The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 1

if i. i VOL. 239, NO. 7 LOUISVILLE, SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 7, 1974 Copyright, 1974, The Courier-Journal Times 192 PAGES 30 CENTS Landowners in Eastern Kentucky gear to contest man who claims 780 acres of their land is his ivptmi nil i be organizing to fight for their land claims. About 400 people attended a meeting in Knott County last Wednesday night to express their determination to contest Bales' land claims; out-of-state owners of challenged property are hurrying back to Knott County, and property owners are considering filing suit to establish their property rights.

"The danger is that if we don't act, someone may weaken," said Albert Stewart, an English professor at Alice Lloyd College and the owner of a farm that Bales claims. "They (Bales and his associates) think if they can break one person down and get a toe in somewhere then they can break everyone down. That's their strategy." People claiming land and mining rights under Bales' deeds have been almost totally unavailable for comment. However, extensive interviews of Knott County residents and officials and a thorough check of county land and court records lead to this composite picture of the land dispute: Bales, president of Bob Bales Enterprises, was assigned deeds April 18 to the 24,780 contested acres made up of 119 tracts of land of about 200 acres See EASTERN Back page, col. 1, this section blesome and Quicksand creeks and some of their chief tributaries.

No mining has been done yet by Bales or any company leasing coal rights from him. However, one coal operator working with Bales has moved four bulldozers and a blade onto land Bales claims in the Balls Fork area of Knott County. And Bales has taken preliminary steps to obtain a state strip-mining permit. Many of the local residents, who claim to have valid deeds to their property, at first did not believe that a serious challenge was being made to their claim of ownership of land. Now, however, the residents, appear to to contact Bales were unsuccessful, and an associate said Bales is "on vacation and out of touch." The land Bales claims rights to all but 1,000 acres of which is in Knott County includes: the homes of at least 79 families; property that has belonged to some of the families for more than 150 years; coal that is claimed by several other coal companies; two Knott County public elementary schools; several churches and family cemeteries; Camp Nathaniel, a Knott County religious summer youth camp, and two sections of the University of Kentucky's Robinson Forest.

Most of the land in question is on Trou By STEPHEN FORD Courier-Journal Staff Writer HINDMAN, Ky. A Virginia land and coal agent has laid claim to 24,780 acres of land and coal in Knott, Perry and Breathitt counties, apparently under deeds and patents lhat he says date back to an English royal charter issued in 1710. The agent has indicated that he wants to begin strip-mining some of the land. The agent is Bob Bales, of Salem, Va. Very little is known of Bales, and no local Eastern Kentucky landowner or county official has seen the deeds and patents he says he has.

Repeated attempts a aani 0 1) t) II Kissinger prepares for debate in U.S. on ties with Russia 00 00 00 00 op wfin Jill By FLORA LEWIS Nw York Times New Service MUNICH, West Germany Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as he toured Western Europe yesterday, was preparing for a major debate when he gets home on the meaning of security in the nuclear age and on the value and risks of closer ties with the Soviet Union. As details of the Moscow meeting between President Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev emerged, Russia and America were presented as having arrived at a period of crucial decision. In describing the debate Kissinger has in mind, a senior official traveling on the secretary's plane asserted that it was as important to future generations as the national debate in the 1950s was about whether the arms race had to be faced and how to deal with it.

Kissinger believes the debate is impor-. tant because there is once again a risk that the misconceptions of a generation ago, based on obsolete technology, could distort and even ruin the goals of current American diplomacy, the official said. If this should happen, he added, there would be great changes in the world and it would take at least 10 or 15 years to start the process of super power accommodation once again. The official, who asked not to be iden tified, gave a summary of the way agreement was reached in Moscow on how the United States and the Soviet Union might approach the nuclear age survival issue and of American handling of the negotiations. He said that the United States came with a proposal that was quickly rejected by the Russians.

If it had been accepted, he said, there would have been a dispute among various American leaders about the safety of such an agreement. But the risk of a domestic argument never had to be faced, he said, because there was complete American agreement that the proposal was a maximum offer and that nothing less would be acceptable to any U.S. authorities. This was an evident allusion to the dispute between Kissinger and Sen. Henry Jackson, about concessions to the Russians, and to the strains between Kissinger and Defense Secretary James R.

Schlesinger, who is backed by military leaders. In his appeal for a widespread debate, both within the U.S. government and in public, the official stressed the need for a new understanding of just how to judge nuclear superiority and military advan- See KISSINGER Back page, col, 1, this section Photo by Bob Rinstum Storm scene Whispering Hills East Apartments in Okolona. Water in the parking lot reached four feet in some places, but only lapped the doors of first floor apartments. No one was injured.

(Story, Page 1.) A THUNDERSTORM in Jefferson County late yesterday afternoon dumped an inch of rain in less than three hours, temporarily knocking out three substations and flooding streets and residences like the Dispiriting Elsewftere Heat blamed for shattering window in car in vice president's motorcade Bourbon distillery in Bardstown is sold, a victim of modern times Grain food enrichment urged A government research board has concluded that many Americans suffer vitamin and mineral deficiencies and has recommended that all foods made of wheat, corn and rice be enriched Page A 2. On inside pages Business-Real Estate Section (Classified 18, Section Deaths 12, 15, 16 jiavely Arts Section iOpinion Page 2 Outlook-Environment uSports Section Woday's Living Section From New York Times and AP Dispatches DALLAS The shattering of a window in a police car that was escorting Vice President Gerald R. Ford yesterday set off reports that he had been fired on by a sniper, but the reports later Were discounted by officials. The breaking of the window later was blamed on "heat expansion." Ford was on his way from the Dallas-Fort Worth regional airport to downtown Dallas to dedicate the New World Trade Center, in the same complex of buildings for which President John F. Kennedy was bound for when he was assassinated on Nov.

22, 1963. The incident yesterday, which resulted in a fist-size hole in the door window on the driver's side of the police car, occurred in the suburban town of Irving, just outside Dallas. The car was the fifth in line behind the bullet-proof limousine carrying Ford. Within seconds, scores of local policemen, men from the Texas Department of Public Safety and Secret Service agents converged on the scene. Helicopters appeared overhead and police dogs were used.

No evidence of a sniper or a bullet was found. There were no injuries. The 10-car motorcade, never stopping, proceeded to the dedication on schedule and Ford calmly delivered his speech. Bill Roberts, the vice president's press aide, said that when Ford was told of the incident "he just laughed. He thought it was kind of funny." A Secret Service source said that the escape of any possible sniper from the scene would have been cut off immediately.

"Within one minute, there were five law enforcement people on the scene of the field where the trajectory would have had to originate," the source said. "They just smothered the area, as far as the See HEAT PAGE 18, col. 4, this section By HOWARD FINEMAN Courier-journal Staff Writer BARDSTOWN, KY. In a place where the careful meting out of time from minutes to decades once meant everything, there is now virtual timelessness. In the office of what until Monday was the Waterfill and Frazier Distillery Co.

plant, a desk calendar announces the arrival of January 1971. The Coca-Cola clock on the wall stands still at 2:20, waiting for the right time instead of keeping it. Until five years ago, this place was scheduled in its every move. Shipments of grains, shipments of bottles and labels and oak barrels from Little Rock, Ark. Cycles for liming wood tubs, cycles for fermenting mash, cycles for distilling and cleaning tubing and stoking coal and rotating ricks of barrels.

from year to year and place to place. The only schedules left in the office now are those for the shipping out from last February to May of the remaining barrels of bourbon made and aged here. "I don't even want to talk about it," said C. M. Ritchie, whose entire working life has been spent seeing that schedules were met and that the bourbon got from the grain to the bottle.

"Let's let water under the bridge just go on down the river and be done with it." Time, which makes whisky, closed the small bourbon distillery here. But the Waterfill and Frazier plant, a 50-acre site whose corrugated iron buildings are streaked with rust, will not be exiled from the bourbon business altogether. Like some other small distilleries in the region, the plant will pass into dignified old age as warehouse space for other Three fined, suspended in race error Photos, Page 1. people's spirits in this case, the whisky of the James B. Beam Distilling Co.

The last whisky was distilled at the plant in 1969. Since then, a small crew has stood a hopeful watch over the silent coal furnace, the still-fragrant cypresswood fermenting tubs, and the conveyor belts where a few empty flasks wait to march into the clutches of bottling machinery. "Give me some coal and 30 days' time and I'll have this place going said Ritchie, 56, a bull-necked but gentle man who started working at the plant in! 1939 and who became its manager in 1957 But the hope of rekindling the fire beneath the tall copper still apparently ended last week, when the first Plnkerton guard arrived to signal the transfer of the plant to Beam. Beam executive vice president Martin Lewin said the plant will be used to make up for warehouse space Beam lost when the April 3 tornado destroyed storage facilities at the company's Boston, operation. Lewin declined to reveal the purchase price.

"It's a depressing figure," he said. "We bought the entire place, but really' only paid for the warehouse space." "There were several other distilleries for sale in the Central Kentucky area." Joseph H. Makler of Chicago, an owner of the plant since 1944, could not be reached for comment. The Waterfill and Frazier Co. home office in Chicago declined to name the sale price.

Lewin said Beam would "try its best" to See BARDSTOWN PAGE 18, col. 1, this section By JIM BOLUS Courier-Journal A Times Staff Writer Three placing judges were fined $100 each and suspended from their positions for the rest of the Commonwealth Race Course meeting another week as a result of having named the wrong horse as the winner of Thursday's featured eighth race, track stewards ruled yesterday. The stewards also revised the order of finish of the first two horses, placing Julia's Dash first and Git second. State racing steward Art Hebel said the effect of this ruling would be for Julia's Dash to be recognized as the winner of the race for all purposes except pari-mutuel wagering and for the horse's owner, T. A.

Julian, to receive the first-place purse money of $3,000. By being relegated to the second spot, Git now will receive $1,000. George (Hoolie) Hudson, owner of Git, said that he is considering appealing the stewards' ruling to the Kentucky State Racing Commission. Bernard Berns, one of the three suspended placing judges, also said he may See 3 JUDGES Back page, col. 3, this section Refried beings to stay INDIANA Partly cloudy, warm and humid today becoming fair tonight and tomorrow with a chance of thundershowers; highs mid- to upper 80s north to low 90s south, lows In the low mid-60s.

High yesterday, 86; low, 68. Year ago yesterday! High 87; low 67. Furnished by the National Weather Service LOUISVILLE orea Vorioblt cloudiness, hot and humid with a chance of afternoon and evening thundershowers through tomorrow; high in the upper 80s, low in the upper 60s. KENTUCKY Hot and humid through tomorrow with a chance of afternoon and evening thundershowers in the north through tomorrow; highs In the mid-80s to near 90, lows in the upper 60s to around 70. Rain check Staff Photo by Frank Klmmel WATCHING the rain that spoiled yesterday's Bonnycastle block party in Louisville after about an hour were Genrose Houze, left, and her daughter, Beth.

The party, in the 1600 block of Spring Drive, was rescheduled for 1 p.m. today. Sun: Rises, 5.26; sets, 8:09, Moon: Rises, 8:50 a.m.; sets, 8:23 p.m. Weather map and details, Page 4..