Take a Break from Finals !
Join TAMU Outdoors for
4 days and 3 nights
in beautiful
COZUMEL!
December 15-18
Registration continues until November 1.
For more information contact Patsy at 845-7826.
Divers $450.00 ($470.00 for non-A&M)
Non Divers $375.00 ($395.00 for non-A&M)
Thursday, October 26,1989
The Battalion
EVERYONE TALKS
ABOUT CHANGING THE WORLD.
THIS YEAR
3750 PEOPLE WILL
ACTUALLY 00 IT
Not everyone is cut out to change the world. After all, it takes education, skills
and a spare two years.
, Also a willingness to work. Hard.
This year 3,750 Americans will join the Peace Corps to do just that. They'll do
things like build roads, plant forests and crops, teach English, develop small businesses,
train community health workers, or even coach basketball. However, what they'll be
doing isn't half as important as the fact that they'll be changing a little piece of the
world... for the better.
And when they return, these 3,750 Americans will find that experience doing
hard work will have another benefit. It's exactly what their next employers are
looking for.
So, give the Peace Corps your next two years. And while you're out changing
the world, you'll also be making a place in it for yourself.
Peace Corps Representatives will be on campus to discuss opportunities
for overseas service. BA/BS candidates on AGRICULTURE. MATH &
SCIENCE are particularly needed. To learn more about how your skills
can be put to work, plan to stop by or call:
1-800-442-7294 EXT 124.
INFO TABLE
FILM SEMINAR
INTERVIEWS
Tuesday, OCT. 24
MSC Lobby
Wednesday, OCT. 25
Rudder Fountain
9:00-4:00
Tuesday, OCT 24
MSC, ROOM 228
Wednesday, OCT 25
MSC, ROOM 302
7:00 pm both nights
Thursday, OCT 26
Career Planning &
Placement
Rudder Tower
8:30-4:00
'Please bring a completed application to the interview"
PEACE CORPS
STILL THE TOUGHEST JOB YOU'LL EVER LOVE.
CLASS OF
1991
AGGIELAND PICTURES
ARE BEING TAKEN NOW!!
OCTOBER 23-27
at AR PHOTOGRAPHY
707 Texas, Suite 120B
Hours: Monday-Friday
9a.m.-5p.m.
Polly wanna forest?
Texas Environmental Action Coalition member
Kiki Jones acquaints students near Rudder Foun
tain with the damage of the world’s rain forests
for World Rain Forest Awareness Week.
Aggie hauntrepreneur
Former student’s architecture training
helpful in designing haunted houses
FROM STAFF & WIRE REPORTS
’79, spends most of his time
hunched over a drawing board de
signing strip shopping centers, car
dealerships, hotels and the like.
But late every summer, Pickel
starts to get restless and his mind
and his pencil turn to other projects.
Projects such as the Slamming Door.
Or the Trap Door Room. Or the
Hall of Mirrors. Or the Boo Corner.
Projects designed to scare the day
lights out of his clients.
When he is not working as a pro
ject architect for James Pratt Ar
chitecture, a Deep Ellum design
firm, Pickel is designing haunted
and turning to more humdrum ar
chitectural tasks.
In fact, he didn’t think about
haunted houses again until seven
years ago when he heard on the ra
dio that the March of Dimes was
planning a haunted house. He vol
unteered his services.
“They had already built the
house,” he says, “but they wanted me
to come do the operations. I really
don’t like to do operations. I like to
build houses and then go see what
everybody else is doing.”
The following year, the March of
Dimes called on Pickel. But they had
already drawn up their plans and
put up their walls.
“I redesigned the whole house,”
he said. “They made $24,000 that
year — the most they had ever made
tla
ila
two weeks, he says, should earn
much.
Pickel has learned, however,
a haunted house is no rose gai
Security is a big problem. "Guys
with their buddies will occasional
try to punch out one of the actors.
Small children can be trouta
some. “Our age is 13 to 25. Wedoi
recommend it for kids 12 and
der. Most of the little kids who
in are carried out.”
And occasionally, membersof«
tain fundamentalist churches sk
up to picket one of Pickd’s haunii
houses because they believe ii
something to do with Satanisi
Pickel is perplexed, but pleased.
houses have nothing to do withS raised
nearly
Th
“D
eople ask me, ‘How long does it take to go
through your house?’ I say, ‘How fast can you run?”
— Leonard Pickel,
Haunted house designer
Elm
houses for his own company,
Street Hauntrepreneurs.
Pickel figures he has designed
about a hundred haunted houses in
the 15 years since he created his first
— a haunted room, really — in his
college dormitory.
“The reason I do haunted
houses,” he says, “is that I’m really a
frustrated designer.” Architectural
projects these days are team efforts,
often involving dozens of individu
als. “When I do a haunted house, ba
sically it’s me from start to finish,
putting pencil on paper.”
Pickel became a connoisseur of
haunted houses as a result of a child
hood visit to a house sponsored by a
local radio station. It was pitch black
inside, he recalls, until a strobe went
off. Then something brushed
against his ankle. All he could think
of were the monsters he’d always
imagined under his bed at home.
“I was gone,” he said. “It was the
only haunted house that ever scared
me.”
The experience taught him some
thing: It’s not what you see that
scares you most. It’s what you imag
ine.
— and they asked me to design their
next house.”
The third year, Pickel perfected
the principle he adheres to today.
He calls it The Pickel Theory of
Haunted House Design: Create
scary spaces and let visitors’ imagina
tions do the rest.
“Everybody’s haunted house is the
same,” he says. “It’s got a guy who
sits up in a coffin and a guy who
hangs by a noose. I hate houses that
show me things that don’t frighten
me. And I hate gore.”
The trouble, he says, is that almost
everyone approaches haunted
houses as though they were a kind of
theater. They use lots of props, elab
orate sets, costumed actors and ac
tresses.
All this slows things down, Pickel
believes. And it’s not always very
scary.
Unlike the rooms in ordinary
buildings, which meet at right an
gles, Pickel’s rooms are laid out on a
triangular grid, creating lots of odd
tan, he says, but the publicity is*
come, all the same.
Not quite so welcome wasthti of the
tention he received from the lawieisaid \\
at New Line Cinema, the folks*
make all those “Nightmare On L
Street” movies.
Pickel’s houses were doing so*
for the March of Dimes that I
years ago he was inspired to (
out of architecture and take i
haunting full-time. “I
»: system
I’rr
Lynn
Red C
apart n
tersho
Sorr
placed
could do them for money talk opene<
than just fun and giggles.
“I started with zero capital,”
said. “I didn’t have any money
couldn’t interest investors becaust
had no collateral except two tr
full of lumber. I just put every
on my credit cards.”
He did three houses. WorkonM
progressed smoothly. But the thill
which was to have been located
the W r est End, ran into buildingcos
problems.
“The city fought us step by sie|
he says. “As as result, we were
only four days.”
A haunted house, he soon disc
ered, can empty a bank account fe
ter than Dracula can drain a veh
He was still grappling with
$9,000 loss when he got a phoned
from New Line Cinema.
Pickel had given one of his hoi®
a “Nightmare on Elm Street” the®
His newspaper ads prominently(h-
played a drawing of the
mare” house, and his actors wfft
66
H is Texas A&M haunted
house grew out of a Halloween
custom at the school: male students
would trick-or-treat at the women’s
dorms, and then the women would
reciprocate.
For Halloween during his sopho
more year, Pickel and his roommates
redecorated the TV lounge in their
dorm with a coffin, candles and an
Aggie made up to look like a corpse.
“We were the last and least impor
tant dorm on campus,” he recalls,
“and the evening went by without a
single visitor until, finally, four co
eds showed up.
“Three of them peeked around
the corner of the door, but the
fourth walked right in and
screamed. We said, ‘If they’re that
easily scared, we gotta do a whole
haunted house.”
The house became a dorm project
and, at 25 cents a ticket, earned
$1,000 on its $200 investment. Pickel
went on to design one other haunted
house at A&M before graduating
. We don’t recommend it for kids 12 and
under. Most of the little kids who walk in are carried
out.”
— Leonard Pickel
angles where surprises are lurking.
Hallways are narrow and mean
dering so it’s hard to see around cor
ners. The whole thing is finely cali
brated to produce a vague sense of
unease relieved only by moments of
stark terror.
And calibrated to produce reve
nue.
“The only way to make money on
Halloween is to crank them
through,” he says. “People ask me,
‘how long does it take to go through
your house?’ I say, ‘How fast can you
run?”
w
dressed like the movie’s dawfu
gered terror, Freddy Krueger.
New Line Cinema was e"
pleased.
“They kept gritchingat me, wait
ing to know who much money"
making. I told them a hauntu
house could make about $20,OW
and they said, ‘We can work wt!
that.’
“But when I finally told themil ,,
much I had lost, they never gotbsi
to me.”
Convinced that haunted hoi® ^
will never make him rich, Pickel ^ •:
since returned to his architects
career. But he will continue to bi: ;
haunted houses for charities, ft*
orking with waffle-board
panels, black and white paint, year’s houses will benefit the Mar-
a lighting system, a few special et- Dimes and the Denton Suit
fects and a rented tent, Pickel says he
can put up a haunted house for . Besides, he has learned that a-
about $6,000. Any house that’s open ln S people is its own reward.
= Horse blankets make big bucks for small firm
QUITAQUE (AP) — A horse is a horse — unless its
wardrobe is exclusively designed by Texas Horse Pad,
Inc., a maker of horse comfort products.
Of course not all horses need clothing from head to
hoof, but this West Texas company is prepared to “deck
out” any horse for any kind of weather. And, according
to Texas Horse Pad Vice President Norlin Mora, that
makes a lot of “horse sense.”
“We make anything that’s made out of cloth for
horses,” said Mora, who manages 12 employees in
expanding business. “We make horse pads, winterbla'
kets and hoods, breast collars, cinches, sheep cover'
shipping boots, feed bags and fly nets, to name a few
“Some people wanted to see Quitaque grow so tk
invited Troy Skinner of Clarendon to put in a busint'
here,” she said. “At that time they were selling a loti
pads that weren’t the right size or quality. They decide
to open Texas Horse Pads to improve quality.”
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