Pensacola News Journal from Pensacola, Florida • 27

'Noble House' author James Clavell has five more books in store for his 4 Asian Saga 5D yy Jv 1 iim.u jf IwnmwninwiPiMi aimiiiiiTirnin-ttiti 1 tarwiiiniiiirrj Peanuts Garfield 4D News Journal To report a Life story 435-8530 Pensacola. Florida Wednesday, February 24, 1 988 They fight their own poverty war UFO sightings beam interest UFO INFO: His newspaper's reports i unidentified Hying objects over the Gulf Coast are drawing generally Poverty-stricken receive a helping hand to survive positive response from the public, says Duane Cook, publisher of the Gulf Breeze Sentinel. The reaction from most people, he said, is, "I wish I could see it." In November and again last week, the weekly newspaper MARX A vv? y-f" rj By Frank Ritter Gannett News Service CRANKS CREEK, Ky. The little boy and his three sisters listless and docile represent the worst of Appalachian poverty. Their wan faces are blank.

They don't smile. The youngsters range in age from 3 to 9. As if stunned, they sit on old couches in a tiny shack. The heat from a coal-fired stove is stifling. The smoke from their father's cigarettes and their grandmother's pipe engulfs them in a cloudy haze.

Arthur Couch, their father, was born blind. Their mother is unable to lind paid work. An 81-year-old grandmother is ailing. The family also includes the children's middle-aged aunt, Ollie Couch, blind and perhaps mildly retarded. Nearly 25 years after President Lyndon B.

Johnson launched the "War on Poverty," the Couches and many like them remain trapped in the backwoods mountain country of Appalachi a. Relief comes not from government programs but from the helping hand stretched out by Becky and Bobby Simpson, who run the Cranks Creek Survival Center. Their organization is dedicated to helping the poverty-stricken residents of Harlan County. "When you're in poverty, you're stranded," Becky Simpson said. "It's the coldest, crudest thing that ever happened to anybody.

It conies into your house and it won't leave. It drains you physically at first and then it inflicts mental punishment on you until you don't know what to do or where to turn." From the survival center on the Simpsons' property, the 52-year-old couple distributes food and clothing, provides plants, seeds and fertilizer for people's gardens, coordinates groups that refurbish homes of the poor, and operate various programs to help children and adults in the rural community. No one who comes to them for help is turned away empty-handed. Residents and organizations in several states donate food and clothing to the Cranks Creek center. Bobby Simpson, blind since 1962, supervises the collection-of the donated materials.

Last year, he and his relatives made 220 trips to collect items that were then distributed to poor people in and around Harlan County. As word of the center has spread, college students and other groups have flocked to Cranks Creek. They come for weeks at a to help distribute food and clothing or to repair and paint homes of the poor. Sometimes they get college credit for their work. Roughly one-fourth of Harlan County's 44.000 people are believed to be at or below the poverty level down from 3fi percent in 19(59.

The unemployment rate is 12.2 percent, more than twice the national average, in a southeast Kentucky county almost totally dependent upon coal mining. It was strip mining that transformed Becky Simpson from a quiet, agreeable housewile into a feminist, crusader and activist. In 1977 floods caused by strip mining a recurring problem demolished 37 homes on Cranks Creek. She learned the federal Office of Surface Mining had money to pay for the damages. Through her efforts, 16 families on Cranks Creek shared $150,000.

In addition, the federal government spent $1 million for reclamation work and dredging of Cranks Creek. Becky Simpson has worked to help Harlan County's poor ever since. sfmif XL a mil i MMoaa published photos of what appeared to be UFOs. Cook said no government agency has come forward to either prove or disprove the sightings. He said other people have reported sightings of the saucer-shaped craft, and he speculated that some form of intelligent life in outer space is "testing us" before making face-to-face contact.

Another theory offered by some people, he said, is that military activity is responsible for the strange sights in the sky. The UFO stories have brought the paper more attention than money, Cook said Tuesday. "We're getting a lot of notoriety," but the stories haven't improved sales significantly, perhaps because the paper already is delivered to many homes in the circulation area, he said Tuesday. SIGN OF THE TIMES: On a button: "I'm allergic to food. I break out in fat." REUNION: You can understand why Ruth Conquest was talking alternately in Norwegian and English.

For the first time in 17 years, the Norwegian immigrant was seeing her sisters, who had come to Pensacola from Norway to see her. She was switching between languages because her sisters speak relatively little English. Besides, this gave her a chance to brush up on her Norwegian. "It's fantastic to see them again," Conquest said of her sisters, Olga Brynjulveson and Anna Dyth-dehli, who arrived the other night. They're here for two weeks, but sometimes a visit will last longer than expected, as Conquest knows from experience.

She came to the United States, just for a visit, in 1949. Thirty-eight years later, "I'm still here," she said. ON CAMPUS: Some 450 high school students will be at the University of West Florida today and Thursday to select their favorite Democratic candidate for president. And look for some eclectic choices by the students, whose mock convention will give them a taste of politics in time for the 1988 election. Last year the students named columnist William F.

Buckley as their Republican presidential candidate. The previous year, they chose a Democratic ticket of Gary Hart and Lee Iacocca, said professor James Witt, director of the Rayburn-Dirksen Institute at UWF. The institute puts together the annual program, sponsored this year by a former politician, John Broxson. The students "really get into it," with caucuses, debates and political maneuvering, said Witt. LIONS LOOK BACK: A look at the history of the Pensacola Lions Club captures some changing times on the Gulf Coast.

There was the campaign in the 1930s to raise money for a city airport. Then there were the dances so popular during the Big Band era when ballroom dancing was fashionable. After that, Lions went door-to-door selling brooms to raise money for the group's numerous charitable causes, which range from helping handicapped people to sponsoring athletic programs to arranging an exchange program between foreign and American students. Some memories of those days are sure to flash back this Saturday when the group celebrates its 60th anniversary with a dinner for 200 people, said president Jimmy Nelson. The speaker will be Kay Fukushima, a director of the International Association of Lions Clubs.

ft 1 Gannett News Service Blind since birth, Ollie Couch, left, gets a hug from her best friend, Rebecca Simpson, who visits frequently to dispense food, clothing and words of encouragement. At right, Junior Brewer, 47, who has been crippled all his life, is delighted by photos of the family, taken during a previous visit by Simpson. Brewer shares his home with his elderly parents. It can be tough being an adult, too Don't compare self with parents' life By Barbara Woller Gannett News Service It's hard for young people to know when they reach adulthood today because often the traditional signposts a spouse, children and owning a house are missing, says Cheryl Merser, author of "Grown-Ups: A Generation in Search of Adulthood." "I hope it (the book) will explain adulthood so people will feel a little more comfortable with their lives," says Merser, 37. Today's young people should avoid "measuring themselves against their parents," she says, because society has changed and all the signs of adulthood are blurred.

"We'll not all get married. We'll not all have a house." Merser also says we have to escape the idea of equating being a "grown-up" with an "adult." "A 'grown-up' is something you become automatically when you reach a certain age and take on certain responsibilities such as paying rent or holding a job," says Merser. "An 'adult' has a kind of 'spiritual knowledge' that's different from a child. An adult sees the world in all its dimensions. "He or she is responsible for giving something back to the world, not just taking from it, such as teaching, raising a child, doing volunteer work." This ability to give back, she says, is central to adulthood and a benchmark that validates its arrival.

So is the idea of accepting frustration and still makin" the most of your life. "The world will not yield," says Merser. "You have to yield to bring elements of your lii'e together." Constantly comparing ourselves to our peers r-m Kids should meet parents half-way By Patricia Rodriguez Gannett News Service Don't expect your parents to read your mind; sit down with them and have an adult-to-adult talk. That's the advice of Keith Young, director of the half-way house and apartment programs at Mental Health ServicesNorth Central in Cincinnati, Ohio, who suggests that adult children trying to improve their relationships with their parents: Have ready a list of concrete examples of things they do that annoy you. For example, tell your mother you're now 42-years-old and she needn't do the dishes every time she comes over.

But be gentle. Your parents honestly may not know their behavior bothers you, especially if you've accepted it all these years. Be prepared to repeat your position if they continue their behavior after you have spoken to them. Your parents, like anyone else, will likely resist change unless they understand you're serious about it. Don't try to impose your values on your parents.

They won't appreciate it any more than you do when they try to impose their values on you. By the same token, you should observe the rules they set when you're a guest in their home. "On the other hand, you need to be able to run your home your way," Young said. "If they come into your house and start rearranging your furniture, you need to speak up." Give your parents some respect. Even if they consistently give you the same advice, listen to them.

"The tendency is to tune them out in the first minute," admits Ed Klein, psychology professor at the University of Cincinnati. "But listen to what they have to say, even if you think you've heard it before." Maybe you haven't, he said. Parents can be too demanding of kids By Patricia Rodriguez Gannett News Service Janet Dight considered herself a rational adult, but her parents were driving her up the wall. They'd been hurt when she left her Mansfield, Ohio, home for Colorado, and they made sure she knew it. For months after the move, her mother's phone calls and letters were filled with requests that she visit them more often, call more often, write more often.

"Finally, I just told her I couldn't come home for dinner twice a month because I lived 1,300 miles away," said Dight, who still lives in Colorado Springs. "To my surprise she said she understood, and that was that." Dight, 37, is the author of a new book, "Do Your Parents Drive You A Survival Guide for Adult Children (Prentice Hall Press, That decisive exchange with her mother several years ago demonstrated to her that if you stand up to your parents and treat them as rational adults, they'll probably do the same for you. It's a solution far too few people achieve, mental health professionals say. "We've all had experiences with this," said Charles Galloway, a communications professor at Ohio State University and a frequent lecturer on interpersonal relationships. "Basically, the parent wants the child to be what the parent needs the child to be.

So the parent makes demands on the would like them home for the holidays, they' would like to come out for a three-week visit sometimes (the demands) are unreasonable." Because the person making the unreasonable demands is a parent, the child tends to capitulate because of feelings of obligation, respect or even guilt, Galloway said. But going along with demands isn't necessarily the See PARENTS, 3D IT'S VEDHESDAY WE "The Miss Firecracker Comedydrama, presented by Pensacola Junior College. 7:30 p.m. Feb. 24-27; 2:30 p.m.

Feb. 28. PJC Fine Arts Auditorium. $5 (free for PJC students). 476-5410 Ext.

1800. Tyrone Crider: Central State Unorthodox Recruiter. 7:30 p.m., Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church, 1 822 North St. A University of West Florida Black History Month presentation. Free.

474-2387. sabotage our quest for our individual experience of adulthood, says Merser. See COMPARE, 3D.