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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 16, 1989)
Thursday, February 16,1989 The Battalion Page 15 7:20 p.m. j, riday. PG. Showtim. i 9:25 p.m. xcellent Advfj >pens Friday. 1 PG. Opens Ft I E. 29thStrt f r more infor®;. Rated R. Sit, n. and 9:50p it , . Showtimesi 0 p.m. i. Shovvtimesi,, 5 p.m. anda. Rated | 7:10 p.m. mj rundrels. Rat e s are 7 p.m.jji PG-13. SW, a..and 9:35 p,® n at 226 Soui;. til 693-245/fe i. d R.Showtitj 15 p.m. PG-13. Shot i. and 9:40p,| s. Rated PC 7:20 p.m. aji lanor East Mai more inform! ling. Ratedl 7:05 p.m. am Tourist. Raie t e 7:15 p.m.am ons. Rated I 7:20 p.m. am Forgotten museum basements yielding fossil dinosaur bones DENVER (AP) — When most eople dean out their closets, they ind useless clutter. But when Rob ert T. Bakker rummages through the closets of' the nation’s museums, he finds remnants of previously un known species of dinosaurs. “What we’re in now is a new dino saur gold rush,” says Bakker, a Uni versity of Colorado paleontologist. But the rush isn’t to dig into the earth, it’s to search the basements of museums, where fragments of dino saur bones and skulls have been stored since they were discovered. “Twenty or 30 new dinosaurs are found every year around the world,” says Bakker. “Most good specimens are in re search storage ... like an ancient manuscript waiting to be read.” In the past few years, Bakker, 43, has “read” the remains of what he believes are four new species of di nosaurs, including two that have been researched and formally an nounced. “The four I’ve found were dug up, glued together, waiting to be studied,” Bakker says. if ini area non (AP) - BoS ted recordings les for his sett: te thought son ion, he and»: i headed for)! vas “My Pmoj h off the ruel." m was lackinf tong,” he said, ;s had been £ wn, why ms treer). It’s myy; ople it’s yourp! >u want but mi t he right thing' ised any to leave New [( Of jeople it’s 'e to do as lake sure the right obby Brow’ originally ki o the grou cess of “Don't! irst solo recoc have establish in his own rigki songs could to on,” Brown sai >s more of me. nited. You to in the same ary as fellow fit Ralph Tresvai ky Bell andE« )egan singing t n Brown was IS evoted fans, got totally out led up in theki to the shown 1 up a gentleit: :h the organize h this door, vrong door. Tk ound and sa"- ising us. We«: n 1987 to go® for a directo loved the groij ids forever b»' f going inter >n stage. mergetic type 'ere going for: i speak. 1 wait' ny audience." am containedik 1,” which topf But on stage, g was necessan r with Readv k .. “I got upthf ough a New fit I would start:: h would conit ; a real long® n g'” Farm ‘king’ finds fame in broccoli ROCKDALE (AP) — years ago, Perry Luetge Five had never tasted broccoli. In fact, he said he had never heard of the popular dark green vegetable. Today, the 67-year-old farmer has achieved a measure of fame in Milam County’s farming com munity as the “Broccoli King.” County Agent Bill McCutchen said Luetge probably is the only commercial broccoli producer within a 100-mile radius of Cen tral Texas. Luetge’s acquaintance with the vegetable came out of an experi ment conducted by the Texas Ag ricultural Extension Service. “If it hadn’t been for those people, I wouldn’t have known what it was,” Luetge said, as he stood amid a small forest of knee- high broccoli plants. Luetge, who epitomizes the image of the overall-clad Ameri can farmer, said he likes to exper iment with crops. Broccoli is only one prolific product of Luetge’s farming efforts. He plants the vegetable as a fall crop under the remains of his spring and sum mer gardens. “He always fooled with toma toes, corn and peppers during the spring, and mustard and tur nip greens in the fall,” said Ezra Johnson of Cause, who works with the agricultural extension service’s Intensified Farm Plan ning Program in Milam County. "But there is a small space be tween October and December where most small farmers lose in come.” Luetge filled this unprofitable void with broccoli. McCutchen said Luetge was equally successful with cauli flower, but the care and feeding of that vegetable was too time consuming. Broccoli farming requires a great deal of manual labor, and the grower must have an available market for the crop. Luetge has accomplished both, McCutchen said. Luetge markets his freshly cut broccoli at numer ous Milam County stores. Luetge also produces some of the largest heads of broccoli ever seen by extension agents, McCut chen said. “I had one the other day that weighed 3 pounds,” Luetge said. “It just barely fit in a 5-gallon bucket.” Smaller heads are pre ferred by stores. “The year before last, I sold 4,100 pounds of it and I cut every bit of it myself,” Luetge said proudly. “I can cut 100 heads an hour. I am the Broccoli King south of the river.” For years, broccoli has been a popular addition to small kitchen gardens in Milam County, but Luetge is the undisputed pioneer in producing the vegetable as a commercial crop, Johnson said. The key to success in the broc coli field is irrigation, fertilizer and careful tilling to avoid root damage, Luetge said. This winter’s crop was divided among five varieties, including Green Duke, Emperor and Green Comet. He also grows Chinese cabbage and traditional heads of cabbage in his fall garden. Luetge’s broccoli plants have been known to produce from the fall to early spring. They thrive in cool temperatures, but will die if exposed to 20-degree tempera tures, Luetge said. Luetge does the harvesting by hand. He walks through the three-quarters-of-an-acre patch, carefully looking for a perfectly formed head, which he cuts and trims by hand. Sifting through bones and prehis toric fragments on the shelves of the Denver Museum of Natural History, Bakker came across a skull and bits of armor-like plating. They since have been declared a new species of the plant-eating no- dosaur family, of the genus Denver- It looked like a “two-ton arma- dillo-Godzilla hybrid with long spikes coming out of the shoulder,” Bakker says. The other find, announced in April, was a pygmy Tyrannosaurus rex, which stood about 8 feet and weighed about 500 pounds. Its skull was in storage at the Cleveland Mu seum of Natural History. Still being researched are two other finds which are on exhibit in museums. One, he believes, is an early version of an allosaurus and the other is a relative of the stego saurus. Bakker says he got hooked on di nosaurs when he was in fourth grade. With a bachelor’s degree from Yale and a doctorate from Harvard, he has taught from kindergarten to graduate school and has made an nual trips to Colorado and Wyoming to take part in dinosaur digs. He and his wife, Constance Clark, moved to Boulder four years ago. He became adjunct curator of the University of Colorado museum. The trail to find dinosaurs has taken Bakker to field sites and mu seums across the United States and Canada. He says he knew about the Den- versaurus skull but “had not looked at it carefully enough.” “I was interested in the very last dinosaurs ... the twilight of the dino saur gods,” he says. “I took a second look at it.” The skull was found in 1924 in the Badlands of South Dakota and misidentified, he says. The Denversaurus, announced in October, was more advanced than other nodosaurs, he says. The eye sockets were at its sides, allowing the animal a 360-degree scan. It was about 20 feet long, 5 feet tall at the hip and 7 feet across. “You’d need a forklift to turn one of these over,” he says. Bakker discovered a skull of the pygmy Tyrannosaurus rex in stor age at the Cleveland museum. The specimen was excavated in 1942 near Bozeman, Mont. The Tyrannosaurus rex weighed 10,000 pounds and stood 20 feet tall, but the pygmy was full-grown at 8 feet. “There is no doubt the. pygmy was full grown,” he says. “The bones were together (in the skull).” Similar to its giant cousin, the pygmy was a meat-eater, with for ward eyes, much like those of a hawk. It had little hands and, Bak ker speculates, was nimble-footed. “It’s a mystery animal because there is only one of them,” he says, “It’s very birdlike ... it has feet just like a turkey or a chicken.” Both the Denversaurus and the Tyrannosaurus rex — which were natural enemies — lived about 67 million years ago, during the last years of the dinosaurs. 77-y ear-old station attendant stillpumping gas after 50 years MIDDLESBORO, Ky. (AP) — Charles Siler started in the service station business when “service” was more than just a name. In 1938, he came to Middlesboro from Williamsburg as an $18-a-week assistant manager at the Standard Oil station on the corner of 19th Street and Cumberland Avenue. “Fill ’er up, sir?” the nattily dressed attendant would ask cheerfully as he cleaned the wind shield and offered to check the tires and look under the hood at no extra charge. “We had to go to school on all that stuff — how to wait on a car,” says Siler, who completed 50 years at the station at the end of December. At 77, he shows no sign of slowing down as he moves out the door to pump gas then back again to make change, fill out a credit card slip and trade banter with three or four bud dies, each of whom he calls “Hoss.” “I still get up at 5:30 every morn ing, and I don’t usually go home to eat supper until about eight o’clock at night,” he says. Pumping gas really meant pump ing gas when he first began in the business, Siler recalls. “Gas sold for about 25 cents a gal lon, and the pumps had a handle on the side for you to pump the gas up by hand into a little glass globe and “I It’s a sight now the people who come in here and there’s not even that much oil showing on the stick. People seem to want to wait on themselves now, but they don’t always do a good job of it.” Charles Siler, service station attendant then let it out,” he says. These days, he says, with few full- service stations available, motorists tend to neglect the service on their cars until they have problems. “It’s a sight now the people who come in here and there’s not even that much oil showing on the stick,” he adds, pinching his thumb and forefinger together. . “People seem to want to wait on themselves now, but they don’t al ways do a good job of it.” Siler has never had any real prob lems at the station, except for the one time he was robbed. “This fella came in here and he had a gun, and we asked him if that thing would shoot. And he went ‘blooey’ and shot a hole in the roof,” Siler says. The bullet hole is still there. Although Siler is 77, he says the idea of retirement never has crossed his mind. “I’ve got to have something to do,” he says. “I’ve worked in a ga rage or a service station all my life. That’s all I’ve ever known. I love this place. It’s home to me.” Film classic returns to screen y restored after crude editing ASSOCIATED PRESS When film students, critics, his torians and other buffs are asked to list the best movies ever made, “Lawrence of Arabia” appears with frequency. And no wonder — this majestic epic is cinematic poetry. When the David Lean master piece, which introduced an un known actor named Peter O’Toole, landed in New York on Dec. 17, 1962, it opened with a few lovely and majestic touches including a program book com plete with bibliographical and biographical material. Although called a “camel opera” by some wags, and homoerotic by others because of its absence of women and glorification of men with men, few could elude the movie’s raptures. And the charms and cinematic seductions of “Lawrence of Ara bia” are greater than ever in a new restored version which opens this month in New York, Wash ington and Los Angeles. After a decade, 32 minutes of the movie had been cut and one print contained a complete rever sal (Lawrence’s watch is switched from hand to hand). There were also original editing cuts made when the movie was first released to trim it for American audiences with a short attention span. Lean has restored some of those scenes, at times calling some of his actors (notably O’Toole) into a studio to record new dialogue. Lean has added a scene in which Lawrence rudely breaks up a snooker game at the officers’ club, and a harem scene. The flogging scene before a panting bey (Jose Ferrer) is more fully de veloped and suggests even more strongly the sexual conotations. The restoration by Robert A. Harris and Anne Coates, who won an Academy Award for edit ing the original movie, takes the film to a running time of 218 minutes. The new version, with an added 20 minutes, is still breath taking but attempts to more deeply probe the elusive and enigmatic Lawrence. T.E. Lawrence was an arrogant cartographer in the British army who is sent to Arabia to assist Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness) in the 1917-18 Arab revot against the Ottoman Empire. He quickly adapts to the desert and the bed ouin way of life — he drinks wa ter only when his guide does; he eats the same tepid swill as they do. He also becomes a messianic warrior whose strategy and wis dom are matched only by ego and obsession. With his almost virginal white robes, O’Toole struts about not with the swagger of the British gentleman but with the stance of a god. Indeed, the exploits Rob ert Bolt so craftily chisels in his excellent screenplay, paint Law rence as a demigod. In one scene, he rushes back into the deadly An Nafud desert, which he and his Arab army have crossed to surprise the Turks in a land raid, to find a man who fell from his camel. He is told that the man is certainly dead and he risks his own life by going back. He re trieves him, emerging from the steaming horizon like a hump backed ant. Scenes later, he must kill the man he saved in order to stave off a squabble between tribes. Unlike today’s filmmakers who take their audiences to be sim pletons, Lean has a keen eye for detail and strives for cultural ac curacy. The costumes, props, blocking all hold up today — “Lawrence of Arabia” could have been made in the 1980s. The makeup, however, especially the shoe polish on Guinness, is dated. The performances by a rash of stars who also include Omar Sha rif in his Western screen debut and Anthony Quinn, are excel lent. But the movie’s real star is the desert with its smouldering dunes and poetry of colors. Maurice Jarre’s rich sound track with separate themes for the British, Lawrence and the Ar abs, is still masterful. But above all, “Lawrence of Arabia” accom plishes what few epics ever did: the artistic fusion of intimacy and adventure. Actor shows diversity in Broadway portrayal of New York ex-mayor Retired congressman building train museum along old railroad NEW YORK (AP) — Tony Lo Bi anco gives casting directors, not to mention audiences, fits. Most can’t quite remember what he looks like or where they saw him before. They have seen him as young and old, short and tall, skinny and fat. He has played gangsters, prize fighters, communists, cowboys, po licemen, soldiers in ancient Rome, longshoremen, psychopaths, base ball players and scores of others in productions by everybody from Eu gene O’Neill to Sylvester Stallone. After critics raved about his per formance as the hot-headed Eddie Carbone in the 1983 Broadway revi val of Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge,” he was offered a lot of roles as tough Italian fathers. Now he’s bracing for a different kind of part. “I’ll probably get a slew of short, fat roles,” Lo Bianco says. The reason? The actor is starring in “Hiz- zoner!,” a one-man show based on the life of New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and currently on view at Broadway’s Longacre Theater. “Now they’ll say, ‘Tony has gone to pot,”’ the 52-year-old Lo Bianco says. ‘“He’s gotten fat.’” And shorter, too. The 5-foot-9 Lo Bianco, a one time Golden Glover, plays the 5- foot-3 LaGuardia without losing an inch. “I do it smaller on stage,” the ac tor laughs. “That’s the fun of it. You can ap pear to shrink.” The actor did gain a little weight for the show. But then, he has also taken off pounds if the role de manded it. “You have to move your body around to conform to what you’re going to play,” Lo Bianco says. “As an actor, you should be a marshmallow or a piece of sponge. You’ve got to push your face and body around to pay tribute to the script and the character someone wrote.” LaGuardia, a non-stop worker, was one of New York’s best-known and most colorful mayors. During his three terms in office, from 1934 through 1945, he fol lowed fire trucks to fires, read the funnies over the radio when there was a newspaper strike, supervised many large building projects, includ ing what came to be known as La Guardia Airport, and even balanced the city’s budget. The difficulty with playing La Guardia, who died in 1947, is that many people still remember the way he looked and the way he talked. Not only from their own memories, but from newsreels, old radio pro grams and even Tom Bosley’s Tony award-winning portrayal of him in the 1959 musical “Fiorello.” “Hizzoner!,” which was written by Paul Shyre, has been in the works since 1983 when it was commis sioned by a New York public tele vision station. Shyre thought of Lo Bianco for the role. The two men had known each other since they worked to gether in Harold Clurman’s acting classes. Lo Bianco’s research took him to the LaGuardia archives in Queens to pore over their material and photo graphs to capture the man’s express ions. He read books about the man as well as LaGuardia’s autobiography, “The Insurgent.” Still, it took the actor a while to de cide to do the role. He worried about not only having to capture the man’s physical mannerisms but the sound of his voice as well. The play begins on LaGuardia’s last day in the mayor’s office and flashes backward to his youth, to his days as a lawyer and a congressman when he upset the corrupt Demo cratic machine and won election as a Republican, and finally to his elec tion as mayor. The Brooklyn-born Lo Bianco doesn’t remember LaGuardia but remembers his father, a taxi driver, remembering LaGuardia. The actor recalls his parents’ ro manticized stories of the tough times during the Depression and at the center of these troubles responsibil ity fell to LaGuardia. Now, his own passion for the man is just as fierce. “It’s a cause,” the actor says. “I don’t look at doing this play as just doing a play. It’s more than that to me. “What LaGuardia stood for — truth, honesty and no corruption — is something that we should all as pire to live in our lives. He almost never leaves me. I feel it’s as exciting for me to play the role as it was for him to be mayor.” VALLEY PARK, Miss. (AP) — Not much construction goes on in this community off U.S. 61 in the lower Mississippi Delta. But the air has been filled with the sounds of building since C.B. “Bud die” Newman embarked on another venture. Clarence Benton Newman, for mer speaker of the Mississippi House, is building a railroad mu seum. A cool breeze skips across a plowed, flat Delta field and picks up, then scatters, sawdust particles to the tune of beating hammers and screaming circular saws as the work progresses. “I’ve always wanted a caboose,” Newman says. Now he has one, plus a flatcar, a boxcar and a couple of motor cars. Newman also has part of a railroad to park them on. He has a half-mile of railroad tracks that run behind his house and along his Issaquena County cotton fields. When construction is finished and Newman gets all of his railroad par aphernalia into the depot, built of cypress atop the flatcar, he’ll have a museum. He says he plans to make it free to visitors and there “for the children around here.” Newman was in the Legislature for 40 years, speaker tor the last 12.He was regarded as one of the most powerful men in the state — perhaps the most powerful. But since retiring in 1987, mem ories of his youth have filled his mind. The tracks that the museum will be located on are the same tracksthat Newman romped along as a boy in Valley Park. His father moved the family to the lower delta in 1917 to become section foreman for the Illi nois Central Railroad. The house where he grew up is across the tracks from Valley Park Plantation where he now lives. The railroad provided jobs and boats along the tracks during the floods so residents of Valley Park could get about. The worst flood ever to hit the quiet Mississippi town came in 1927 and Newman remembers it well. “When the wind blew at night, wa ter would slap under the house and come through the floor,” he says. When Illinois Central decided to abandon the rail line as unprofita ble, it allowed property owners along the line to either keep the tracks or have them ripped out. “I wanted to keep the railroad in tact because of the floods,” Newman says, so he kept his half-mile strip and then went looking for a caboose. “B I’ve always wanted a caboose,” Newman said. Now he has one, plus a flatcar, a boxcar and a couple of motor cars. And he has a half-mile of railroad tracks that run behind his house and aiong his Issaquena County cotton fields. transportation for cotton out of the Delta and into markets. Its tracks, elevated a few feet, served as a levee when spring rains caused the water to swell out of the Mississippi River, 12 miles from Newman’s back door. Newman recalls mooring fishing He found one in McComb and got it to Valley Park before he realized there wasn’t enough room for his collection. His search for a flatcar ended in a creosote yard in Bossier City, La., where he found one made in Can ada in 1916. Woodworker carves nature’s art CRITTENDEN, Ky. (AP) — In a colonial cottage on a wooded hillside in Crittenden, David Monhollen lives and works as a wood carver. Soon after he and his family moved into the house, he put a bench in the back woods so they could sit and watch the deer and rac- At 44, Monhollen has carved out a life that’s very much the way he wants it — carving wood in the natu ral setting that feeds his soul — and making enough money to provide for his family. His wildlife carvings range from rough-hewn ducks to a pheasant of such exquisite detail that each of the 2,000 feathers is separately carved. The pieces sell for $1,000 to about $50,000 each. Monhollen’s carving began when he was 8, when a man showed his Scout troop how to sharpen their pocket knives and carve a necker chief slide. From there, he taught himself. Monhollen grew up, went to Viet nam, graduated from college, got a sales job, married and had a son and daughter. But he never stopped carving. “I’d get home from work and not even bother to change clothes — I’d carve at the kitchen table. I ruined more three-piece suits,” he says. “All the time, I was trying to fig ure out how to carve full-time.” Eight years ago, the need to carve had become so overwhelming that he quit his job and took up his hobby. Monhollen’s detour through the world of sales and business has taught him how to market his cre ations. He generally targets a corporate clientele. His carvings are in cor porate lobbies, board rooms and professional offices around the country. He also has private clients. Generally, Monhollen carves to suit a client’s interest or an image he wants to project. Eagles are popular with company presidents. Once Monhollen has a commis sion, he goes into the field to observe the animal he will carve, studying the habits and behavior, the shades and coloring, to capture it in wood. At some point, the carving takes shape in his mind. “I see the work done — how it’s supposed to be — in my mind’s eye. Then I’m ready to start.” He works up to 6V2 days a w r eek, 14 hours a day. His life has come full circle. Now it is Monhollen who speaks to Scouts and school kids about being a wood carver. “I’m happy,” he says.