Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 7, 1991 TAG: 9104070135
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They want to rent an Oldsmobile.
Dollar wants to rent them an Oldsmobile.
There are Oldsmobiles. Oodles of Olds.
Everything looks peachy.
Unfortunately, the weather is not cooperating. The sky is cloudless, temperatures are in the mid-60s, winds are south at a knot or two.
This is tricky car-renting weather at Roanoke Regional Airport, particularly between 9 and 11 a.m. and from noon to 2 p.m.
The three Pennsylvanians stroll to the counter, their heads bobbing like apples in a Jacuzzi. Dressed like businessmen, they move like prizefighters trying to duck jabs.
There are Olds but no jabs.
The problem is sunlight. It zips through the glass-plated facade of the airport terminal and can scorch unwitting corneas.
Light spills onto the backs of the people working at the car rental counters, splashes across the counters and blinds customers.
They keep their sunglasses on, and they bob and weave, trying to find a beam or one of those air foils stacked on the front of the terminal to shade them.
"Two out of three customers say, `Phew, that sun is something,' " says one clerk. The clerks don't want to be named. Nobody wants to be labeled a complainer. Fewer still want to lose their jobs.
While the three customers bob, weave and squint, the Dollar clerk at the computer keyboard is moving like Ray Charles at the piano.
The sunlight coming over the clerk's shoulder is washing onto the full face of the computer screen, obliterating all that is written there. The screen looks to be blank.
The clerk sways back and forth, a la Ray Charles, to block first the left side of the screen and then the right.
Lean a bit to the left and type: O-L-D-S.
Move toward the middle: M-O-B-I.
Now toward the right: L-E.
Back to the left: P-E-N-N . . .
Middle, right, ding. Back to the left, like a human typewriter carriage or like Ray Charles without melody, music or money.
The clerks at Dollar, Avis, Hertz and National car rentals, and at Martin Travel, have been plagued with sunlight since the new terminal opened more than 1 1/2 years ago. They hold up newspapers to block the light. At Martin Travel, they empty a plastic rack of brochures on the counter and lay the rack like a visor on top of the computer tube.
One bright fall day, the workers hung bed sheets from the windows to block the light. The tacky sunscreens were meant to prod the airport commission to act to dull the glare.
The commission put up blinds. They are insufficient. Sunlight easily clears the top of the barriers.
The issue lingers.
Bob Poole, the airport manager, says he is concerned with the aesthetics of the airport's front window. He expects to have one window tinted, perhaps by this week, as an experiment. He has asked contractors to suggest designs for canopies.
Until the airport settles on a solution, there will be lots of bobbing and weaving. Some swaying. Plenty of Olds.
by CNB