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.
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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
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