Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 21, 1991                   TAG: 9104210049
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

18 HOURS, 39 MINUTES DIDN'T ROLL BY

Let's face it, though. While it lasted, there was a definite benefit for citizens from coast to coast who did not have to picket or worry about the rest of their lives.

Did you drive or walk or move in any way through the Roanoke Valley between 7 a.m. Wednesday and 1:39 a.m. on Thursday?

It was blissful. There were no 3,000-car coal trains blocking the view, cutting across the street in front of you. No reason to devise a long-cut to get over a train track. Go ahead, close every bridge over the tracks in Roanoke. Who needed 'em? We could drive across the tracks without fear of crossing gates.

In fact, it was almost too short of a strike to notice that all the trains were at home, in bed.

Not nice enough, though, to call for an encore.

\ The Roanoke Regional Airport Commission has repented.

Coffee and doughnuts now are available to the public during monthly commission meetings.

The board used to hurry through the mundane, public portion of its business, adjourn for executive session to private chambers and imbibe and gorge on goodies. Hungry rabble waited outside.

Conveniently enough, board meetings begin at 10 a.m., high time for a cup of java and some baked goods.

Due to relentless public pressure and thinly veiled accusations of elitism, the victuals are now conveniently located on a table within reach of the unwashed masses.

The coffee's a bit strong, and non-dairy creamer is inherently offensive. The doughnuts are really doughnut holes.

But they're there. For everybody. Bon appetit.

\ Recycling? You want to talk recycling?

During the cleanup of Crowell Gap Road on the border of Roanoke and Franklin counties these past few days, crane operators have been lowering giant, steel makeshift baskets down the steep mountainside.

Laborers filled the baskets with trash; the baskets were hoisted, lifted over the top of dumpsters and unloaded.

The baskets used to be boat pontoons, until the boat sank to the bottom of Smith Mountain Lake.

Last year, during a cleanup of the lake, the boat was pulled from the inky deep. The pontoons sat in a lot at Branch Highways until an enterprising welder saw a use for them - specially suited to the Crowell Gap cleanup.

He cut them in half to create ready-made litter baskets, big enough for Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.

That's recycling.

\ Orkin Pest Control, in a wild but now-successful bid for free publicity, ranks Roanoke 20th among American cities for the amount of damage done by termites in 1990, unchanged from 1989.

New Orleans ranks just above us, but we'll pass on trying to catch up. Miami is the nation's perennial powerhouse. Richmond, Norfolk, Raleigh and Charlotte also are more bug-chewed than Roanoke.

And they look it.