The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 756

2B The Miami Herald Sunday July 8 1984 PB Five kings celebrate their reign of the video arcade 0 tS CvMvA rA mv'V 1 gotten real tired of trying to justify my passion to my bridge playing said Self little recognition helps When I got my name in the newspaper people began to think what I was doing was Self played her first video game 18 months ago while leaving a Weight Watchers meeting at a local Holiday Inn She was immediately hooked Self who used to wear bifocals now wears trifocals to aid her playing: one lens for reading one for driving and one for video games really get into Self admits once broke a bone in my foot while bracing myself during one Self believes video games are wholesome sport enjoy the camaraderie here "she said love the kids They treat me like one of them so vital and energetic fun to be Self concedes that video games are not her only passion my favorite game is craps Self said this is a helluva of a lot Bill Mitchell unofficial spokesman for the group was particularly proud He is the champion among champions having won five events including the Ms Pac-Man Donkey Kong Donkey Kong Jr and Burgertime competitions He also won the Pac-Man competition scoring 33 million every conceivable point available in the game has always been my ambition to be very good at something" says Mitchell 21 a Hollywood resident want to be number Mitchell takes his video games seriously He has played a single game for 47 straight hours been featured in Life magazine and on the television show Incredible He attends video trade shows sometimes advises manufacturers and has been banned from playing the video machines in his Hollywood restaurant because he might wear them out used to go to arcades because it was fun and cute Now I go for the says Mitchell who dreams of the day when video champions can make championship money By ANDY ROSENBLATT Herald Staff Writer The world champions gathered quietly in North Miami Beach Saturday just a putt past the miniature golf course There were no gold medals dangling from their necks no champagne toasts no pesty cameramen to chase them The champions even had to bring their own quarters Still it was official Five local competitors had won a total of 13 events in the Video Games Masters Tournaments They had set records and were guaranteed a place in the Guinness Book of Records They had become kings of the video arcade So they did what most champions do They celebrated their victories by calling a press conference The press conference was held between the Cloverleaf Game Room and the Clover-leaf Miniature Golf Course Three of the champions Bill Mitchell Steve Harris and Jack Gale arrived wearing T-shirts and sneakers Another champion wore trifocals One just graduated eighth grade The press corps arrived in a single car Brian Haiik is the youngest champion having achieved video game stardom at age 13 His event: Zookeeper a fast-paced game that features what else a zookeeper running after animals with a net His score: 16145250 Brian a cheery ninth grader at Thomas Jefferson Junior High in North Miami Beach visits the video arcade daily unless his $5 weekly allowance has run out usually do my studying before I come to the Brian said interfere with my school work so my parents mind They always know where I am" Doris Self this oldest winner looks like a bingo player She is 59 a short and solidly built widow with twinkling eyes and graying hair She wears polyester pants and glasses that dangle from a metal chain she wears around her neck Self a Plantation resident hates bingo is a bit bored with bridge and can finagle a joystick with the the best of them She scored over 1 million points to win the Q-Bert championship 1 iA 3 r-wv MURRY SILL Miami Herald Staff Bill Mitchell demonstrates his technique at video game Bill Biauchci h- Intestinal illness seen in children Indiantown kids may be infectious License plates more fun than alphabet soup WALTER MICHOT Miami Herald Staff Barry Nadler mans the controls of the FCC monitoring station in West Broward They want the FCC to tune out I had occasion to note the other day that among other quirks acquired through years of tilting at windmills and pinball machines I have taken to playing word games with license tags while driving around I do this to preserve my sanity amid homicidal drivers as well as give the mind some action Rules are simple Words must be formed from consecutive letters on tags Switching letters to accommodate words is forbidden Besides too easy Proper names are not allowed either Most plates can be solved routinely including some appearing inscrutable at first IVC for example translates into among other words Another apparent toughie XHQ becomes after a little thought Anyway you get the idea Harvey Gelles of Hallandale has had the idea for some time He rose to the occasion immediately been doing the same thing for over a year but in a different he wrote teach Yiddish to a class of senior citizens at the Jewish Community Center in Hollywood riding in my car one day I noticed one of our Florida license plates with the letters ZUP and three numbers Taking the letters ZUP phonetically we have the Yiddish word for began noticing other Florida license plates (The habit is hard to break) I came up with KLT and SHU Altogether I came up with more than 300 Yiddish license plates The pupils loved this method of learning Yiddish Gelles seems to have hit upon an excellent and amusing method of sharpening both vocabularly and mind in any language Handicapped by ignorance of Yiddish I tried applying the same letters to English elaboration SHU was a snap Almost at once and and came to mind There must be dozens of other combinations KLT was a poser until I remembered and associated the word with I wrestled more or less unsuccessfully with ZUP I could not get Bob Zuppke the legendary Illinois football coach of yesteryear out of my head of course is not permitted To digress a bit however I remember Zuppke principally because of a postgame conversation after his Illini took a fierce beating from Ohio State and Coach Francis (Close the Gates of Mercy) Schmidt They shook hands afterward and Schmidt mumbled the usual nothings about tough luck and the fact the Buckeyes had won because they had the horses Rep Larry Smith D-Hollywood the task force will look for suitable property and a way to find federal money to pay for the estimated $6 million project 80 acres is a very premium piece of property and could possibly be sold to raise the said Smith Because of construction for Interstate 595 the monitoring station must be moved anyway The FCC had proposed relocating it 1200 feet south on its own property moved just enough to accommodate the new highway But radio station managers and listeners want it out of their way get quite a few complaints from said Jayne Lind a WINZ executive call up the talk shows and say hear Collins of WGBS said his ratings would improve if the monitoring station were moved tell you how many listeners losing but in the he said MONITOR from IB listeners in North Broward are left with 'a lot of static WINZ listeners who live north of Commercial Boulevard in Broward often get a fuzzy signal or lose it entirely at night when the station is forced to cut back from 50000 to 25000 watts said the general manager Stanley Cohen live in Plantation and sometimes I get it Cohen said The broadcast tower is in North Dade At a meeting Friday in Washington FCC officials talked with Rick Edwards director of engineering for Guy Gannett Broadcasting Services parent company of WINZ Radio and discussed moving the monitoring station Edwards is on a task force that is trying to find a better location for the station Made up of radio executives and engineers FCC officials and US Finding thj right site will not be easy in crowded South Florida When the monitoring station was built almost 40 years ago no one expected the population to sprout around it in such profusion The airwaves were relatively clear of South Florida is covered with AM broadcast waves a whole lot of overlapping said Dave Means FCC chief of equipment and standards who attend- ed meeting Means said the FCC needs 160 acres of level land with no nearby electrical interference The South Florida monitoring station one of 13 in the nation and the only one in Florida cannot be moved more than 100 miles north of its present site to do its job Specific sites were not discussed at the meeting Means said although land at the eastern edge of the Everglades has been mentioned as a possibility The task force is expected to start looking at real estate immediately Wfe By LORENZO BENET Herald Staff Writer INDIANTOWN Children who live in blighted areas near Indiantown are suspected of bringing an intestinal disease into three area day care centers an illness that has hospitalized 19 youngsters county wide since March 1983 Last fall the Health Department tested 125 to 150 children and found that 29 infants and toddlers in day care centers and six others from Indiantown were infected The children were afflicted by giardia an intestinal parasite that is generally contracted by those who come in contact with human waste said Karlette Peck a county epidemiologist decided to go in and do some testing and opened up a can of Peck said Health officials said most of the infected youngsters live in Booker Park a small predominantly black community northwest of Indiantown that is now the focus of an intense county cleanup effort While the numbers show the disease is not epidemic it has exceeded the Health Department director Archie McCal-lister said are planning to do some testing next fall in other day care centers in Stuart and Hobe Sound to see if a problem Peck said also plan to retest in Although health officials and physicians say children with giardia have showed up in other parts of the county Booker Park has the highest number infected with giardia and other intestinal diseases Day care ruled out The Health Department blames poor hygienic conditions including numerous overflowing septic tanks and the absence of bathing facilities But officials have ruled out the possibility that conditions in the day care centers caused the outbreak Officials believe infected children spread the disease to others in the day care centers The problem in Booker Park was brought to the attention of the Health Department by the Indiantown Community Health Center which reported last summer it was seeing an increasing number of children infected by intestinal illnesses Peck said Officials found that 20 to 40 percent of the youngsters tested in the day care programs were infected with giardia or other intestinal ailments They said at least 95 percent of the youngsters were tested The youngsters infected with giardia were part of larger group of about 80 Indiantown residents who contracted 150 intestinal illnesses this year health officials said Some of the people were afflicted with more than one ailment officials said The Health Department is concerned with the growing rate of intestinal illnesses in Indiantown particularly Booker Park because a survey showed only a handful of similar cases showed up in the rest of the county Peck however said only a handful of day care children were ill during the testing period and they were referred to private physicians or the Indiantown Community Health Center which provides care for indigents But a Stuart pediatrician and two day care center directors were upset that the Health Department administer or insist on treatment to quell the giardia outbreak By law the Health Department has the authority to treat the children if it believes the problem poses a serious health threat to the community Disease Health officials after consulting with state and federal officials decided against taking such action because the disease had not reached epidemic proportions and because they believe the potential for side effects from treatment drugs posed a greater threat to children than leaving them untreated Center for Disease Control and the state epidemiologist advised us to seek treatment only for children who became Peck said were advised not to treat children with no symptoms because the drugs can have harmful side effects on young a 25 percent chance that the three drugs used to treat the disease atabrine flagyl and furozone can induce vomiting and diarrhea in children Peck said Peck added that giardia is not as serious as other intestinal illnesses such as shigella and tapeworm average youngster with giardia shows no she said The decision to treat children with no symptoms was left up to private physicians and parents Peck said Peck said she know how many children received treatment Dog lovers howl over ordeal right Zuppke said you have the horses you beat me When I have the horses I beat you When we both have the horses I beat beating around the ZUP bush while stalling for time I finally welded together a verb to form the noun Aware that the improvisation borders on illegitimacy I submit the word anyway because I cannot think of another 1 confess to semi-cheating in other ways If Gelles can enjoy an edge in Yiddish I can make use at last of my struggle with Latin In spotting the tag VMQ in heavy traffic and therefore having no time for deep thought I reverted to as used by Virgil in the opening line of the Aeneid virumque or sing of arms and the In English three words are necessary to translate into the man" Latin a tighter language allows the combination of (man) and (and) to be fused into a single word and lend rhythm to opening statement In that sense I submit that is legitimate But alas I cannot solve my own tag letters Even after weeks of effort I remain stymied in any language Further- more I defy anyone including the ingenious Gelles to make something of the letters UXK I have one advantage While I drive the blasted letters are out of sight and out of mind voked sharp reaction from mal-lovers critical of the way the situation had been handled Charlotte Rosenfeld of North Miami Beach said she may change her will left all my money if I die to the Humane Society a big sum of money I understand how it would happen a thing like that a dog left out in the heat for a whole week and nobody took care of it So many people are involved and everybody says something else want to leave my money to people who take care of animals and that going to talk to the president of the Humane Accounts from neighbors police and the animal rescue agencies conflicted Saturday as to why the dogs had not been picked up sooner Benjamin said the Humane Society heard nothing further and that Animal Services had come for Negra Miami police were not at the house in the morning when Benjamin said the caller telephoned according to Miami Police spokesman Angelo Bitsis Police arrived close to 5 pm and advised neighbors to call Animal Services and the Humane Society Saturday morning By GEORGE STEIN Herald Staff Writer MIAMI A mother dog and her puppies abandoned and chained to a Miami fence for a week brought an outpouring of public sympathy Saturday as well as trucks from two animal rescue agencies The agencies Metro-Dade Division of Animal Services and the Humane Society of Greater Miami acknowledged Saturday they had both known of the plight but had done nothing until Saturday when a newspaper report appeared Each said they had expected the other agency to take care of the case A frightened Negra and five pups arrived safely at the Animal Services shelter at 7401 NW 74th St Animal Services also picked up the bodies of three puppies that did not survive their week-long ordeal The Humane Society also sent a truck to 2290 NW 26th St where Negra had been chained with a straightened coat hanger to a water faucet since June 30 when a tenant moved out and left them behind By the time the Humane Society truck arrived Saturday the dogs were gone said Lyle Benjamin society administrative assistant News of situation pro- PETE CROSS Miami Herald Staff Mother dog tied to a water pipe was abandoned with her pups.