Courier-Post from Camden, New Jersey • Page 13

"A Rats More at Home Here Time. People WITHIN THE broad movements of a dignified, proud woman with silver hair, she has witnessed the slip of her neighborhood, bit by bit, into a slum since the Depression. The old, neat cobble street now has rubble in it, the kids rule everything by day, the rats by night. And sometimes the rats, who feed in the illegal dump, rule her alley by day. "So help me God, I stand in my kitchen looking out, watching one here, then another there, coming out of a can But she has not called the city health department recently about it.

ARTHUR HUGHSON, who would have received her call had she called, already knows there is a "tremendous problem down that way. I'm the first to realize that something has to be done about the rats on those streets," he says, "but we have only a limited number of inspectors," and none yet trained specifically for rat prevention. Next spring, though the health department will have one man fulltime for rat duty. Nevertheless, Hughson points out, "I don't get many calls about the situation down there. I honestly think the people have grown accustomed to the rats.

They certainly don't do much to allev iate the situation on their own." Angelo Errichetti, director of city Public Works, who would have gotten an inter-departmental call about rats and strewn garbage had Hughson been called by Mrs. Hambrose, gets angry when someone mentions Burns and Milton Streets. He has sent his men to clean up refuse "time and time again, but those people just throw their junk and garbage right back into the alley. "What can we do, keep a full crew down there every day of the week, keep a constant policing action going? We don't have the manpower, you can understand that BUT MRS. MERRILL says bitterly: "When they come, they don't do much, they don't have their eyes open.

"What about the stolen cars on the newal project. Perhaps Arthur Hughson will have the manpower to clean out the rats. Perhaps Evans Leather will prosper, and erect a sturdy fence. Perhaps the cars will be towed away by Public Works. Perhaps the people who live there, and nearby, will put their garbage in cans that are not taken away by the trash collectors.

But in the meantime, Melinda who knows rats well for such a young person, will be walking barefoot in the alley. And for a complex of reasons, no one is going to stop her. corner that have been laying there with broken glass for all this time? "IT doesn't pay to call anyone. Nothing gets better. And if I give out the names of the neighbors who throw their garbage all around, I start a riot here, and there are no policemen to help out if that happens." THE EDDY.

The stagnance of the eddy is partly mistrust between the governed and their government, mutual frustration, worn-down lines of communication. The stag-nance is partly the federal government, whose red tape has held up the Coopers Poynt No. 2 urban renewal project for the neighborhood. The stagnance, in part, has come from the decline of the leather company, which owns the vacant lot being used as the dump. The firm's president, Paul Kurtz, wants "to put up an unscalable fence" to keep the nightriding dumpers out, but "we haven't been able to afford it.

"This last year, you know," he explains, "we have actually lost money in our business." The demand for Evans' two key products treated kangaroo skin and goat skin for shoes has slowly dwindled, just as the neighborhood has sunk further and further. It is all interconnected. TERHAPS ONE DAY there will be no Burns and Milton Streets. Perhaps the federal government will fund the re city there are eddies human situations too small to notice unless you are searchingthat feed upon themselves, aggravate and deaden themselves, gradually float beyond the mainstream. Still joined to the city in a physical sense, in time they are left on their own.

Government collects what taxes it can, gives what services it feels it can spare. The people of the eddy take what comes, and don't bother to complain to City Council that what came wasn't enough. Both sides despair of each other, consciously or unconsciously stop thinking of each other. Local government makes plans to destroy what it hates by habit to look at, but can't get the federal money to put its plans to work. The people who form the embarrassment know nothing of plans, know only that the two wrecked cars at the end of the street have been rusting there longer than they can remember, and that the garbage men, when they come, throw the trash cans into the truck and keep going.

MELINDA MERRILL is 13, a blonde, angular girl, second oldest of the seven children of Jane Merrill. She is wearing a ripped and dirty boy's undershirt, has dirty, bare feet, and sticks a toe into the large hole at the doorway that separates the living room from the street. "It came out of there, big as a cat, tail this long, ran around and went back down," she said of the rat. Her mother told of many other rats: The two of them that crawled over the first floor toilet and bathtub one day, the one that chewed the hole in the wall upstairs, the ones that rummage through the garbage in the alley daily and nightly, on their way back and forth from the river. Mclinda's four-year-old sister wouldn't say anything about the ones she saw upstairs.

Dwellers of Camden's worst eddy: Burns and Milton Streets, between North 2nd and North 3rd, across from the John R. Evans leather factory, just behind an illegal dumping ground," on the Delaware River waterfront. "THE RENT MAN, he say he's never seen the rats and he can't do anything about it, but they run all over the house and come and go as they please," said Mrs. Regina Chase, mother of five, including a 10-month-old infant, at 227 Burns. "We put boards on the hole in the wall in the kitchen, and I don't know what to do about this bathroom.

They come right up out of the back yard, right out of that garbage next door." Some of them, too, have been coming out of Mrs. Chase's cellar, which has been covered with three inches of water for nearly a month, and has a primitive plant-life scum forming on its surface amid the circles of oil. The rent man, who with the tenants themselves, government, and the midnight dumpers has contributed to the eddy, hasn't gotten around to draining the cellar. And Mrs. Chase hasn't complained to the city about the rats and garbage, never even thought about it.

"We're not so bad off," she says. "The lady next door doesn't have no electric." MRS. LAURA Hambrose, at 225, has lived there for 37 years, has finally recognized it now as "an unfit place to live," but can't move until her retired husband gets out of the hospital. A quiet, COURIER-POST Monday, August 7, ijj07 13 Cinnaminson Pilot Killed in Jet Crash By CHARLES PETZOLD Courier-Post Staff INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. -Capt.

Frederick R. Alman, 32, of 1002 Edgewood Drive, Cinnaminson, was killed here yesterday when his F-100 jet fighter plane crashed during a practice strafing run. The jet was reported to be one of two Air National Guard planes from the Atlantic City Airport on training maneuvers over the Indiantown Gap Military Reservation. The maneuvers were being held in conjunction with Pennsylvania National Guard exercises. Military authorities so far have not issued any statements regarding the crash.

Capt. Alman, identified as the pilot by State Police at Jonestown, was attached to the 177th Tactical Fighter Group in Atlantic City. Business Partner He was a partner with his father in the firm and Alman and Son, manufacturers representatives. The firm represented the American Furniture Company, Martinsville, Va. A 1959 graduate of UCLA, the pilot was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S.

Air Force. At UCLA, he won Uie Professor of Air Science Award as the outstanding cadet in the Reserve Officers Training Corps. He also attended the Naval Academy at Annapolis, before transferring to UCLA. During the final three of his five years in the Air Force, Capt. Alman co-piloted a B-47 for the Strategic Air Command.

He was stationed at David Monathan Air Base in Tuscon, Ariz. Honored by Guard Capt. Alman left the Air Force in 1964 to join his father in the sales firm. He became a member of the Air National Guard and earlier this summer was honored as the outstanding company grade officer in the New Jersey National Guard. Surviving are his wife, Dorothy; three sons, Gregg, 11; Jon, 7, and Tom Scott, his parents, Mr.

and Mrs. S. Jacob Alman of Cherry Hill, and a brother. Services will be Thursday at 11 a.m. in the Snover Funeral Home, Route 130, Cinnaminson.

There will be no viewing. The burial site has not yet been Women Die As Train Rams Car jmiiBmw Li State Legislation Studied For Tighter Arms Security HAMMONTON-Two women, unable to release their seat belts in an automobile stalled on a railroad crossing, were killed' instantly yesterday when the car was struck by a coal train. The victims were Mrs. Girlie Lewis, 49, of 1133 W. Jefferson Street, and Mrs.

Catherine Morrow, 47, of 1126 W. Jefferson Street, both of Philadelphia. The accident occurred at 6:50 p.m. at 6th Avenue and the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Line crossing in Newtonville. Police said the crossing is unprotected.

Tpr. D. Saul, Mays Landing barracks, said the. women were passengers in the back seat and their husbands were in the front seat. He said the two men, Elmer Lewis, 52, the driver of the car, and Wayne Morrow leaped from the car but were to help their wives unhook the seat belts in time.

He said the car was dragged 1,000 feet by the impact. The train, operated by David L. Grill of Collingswood, was used to haul coal to the Beeslcy Point Plant of the Atlantic City Electric Company. Now You Know More than 50 labor unions have established national offices in Washington, D.C., and constructed buildings costing an estimated $30 million (UPI). CAPT.

FREDERICK R. ALMAN TRENTON (UPI)-The governor's office is studying possible legislation mandating stricter security for places holding caches of firearms. A spokesman for Gov. Richard J. Hughes said his counsel's office had been instructed to launch a thorough study of existing regulations and determine how they should be tightened.

But the spokesman said that to date the survey has disclosed that little or no governmental regulations exists for arsenals, weapons and similar arms repositories. Concern over arms storage se curity has grown since the Newark and Flainfield riots. At the start of both major outbreaks, rioters hit key arms storage points and came away with weapons which officials believe were used in sniping and Other incidents. The study is expected to be lengthy and legislation probably will not be ready before the 1968 legislative session. In Newark, the rioters struck a large warehouse and came away with a supply of weapons.

At the outbreak of the Plain-field disturbances, an arsenal in nearby Middlesex was raided and at least 46 semi-automatic weapons were carried off. This raid triggered a controversial house-to-house search in Plain-' field's riot area. Stiff Gun Control Law One of the governor's emergency actions during the riots was to order the closing of sporting goods stores and other establishments which might sell firearms. New Jersey, through Hughes' prodding, has enacted the stiff-est gun control law- in the United States. Potential purchasers are required to file applications and undergo police investigation.

Sales are barred outright to convicted criminals, drug addicts, alcoholics, mental patients and others deemed undesirable. However, opponents of the law have charged it does little to block acquisition of arms by illegal means, such as the raids during the riots. Hughes has been pressuring Congress for a similar federal law to control interstate sales of firearms citing the difficulty in stopping New Jerscyans from acquiring guns in other states. He also has asked governors of neighboring states to pass companion legislation but has met resistance in these quarters. Ghana Selling Bond-Type Car Negro Revolt Facts Uncovered To get the facts about the Negro revolution Louis Cassels, senior editor for United Press International, traveled 2,000 miles.

While the fires of days of riots still flickered he talked for hours with Negroes in the back alleys of Detroit he visited Newark, Rochester, Toledo and other cities rocked by racial violence 7 and Harlem, where few white faces are seen. He interviewed scores of Negroes and ques-toncd police, state and local officials, clergymen and sociologists. The questions he asked are simple. But the answers, he found, were often complex. His findings will be published Wednesday in the Courier-Post.

III IT. Man Chasing Children Dies A Camden man died last night while chasing a group of children for throwing rocks at his parked car. Augustus Henkey, 68, of 321 Atlantic Avenue was pronounced dead on arrival at West Jersey Hospital after his car hit a fence at 4th a nd Liberty Streets. Coroner Blair M. Ivlurphy said an autopsy will be performed today to determine the cause of death.

mm? WASHINGTON (UPI) The Ghana Embassy is trying to sell a $47,275 limousine that makes James Bond's gadget-laden car look like the family station-wagon. The limousine, which was custom-made for Ghana's deposed president, Kwame Nkru-mah, is equipped with air conditioning, an AM-FM radio, television set, bar, refrigerator, writing desk, dictating machine, bullet proof glass, hidden gun compartment, retractable steps for bodyguards, and a backseat telephone for communicating with the driver. Presently, the car is gathering dust in a public garage near the embassy. Nkrumah ordered the car in 1965 from Hess Eisenherdt of Cincinnati, Ohio, which makes limousines for U.S. Presidents.

He paid nearly the entire price in advance, but was ousted in a military coup before the limousine was ready. y.v.' X'.