wnile aadingonl
.2 of a pound extra weight, hesaid
Rolsten, who has studied thee!
feet of impacts on the human bodi |
for the past 25 years, researchedc-
vers and diving birds trying to lean
how they can hit the water at tit
mendous speeds without breakin;
their necks.
“We found that when they din
they tense themselves. Muscle toi*
appears to be very important,
Rolsten said.
The pangolin, a giant Asian an
eater, may provide another due,
“If you prod them when theyd
up in a tree, they just roll upinabal
and fall to the ground and bounce
he said.
Rolsten is also interested inkarai
experts who seem to “sense” howt
shape their hands and wrists wha j
breaking through wood and coup
crete blocks.
"What we’re trying to do is to fi! ff
out how soft tissue and bones car
take these impacts and redistribn
the force so they do not break
Rolsten said.
Happy Birthday
Once-scornful neighbors plan events to honor Sinclair Lewis
Associated Press
SAUK CENTRE, Minn. — Sixty-
five years after Sinclair Lewis scan
dalized his former neighbors with a
satirical account of small-town Mid
western life, the people of his home
town are throwing a birthday party
for him.
Lewis, the first American to win a
Nobel Prize in literature, was born in
this central Minnesota farm town
100 years ago Thursday. Now, the
town’s 3,800 residents are kicking
off a year of festivities to honor the
writer whom the town once scorned.
Some debate whether the mythi
cal town of “Gopher Prairie,” the set
ting for Lewis’ 1920 novel “Main
Street,” was based on his hometown,
or whether it was a composite of
small towns. Either way, the book
sparked outrage in Sauk Centre with
its portrayal of small-town narrow
mindedness, provincialism and hy
pocrisy.
“There was a certain indignation
on the part of local people,” said
Dave Jacobson, president of the Sin
clair Lewis Foundation, which is or-
f anizing Lewis centennial events in
auk Centre.
“They were, at first, very excited
he had written about their town.
Then they realized it was a biting sat
ire, and some of them felt they rec
ognized themselves, and there was
some resentment.”
In “Main Street,” heroine Carol
Kennicott is frustrated in her at
tempts to bring social reform and ar
tistic enlightenment to the residents
of Gopher Prairie, who are quite
content with the way things are.
Legend has it that the nearby
town of Alexandria banned the book
from its library, and that an area
preacher told his congregation not
to read it. In Sauk Centre, “Main
Street” was not required reading in
the high school until Jacobson, a for
mer English teacher, introduced it to
his classes in the early 1960s.
Time has mellowed any lingering
ill will Sauk Centre might have telt
toward Lewis, who went on to write a
string of best sellers during the
1920s, including “Babbitt,” “Arrows-
mith,” and “Elmer Gantry.” By the
time he won the Nobel Prize in 1930,
he was considered America’s fore
most writer.
“The town (Sauk Centre) is practi
cally a memorial to Sinclair Lewis,”
saia Michael Connaughton, an assis
tant English professor at St. Cloud
State University.
If the town left its mark on Lewis,
he left his mark on it.
Sauk Centre’s mile-and-a-half-
long main street, with its lone traffic
light, has been renamed “The Origi
nal Main Street,” and the street it in
tersects — the street where Lewis
grew up — is now “Sinclair Lewis
Avenue.”
The Palmer House, at three sto
ries, is still the tallest building on
Main Street. Lewis’ boyhood home, a
two-story, turn-of-the-century
house, has been restored, declared a
state and national landmark arc
opened for tourists. P
A Sinclair Lewis Interpretamt
Center, housing memorabilia fra
the writer’s life, was opened in 19*i
The high school team is nicknamet i
the Mainstreeters.
Lewis, the youngest of three sonU
was born to Dr. E.J. and Emmab
wis on Feb. 7, 1885. His fatherwasi
country doctor. His mother diedo:
tuberculosis when Sinclair wasi
“Doc Lewis," as he was known,late
remarried.
As a boy, Lewis was gangly, quit 1 ,
and unpopular. He suffered fromi
lifelong case of acne, and reported
told friends, “Anybody who would
say they love me must be lying,bj
cause I’m so ugly."
After graduating from Yale, It
wis, known to his friends and faml'
as “Harry” or “Red,” launched hif'
career as a writer. He wrote 23 nm !
els, many of which are out of prim
and numerous short stories anaatu
cles.
Grading the quality of grains
Inspector ‘nose’ his duty
Associated Press
DULUTH, Minn. — A lot of peo
ple depend on Rick Wetterlind’s
eyes and nose.
If he sorts through a sample of
merchandise and sees that it’s in
good shape, the price of that ship
ment could rise. But if he detects a
sour odor, the price could plummet.
Wetterlind is a Minnesota state
grain inspector, one of 10 people in
Duluth who determine the grade
and, ultimately, the price of grain
shipped from the city’s three grain
elevators.
Several times a day, state employ
ees take samples from much of the
grain being poured into ships and
railcars. The samples are sent to the
inspection office in the Board of
Trade Building, where the inspec
tors test the grain and assign a grade
to it.
A wide range of grain can spill
across the inspectors’ clean, white ta
bles—wheat, corn, barley and cith
ers. The testing is done on samples
weighing precisely 1,000 grams—a
little more than two pounds.
When the tests are done,
inspectors tally the sam
ple's good and had points
and assign a grade, which
could mean hundreds or
thousands of dollars dif
ference in the price of a
boatload or train load of
grain.
Once the sample is weighed, it is
sifted by machine to determine its
dockage content—the amount of
chaff, weed seeds and other junk in
each bushel.
The sample is then weighed again
to determine its grade. Top grade
spring wheat, for instance, weighs 58
pounds per bushel. If it’s lighter, the
grade goes down.
The inspectors then perform the
“sniff test, putting their noses just a
fraction of an inch from the sample
to check its aroma. A fresh, grainhke
smell indicates a good sample; a
musty, sour or oily smell means the
grain is spoiled or polluted and
earns it a lower grade.
Inspectors then spread the grain
out on a table and pick through it to
find broken kernels, shrunken ker
nels, heat-damaged kernels, stones,
mold, fungus and other imperfec
tions.
When the tests are done, inspec
tors tally the sample’s good and bad
points and assign a grade, which
could mean hundreds or thousands
of dollars difference in the price of a
boatload or trainload of grain.
Crain inspectors must pass a test
every three years and Know the
grain inspecting regulations, which
fill a book two inches thick.
There’s also another test that will
make or break a grain inspector—al
lergies.
Even a small dose of grain or
grain dust can do strange things to
the human body. “Everybody here is
allergic to something, but some guys
are so bad they have to quit,” Gerald
Goad, an inspector from Duluth,
said.
Crew fleeing ship with passports
made officals suspect scuttling
Associated Press
HOUSTON — A maritime offi
cial said he be^an to suspect an oil
tanker was deliberately sunk when
crewmen who said they’d been fight
ing a ship fire got into lifeboats
wearing fine clothes and carrying
their passports.
Alister Crombie, deputy commis
sioner for the Liberian Republic’s
maritime affairs bureau, testified in
U.S. District Judg;e Carl O. Bue’s
court Wednesday in the fraud trial
of Houston businessman Frederick
Soudan.
Crombie assisted the investigation
into the sinking of the Salem on Jan.
17, 1980 off the Senegalese coast.
A 23-count indictment alleges
Soudan, 41, stole 200,000 tons of oil
from its Italian owner and ordered it
delivered to South Africa in the Sa
lem. According to the indictment,
Soudan and four other men ar
ranged for the ship to be scuttled to
cover up the theft.
Also charged in the case is Sou
dan’s brother-in-law, Wahab A1 Gha-
zou, 48, of Syria, who is charged
with helping Soudan hide his profits
from U.S. tax authorities.
Crombie said investigators from
around the world were shocked
when, several days into their inquiry,
they realized what had occurred.
“I can’t believe something like this
could have happened,” Crombie
said.
Crombie asked Lloyd’s Register of
Shipping, an international ship
building register, whether the
tanker could have been sunk with a
full load of oil. Crombie said Lloyd’s
answered, “We’re not in the business
of sinking ships; we’re in the busi
ness of keeping them afloat.”
“It was concluded that the Salem,
fully loaded with crude oil, would
not sink,” Crombie said.
Soudan, who has been in jail since
May in lieu of bond, is accused of us
ing fraud in the purchase of the Sa
lem for $12.3 million and convincing
the South African government to
pay $43 million for oil he didn’t
nave.
Prosecutors contend Soudan
made $4.25 million from the alleged
scheme, which they claim was part of
a conspiracy to steal 1.4 million bar
rels of oil from European firms and
secretly ship the crude to South Af
rica.
Soudan has contended he was
only a broker in the deal and was
duped.
New law
benefits
county
Associated Press
HOUSTON — The feded
government and local authorities;
will share proceeds from the sale;
of a 33-acre Montgomery County;
farm seized in a drug ring investi-1 ;
cation, authorities said Wednes-
° a y-
“ 1 his is the first time in our ;;
history we have been able to share
assets with state and local agen-.
cies,” Dan Hedges, the U.S. attor
ney in Houston, said.
Under the new Crime Control
Act program, signed into law in
Octooer, the federal government :
may share with local authorities
proceeds from property seized in
drug investigations.
Narcotics agents seized the
land, 45 miles northeast of Hous
ton, last September while investi-!
gating an international drug
smuggling ring.
The land was used tostoreand;
package imported marijuana be
fore it was snipped to be sold,of- !
ficials with the U.S. Drug En
forcement Administration said.
No arrests or indictments have,
been made in connection withibe;
seizure, but prosecutors said aM
grand jury is investigating people
who allegedly have operated an|
international drug ring forseve-;
ral years.
The land has been appraised at
$125,000, officals said, and pro
ceeds will be shared by the fed
eral government, the county Or
ganized Crime Control Unit and
the Texas Department of Public |
Safety. I
Prosecutors said the farm is
owned by Frank Garcia of Edin
burg and Jose Luis Cantu of
McAllen. Neither has commented 1
on the case or filed a claim after;
being notified the land wa. ! j
seized.
Deputy Attorney General
Carol Dinkins said Attorney Gen
eral William French Smith hadto
approve the agreement Tuesda)
because the program still lacksset
guidelines.