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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 25, 1985)
R.I.P. the mud lot A true friend of Aggieland has passed away. The mud lot, at Nagle and Church streets, is no longer with us. The lot will be remembered by many Aggies as the only free, unlimited-time parking area within walking distance of campus. In happier times, the infamous lot was the Circle Drive-In. Night after joyous night, Aggies would go to the lot to watch their favorite flicks. Then, the Circle closed and the lot fell into a state of disrepair. The old movie screen burned and the wooden fence around the lot’s perimeter collapsed. Gradually, Aggies began to use the lot for parking. The owners were nice enough not to charge a fee for its use. For the past several years, A&M students enjoyed the benefits of the area, taking them for granted. Now we once again are reminded how quickly parking areas can be taken from us. The lot has been leased by Skipper Harris who posted a sign saying all cars on the lot would be towed as of Tuesday. Harris plans to level the lot and spread gravel on its surface. Students will have to pay $1 per day to park in the un muddied lot. But no amoiint of gravel can replace the swamp-like mem ories the mud lot gave us. This shelter from parking tickets and the rising costs of parking stickers will always have a special place in the hearts of Aggies. The Battalion Editorial Board Mexico City quake Parrot was first clue that another tremor was coming As the chartered Lear jet flew into Mexico City Thurs- day evening, I peered through a Mike ; Cochran AP' Otmvsprmdmt window at the sprawling city below and marveled that 18 million people could live in one place. That’s more than the entire popula tion of Texas. I was surrounded by a team of Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporters and photographers who were taking notes and shooting aerial pictures in the final half hour or so before nightfall. We were wondering also where the devastation was that we’d heard about, for it was certainly not visible as we de scended into the Mexico City airport. We soon found out. wafted from the debris and a uniformed man with a mask over his mouth said 20 persons had been pulled out but that an estimated 115 people remained inside. Perhaps he exaggerated, but I knew for certain that nobody still in that building could survive. I saw the grand old Regis Hotel, once among the finest in Mexico, as it slowly burned to the ground. Firemen could do nothing but attempt to contain the blaze. I had chased hurricanes down the Texas coast and into Louisiana and cov ered tornadoes in Lubbock, Wichita Falls and other Texas cities. I’d seep floods and plane crashes and reported on mass murders and a presidential as sassination. Flames within the dying landmark cast an orange glow at glassless windows and created an image not unlike a giant Halloween pumpkin. “It was a symbol of Mexico because it was so old,” said a man who identified himself as a coin dealer whose shop was nearby. Pointing to where a hotel wall had collapsed on a theater and restaurant, he said sadly: “This was a very important corner in Mexico.” At least 10 died, 30 were rescued and perhaps 50 or 60 were unaccounted for, he said. “The (medical) people who could have helped have been killed or in jured,” he said solemnly. As the night wore on, I was struck by two recurring thoughts. First, the earth quake inflicted incredible damage on hundreds of buildings, yet spared other structures that sat side by side, across the street or around the corner. It reminded me of the selective de struction of the Wichita Falls, Texas, tornado in 1979, although magnified many times over. But nothing prepared me for an earthquake, particularly a disaster of this magnitude in a foreign <^ity with a foreign language and a foreign lifestyle. The next day, the American ambassa dor would say the death count could reach 20,000. That’s about four times as many people who live in the West Texas town of Stamford where I grew up. Commandeering a taxi and driver, I accompanied Jack Tinsley and Gayle Reaves of the Fort Worth Star-Tele gram on a tour of the central business district, the oldest and hardest hit part of the city. Among our first stops was an insur ance building, where a rescue team was searching through the rubble for the bodies of two women feared trapped when the structure collapsed. A young man in a military uniform said in halting English that four or five persons died on an upper floor. It got worse. At what once had been a hotel, smoke I watched scores of volunteers at tempting to free four or five employees of a television station, where at least 19 reportedly died. “They are still alive,” a young medical student explained. “We can hear their shouts and screams from the building.” A nearby television tower had fallen on a school building, crushing it, but the death toll was believed to be minimal. The parrot probably provided the first clue, squawking and fluttering about its cage hysteri cally. A silly bird. We laughed and ignored him, and our host in the penthouse apartment mixed a fresh round of drinks . . . Within moments, we would experience first hand the terror we had attempted to describe through the words of others. main thoroughfares such as Paseo de la Reforma or huddled in such favorite gathering spots as Chapultepec Park. By contrast, there was no gaiety to be found in Lubbock and Wichita Falls af ter disasters there, although both cities pale in size to the Mexican capital. Long after midnight Thursday, I caught a taxi to the El Presidente Chap ultepec Hotel, where The Associated Press had set up makeshift headquarters on the 27th floor. Our office on Paseo de la Reforma was heavily damaged and the building sealed off. The earthquake had wrecked the Mexican communications system as well, and the problem facing the AP and other news organizations was getting their stories, photographs and television film out of the country. At one point, I stumbled across a Texan working in Mexico for Bankers Trust of New York, which had what may have been the only long distance telephone line in town. He made it avail able to the AP, which reduced the need for shuttle plane flights in and out of Texas. At a temporary morgue, bodies of victims, stripped of their clothing and identified by numbers, lay side by side on the blood-stained concrete floors of a government building. Sacks of ice had been placed on the torsos of the victims, which included men, women and small children. The grim operation seemed terribly imper sonal, except when friends or family identified a loved one. A surgeon who had come to the morgue in search of a relative said a number of his medical colleagues had been killed and injured when the Mexi can equivalent of a doctors’ building col lapsed near his hospital. Secondly, despite the great loss of life and property, and the widespread suf fering, life outside the stricken areas went on in something close to normal. Until a governmental ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages was imposed Fri day night, bars and restaurants did a booming business. To some extent, it was almost festive, as if the people of Mexico City were celebrating life in the face of death. At the Camino Real and El Presidente Chapultepec hotels, two of the city’s fin est, bars and restaurants overflowed with people, and the sound of music drowned out the wail of sirens across By late Friday, I was more than a little exhausted and by all means responsive to Eloy Aguilar’s invitation to join him at his apartment for a drink, even if it meant walking up nine flights of stairs. After all, the worst surely was over. Only the parrot knew otherwise. The parrot probably provided the first clue, squawking and fluttering about its cage hysterically. A silly bird. We laughed and ignored him, and our host in the penthouse apartment mixed a fresh round of drinks. A New York colleague named Jules Loh and I were taking a nighttime break from coverage of the killer earthquake that had crippled the Mexican capital 36 hours earlier. town. Mexican residents strolled along the Within moments, we would experi ence first hand the terror we had at tempted to describe through the words of others. We had climbed nine flights of stairs to the apartment of Eloy Aguilar. Associated Press bureau chief in J City, and his wife Venie was no* scribing the chilling eventsof Thursday morning earthquake. It was not her first, but it had her scariest. Outside, the night lights of stricken city glowed through a hazti smoke and smog, and the soundsof] lice and ambulance sirens filtered ward from the streets below. Not long after the parrot’s outq, leaves on the indoor plants began move as though caressed by some tom breeze. At 7:37 p.m. Mexico City time, second earthquake hit. The apartment building began sway and shake and the floor trend beneath us. The Aguilars knew atos what was happening and as Eloy si to the telephone, Venie told Jules me to take cover under a doorway. An instant later, the lights went out In the dark, I crawled across floor, certain the building would bi apart at any moment. I wondered ill would collapse or explode or ma' topple. As I groped toward a doorway ing to the kitchen, I thought fleetinj of my family back in Fort Worth,ani| realized I was an awful long way ft home. I was struck by the utter helplessnd of the situation. There was no go and nothing to do. This was surely strange way to die. My life did not flash before myeii like it was supposed to. Instead, I mind’s eye could see only thecrumbltf smoking buildings of central Mexi® City and the awesome death anddi struction I had observed since arrisi here 24 hours earlier. Now I was no longer an observer was a participant. And I was terrified. A sta with the rate of Tom L< Republi nation, ’ Appe Series s Student mittee, that stai increase cade. He sa taxes ar to the j persona the only revenue Mike Cochran, an AP correspond for 25 years, has covered tornado* floods, hurricanes and other disaslefi Democrats, labor — an unhappy With the bitter _ 1 memory of the 1984 twfiaWi M* | election still fresh in | the minds of many in News An&fyst ; the room, the sign ' 1 -■ behind the podium had special mean ing: “Politics Is Union Business.” It was meant as a rallying cry, an ap peal to union members to ignore critics of labor’s political involvement and an effort to get them revved up for the 1986 campaign. But it also was a symbol of the current tension between Democratic Party poli ticians and labor. The occasion was the legislative con ference of the Service Employees Inter national Union and the delegates heard from House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. and freshman Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa. Harkin was scornful of those who ad vise the Democratic Party that it must change direction in order to attract sup port in the age of Ronald Reagan. “You don’t win the hearts and minds of the American people by telling them you’ve lost yours and would they please point you in the right direction,” he said. O’Neill described labor and the Dem ocratic Party as “enmeshed and en joined.” But the drubbing the Democratic ticket took in the 1984 presidential elec tion strained that relationship. With its early endorsement of Walter F. Mondale, labor played a key role in getting him the Democratic presidential nomination. Unfortunately for' Mon dale, labor’s role in his campaign gave ammunition to those who wanted to tag him as thecandidate of special interests. The new Democratic Party chairman, Paul G. Kirk Jr., has urged labor to back off its 1984 strategy of delivering a pre primary endorsement to a presidential candidate, a request that got a cool re ception from AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland. Service Employees Union President John J. Sweeney delivered an even tougher response. marriage Sweeney looked back at the 1984 de bacle in which Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota and the Dis trict of Columbia and said: “If we learned anything from the campaign, it was that never again should we give our endorsement, our money and our peo ple without demanding a role in run ning the campaign or without demand ing that the candidate run on worker issues.” At the moment, the relationship be tween labor and the Democratic Party looks like one of those tempestuous ^ marriages in which the partners can’t seem to live with each other or without each other. Donald M. Rothberg is the chief politi cal writer of The Associated Press. The Battalion USPS 045 360 Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Rhonda Snider, Editor Michelle Powe, Managing Editor Loren Steffy, Opinion Page Editor Karen Bloch, City Editor John Hallett, Kay Mallett, News Editors Travis Tingle, Sports Editor Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting per operated as a community service to Texas A&MlN B rya n -College Station. .. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of lit Editorial Board or the author, and do not necessarily rep resent the opinions of Texas AScM administrators, ww or the Board of Regents. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaperW students in reporting, editing and photography classes within the Department of Communications. 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