Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 21

From crime to academia An armed robber staiks the University of Texas campus. But he's given tp his gun and a life of crime to get a doctorate degree in sociology. Page B2. Austin American-Statesman citystate Sunday, June 22. 1 980 B1 Money madness An Austin numerologist and money consultant advocates giving away 10 of your paycheck to make you feel better.

One of his clients insists it works. Page B12. hit i licans or courtm Repub ewis mike kelley tcxas folk 4 tVSieSrv. -WSJ'- The service is all premium at his station By RICK SMITH American Statesman Stall BASTROP For 50 years Oren Eskew has greeted the pickups, Cadillacs, Fords and Renaults that have pulled up to his gasoline pumps. He said he barely has noticed the evolution of autos from spoke wheeled, open topped roadsters to low-slung, fuel stingy imports.

Cars change, Eskew said, but not people inside. It's the thought of those people that keeps Kskew from calling it quits in the face of ever-tighter gasoline supplies and an upcoming switch to metric pumps that he admits confuse him. "These people who stop in, they're not Just my customers," said Eskew, who opened Bastrop's second gasoline station May 19:10. "They're my friends Some of these people who stop in first came by when they were babies riding in their daddy's pickup. "Some of the women who stop In are widows; their husbands were my customers.

if- By DAVE McNEELY American statesman Stall SAN ANTONIO The state Democratic Party Saturday put the heat on Texas House speaker candidate Gib Lewis of Fort Worth for claiming pledges of at least 15 Republicans running against Democrats in state House races in November. The Democrats, holding their state convention here, condemned any candidate for speaker of the state House "who endorses or aids the efforts of any Republican candidate to defeat any Democratic candidate for the Texas House of Representatives." The resolution also called for opposition to any speaker candidate "who makes prior commitments to the Republican governor or any group of Republican legislators in return for support in the speaker's race." Supporters of state Rep. John Bryant of Dallas for speaker, who were in abundance at the convention here, pressed the measure. But Lewis, who arrived here Saturday after meeting Friday with Republicans at their convention in Houston, said he had no problems with the resolution. "Hell, I'll vote for that," said Lewis, who claimed his presence in Houston was not an endorsement of any GOP candidates.

"I wasn't at the Republican convention," said Lewis, who was the guest of honor at a reception given by the 20 Republican House members who have endorsed his speaker candidacy. "I was over there meeting with Republican members." Lewis said he is "certainly not gonna become involved in anyone's race one way or the other." He said he is trying to stress "unity among the members" of the House, so they can deal in the 1931 legislative session with issues such as state finance and redistricting in a nonpartisan atmosphere. "The state Democratic Party. is not the place to get involved in a speaker's race," said Lewis, in recognition of the fact that Bryant has supporters for his candidacy in large number throughout the estimated 3,900 delegates here. "You don't see me buttonholing anyone," Lewis said.

"I'm here attending my party's convention." Bryant, meanwhile, said that his half-hour television program airing in several markets in the state (10: 30p.m. today on Channel 7 in Austin) is designed not to castigate incumbent Speaker Billy Clayton or Rep. Lewis, but Instead to defuse criticism leveled at Bryant by Republican Gov. Bill Clements that at he is a free-spending liberal. The vote for speaker will not take place until January 1931, when the 150 House members selected in November take their scats- Democrats pull hair, B6 GOP rallies for Reagan, B7 Stall Photo oy Za Hyai It might be curtains for this armadillo, say Starla Herschap, left, and Karen Esterling.

Dawdling 'dittos Fun comes by the bushel at JAMboree Kitchen Ballet sobers decadent party-givers The inventiveness of the human mind might be well-nigh limitless. We have come across a little book here, entitled "Check List for Entertaining." It has all sorts of helpful hints, including the instruction that the hostess should set an early example in moving her finger bowl into proper position, lest some oafish vulgarian wind up plunging his eclair into it. You and of course, are the sort of people who would love to see somebody dunk his eclair by mistake into the finger bowl. Unfortunately, you and I are also the very ones who would do it, so this is useful information. But the author goes over the line.

In her zeal to make every facet of entertaining happy and effortless, she carries her recommendations back into the kitchen after the guests have departed. She dares to suggest that cleaning up can and should be "productive and fun." If you have had any decent religious education at all, you know that cleaning up is not supposed to be fun. It is the penance you pay for having allowed yourself to have a good time. This woman's notion of fun is suspect to start with. She has devised a set of physical exercises to which she urges that one submit oneself whilst elbow-deep in offal.

She calls it the "Kitchen Ballet." At the sink, she recommends that instead of hunching your shoulders tensely, you should drop them and take slow, deep breaths. At my house, that would merely serve as reminder that there is still about 10 days' worth of garbage that I haven't got around to taking out. This could be good. If your guests were gagging and placing their napkins over their mouths during the meal, you would know the cause to be the effluvia from the garbage bags and not what was on the plate. To strengthen the feet, legs and posture, she says you should walk from stove to sink and from sink to refrigerator on your tiptoes.

"Stretch your arms high," she says. This is nifty unless you are walking from sink to refrigerator, carrying a large bowl of leftover vichyssoise. If that occurs, place your fingertips together, hands still high over your head, and go into a dazzling pirouette. This should fling most of the vichyssoise off you and onto the walls. Sponging soup off the walls is a sure-fire way to tone up your back and shoulder muscles.

It also improves girding of the loins, which you will need for the next exercise. From a standing position, leap to the kitchen counter. Stand on tiptoes. With one foot, reach over and turn the light switch off. Wait 30 seconds.

With extended foot, switch lights back on. Bring extended foot sharply back to the side of its partner. Flex knees slightly and leap, screaming, off the counter and onto the floor, bringing each foot down on one of the numerous cockroaches that crawled out of hiding while the lights were off. Experienced leapers might wish to try a handspring to the floor, recovering to the standing position in one smooth maneuver. This allows killing of two roaches with the palms and two with the feet, but should only be done while wearing gloves.

Or much better, get someone to invite you to their house. TV r. "They all depend on me to look after their cars. So I do." There's no such thing as a self service pump at Eskew's Exxon station onU.S. 71.

Air hoses hiss like snakes, and hoods pop open constantly as Eskew and his employees give every car that stops In a once over. "I believe in full service," Eskew said. "I tell my men that every car that stops here has a windshield. That's all I have to say." ust my Oren Eskew: 'Not my customors lespie County Peach Queen moaned as she led off competition in the peach pit spit contest. Despite her doubts, she turned in a soaring 9-foot, one-inch effort.

A small peach crop this year meant an abbreviated supply of the fuzzy fruit for the auction, as well as a shortage of pits for the spitting contest. But there was no shortage of music when tall, lanky Jack Goff of Mason led off the old fiddler's contest. "I've been fiddling since I was 11," said Goff, who learned to play from his father and five brothers. Goff, who drives a bulldozer for a livng, won the event. "I play five, six contests a year," he said.

"Used to play dances, but then I started loving to dance too much. "People around Mason really go for fiddle music at dances. Lots of times we'd start playing at 8 p.m. and wouldn't finish up to 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning. "The guitar player's fingers would be bleeding, but the people would keep saying, 'Play one more "That never bothered me.

I was never ready to go, anyway." By RICK SMITH American Statesman Staff STONEWALL When their armadillo failed to cross the finish line first Saturday at Stonewall's Peach JAMboree and Rodeo, Karen Esterling and Starla Herschap plotted revenge. "We're going to buy him and eat him tonight for supper," agreed the 13-year-olds. The residents of Orange Grove were in Stonewall to visit relatives and decided to enter an armadillo in the races at the 19th annual JAMboree. But when they spent all of Friday night searching without success for a competitor, they broke down and shelled out $3 to rent a 'dillo at the fair. Another disappointed 'dillo renter was Tim Blackwell from Alvin, who is visiting with an uncle in Stonewall.

"I can't understand it," Blackwell, 12, said, shaking his head after his critter finished dead last in a preliminary heat. "I know a bunch about armadillos and I looked this one over close. Checked his teeth and everything." Kathy Ristau, 17, of Fredericksburg, found other events at the JAMboree equally perplexing. "I don't know how to do this," the Gil F.skew moved lo the U.S. 71 location 16 years ago from his original downtown station at Chestnut and Main streets, His wife continued to operate the downtown station until she retired six years ago.

When Eskew first started pumping gas, it sold for 12 cents a gallon, including tax. Oil was served up not from quart cans but a 55-gallon drum and had to be checked, he recalled, by crawling underneath the auto and opening a valve. Several generations of Bastrop boys worked for Eskew, who said he told them never to call him "boss." "I made sure they had time to study. And If they wanted off for a football game or something, it was fine. I worked In their place.

I remembered what it was like to be a boy." i South Austin fire damage extensive k0Te By JANET WILSON American Statesman Staff All that remained Saturday of the Salvage Center at the intersection of Ben White Boulevard and South Congress Avenue is an "incredible" mess after a fire Friday night swept through a warehouse. The two-alarm fire damaged the building housing eight apartments, a restaurant, three businesses and a evision repair shop behind the Jale-peno Junction restaurant. The building owners said a warehouse for Amway products held several hundred thousands of dollars in merchandise stored on shelves and the Salvage Center had at least that much. Other business establishments include Lehner's TV and Bird's Locksmith, hardly touched by the fire. warehouse, causing an undetermined amount of destruction and displacing apartment residents.

"The worst part appears to be in the Salvage Center," Gareth McCoy, co-owner of the building, said. "It's incredible Inside. It's five feet of sodden, charred rubble." McCoy said the cause Is under investigation, but a fireman at the scene and two business owners said it appeared to have started in a tel 41 jusr had 3 9 -ij Photograph that Carla Elder saw in newspaper. Mall builders scurry to protect Barton Creek fi' tjav I milrim -j -c4 A 'Dead9 son shows up in photo, mom says TAMPA, Fla. AP) A Tampa mother thinks a photograph she saw in a newspaper Is that of her son, a Marine who supposedly was killed In North Carolina two years ago.

The picture was of a hitchhiker, Idf-ntlficd as Michael Elder, In Dallas holding a sign that read: "I Just had a bath." The name's the same, Clara Elder said. And more than that, the hitchhiker looks like her son. "ft- -a By LEE KELLY American-Statesman Staff The truck bounced over the earth scarred by bulldozers and all but stripped of vegetation. The ground obviously had been pounded by May's driving rains and baked by the merciless June sun. Atop a rise, the skeletal steel beams of the Barton Creek Square Mall protruded from the clay soil and limestone rock as a city monitoring crew Inspected the 120-acre construction site.

Below them, near the base of a 35-foot, graded slope bordering Loop 360, sat rows and rows of more than 700 yellow-green bales of hay, staked to the ground and tied together with string. "It looks like a farm stock show," Dr. Maureen McReynolds said from her passenger seat in the truck. McReynolds Is the director of the city's Environmental Resources Management Office. Her excitement stemmed from the fact that two days earlier there were only about 250 bales at that lo cation, weathered to a brown and gray color.

A pool of stagnant water sat nearby. The bales' discoloration was caused primarily by silt and water saturation. The situation had spelled danger for nearby Barton Creek and led city officials last week to order immediate corrective measures. Rivulets deep In the slope's side had angled rain down the hill, straight at a large clump of trees. Eventually, silt buildup would have smothered the roots and killed the trees.

With time, the erosion, accelerated by construction and unhindered by proper controls, would have caused the silt and water flowing around or stagnating near the hay bales to damage Barton Creek. To prevent that damage and more immediate harm to the creek, city surveillance of the Barton Creek watershed between Loop 360 and Barton Springs became a daily occurrence last week after city officials found the company building the See Barton Creek, B7 18, agreed with their Greg Elder, 17, and Beth, mother. On March 3, 1973, the body of a man Identified by the U.S. Marine Corps as Michael Elder was buried In Tampa by the Elder family. "We never thought it looked like him," the mother said.

"We were taking the word of authorities." Stall PTwlo by Jim Dougherty Hundreds of bales along Loop 360 near the mall construction site were fashioned into walls to retain water and protect creek..