Graphe by Jo Arm Fattgren
In Texas an entire town
is putting the sun to work
BRIDGEPORT, Tex. (AP) — This rural North
Texas community of 5,000 plans to put the sun to
work, becoming what city council members say is
the nation’s first town powered by solar energy.
“It sounds like a Buck Rogers story to me but it
really impresses and excites me,” councilman Jack
Vandeventer said Thursday. “The whole city is
elated, very supportive. They’re really gung ho.”
The decision to construct a solar energy plant
to provide electricity to the entire city came when
Texas Power and Light Co. threatened to stop
service after Bridgeport denied the utility a rate
hike. Texas Power and Light had asked for a 10.7 per
cent rate increase and the city countered with an
offer of 2.2 per cent.
"They said they were going to pull the plug on
us so we decided we’d just go shopping for other
sources of power,” Vandeventer said.
Bridgeport, located between Fort Worth and
Wichita Falls, owns its own power distribution
system. The city buys wholesale electric power and
transmits it through its lines.
When Solar-King Inc., of Reno, Nev., heard TP&L
planned to discontinue service to Bridgeport in
1978, the firm contacted city fathers and proposed a
solar energy plant,
plant.
“The savings are going to be tremendous,”
Vandeventer said.
hie said counci I men were skeptical at first so
they contacted the Federal Energy Research and
Development Administration.
"We asked them if it was too far out and to our
surprise they said no,” he said. “Every time we talk
to somebody else we get more enthusiastic.”
More talks are planned with federal advisors
and scientists at Texas Tech University on the
specifics of setting up a plant, scheduled for
operation in 1978.
The plant, using flat plate solar collectors and a
specially designed thermal energy process, will be
capable of producing 4.2 million kilowatt hours of
power each month. Summer consumption here
averages less than two million kilowatt hours per
month.
“It will cost $60,000 to $100,000 a year to
operate it — much less than we’re paying now,”
Vandeventer said. Figures indicate that in 10 to 15
years maintenance will be virtually nil. The savings
will be substantial.”
Vandeventer will show this new material to the
council tonight.
Solar-King officials said the generator can
store power for up to 97 hours without additional
sunshine. City Manager Maury Brown said the only
trouble may arise in the month of January which has
the most sunless days.
“We’ve already thought of that," Vandeventer
said. “Another utility company will be ready to
provide backup service on a temporary basis if we
should run out of sun power."
Airlines offer special rates, but you have to ask
(CPS)—It may take begging,
whining or bullying, but even
tually the reservations derk at the
airlines ticket counter will divulge
the cheapest way to fly during the
holiday season.
But to get the best deal on
tickets, students should know
some of the price breaks available
on many flights before tangling
with the airlines. Often, reser
vations clerks neglect to inform
flyers that special rates do exist
and sell them tickets at regular
coach fares.
Almost all the big airline
companies offer excursion fares,
advertised as “Bicentennial" or
“Spirit of 76" or other eye
catching names. But beware.
Excursion rates come with a big
bundle of qualifications. Tickets
must be purchased at least seven
days in advance, they must be for
a round trip and the flyer must
stay at least seven but no more
than X days at his destination.
The airlines also have “black-out"
days when excursion rate tickets
are no good.
During the Christmas and New
Years holiday season, according
to a reservations clerk for
American Airlines, 10 days are
blacked out. These include
December 19th, 20th, 24th, 26th
through the 29th, 3lst and
January 4th and 5th.
Other airlines offer similar
excursion fares only on
weekends. These must also be
round-trip tickets and the flyer
must travel both directions on
specified days, often Saturday
and Monday.
Excursion fares, if they fit into
your travel plans, are the least
expensive way to fly. Some
airlines also offer night fares on
many, but not all, flights that
leave after 10 p m. The difference
between night fare and excursion
fare is minimal—on a Denver to
Chicago round-trip ticket, the
difference was only $7.
A few airlines offer “no-frills”
fares which are less expensive
than regular fares but traveling is
restricted to Monday through
Thursday and the tickets must be
purchased seven days in ad
vance. “No-frills” fares are
scheduled to expire December 16,
but if you plan to travel before
then, ask the clerk if they are
available.
No matter what breaks you
finally get on your airline ticket,
flying isn't cheap. But it is fast. A
jet takes only a few hours to get
from New York to Chicago and
the excursion rate is $111.74
round-trip.
A train, on the other hand,
takes about 20 hours to get from
Chicago to New York and costs
$96 round-trip. If your time is
more precious than your money
traveling by air is the best bet.
For frequent stops and a lot of
sightseeing, trains are better and
also cost slightly less.
If money is in very short supply
and no one’s demanding your
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10-5 Monday-Saturday
Sundays noon-5 through Christmas
time, consider traveling by bus.
But comparisons with trains and
airplanes are useful. On the same
Chicago-New York route, the bus
will take about 25 hours and cost
almost exactly the same as the
train. On the Denver-Chicago
route, the bus is cheaper than the
train by about $18 but takes an
extra five or six hours. Remember
to calculate food costs for a long
bus or train trip.
A huge, important novel by the author of THE RECOGNITIONS—
awaited by literary America for more than a decade
4 | * I « f. |
First published in 1955. The Recognitions
was, on its paperback re-issue in 1974,
formally acknowledged bv critics as a
masterpiece ( One of the most impor
tant American novels written since the
war . . it should be ranked with the
work of Thomas Pvnchon . . He has
forged a classic "—Tony Tanner. The New
York Times Book Review
IR is of comparable magnitude—a
rushing, raucous look at money and its
influence, at love and its absence in the
lives of the magnificently orchestrated,
absurd circus of all its larger- (and
smaller-) than-life characters Their
voices dominate the book—talking to or
at each other, into phones on intercoms,
from TV screens—m a wav unprece
dented in modern fiction
At the center of William Caddis's new
novel: I R. 11 years old, hvped on action
Operating out of a pay phone in his Long
island school, with connections in a New
York cafeteria and in a seedv iunk filled
pad on East %th Street, he parlays an
order for thousands of Army-surplus
wooden picnic forks into a nation-wide.
hydra-headed "family of companies "
Safety-pinned together with those
letter-of-the-law shenanigans that
abound in U S. business, the J.R Corp
and its Boss, engulf a fitful crew of sur
vivors and lowers composers who don't
compose, divorcees and widows, a mail
order lawyer, a family-owned piano-roll
(and condom) company. . . . Their in
spired shoestring ventures obtrude into
the bigger world—the Real world—of tne
grim pragmatists who link up, split off
for profit, then reassemble for more: cor
poration execs, school principals dou
bling as bank presidents. Congressmen,
and generals
Snowballed along, the reader enters
I R too. lives the "real time" of spoken
words begins to anticipate responses,
pick up clues and the swift punch lines
of elaborate |okes .
This participation and the startling, dis
turbing clarity with which Caddis catches
the wavs in which people deal, dis
semble and stumble through their words
—through their lives—makes I R the ex
traordinary novel it is.
paper $595
University ot Oregon
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