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The Brussels Post, 1961-08-31, Page 7a WOritPamous Hotel At Last Bows Out MERMAID IN THE SHADE — Resting on the 'old mermaid tree in Weeki Wachee Springs is pretty Lou Spikes. In the traditional mermaid fashion,' as soon as her picture was snapped she dove back into her deep, crystal clear underwater home, down, Amos and Eli start to fell the trees they have selected fee thinning. Then they leave there to dry and season 4.01 winter• time, when the job of workine them up is undertaken, State forestry people woule certainly approve of the efficient way in which they go about tilt working-up process. On short dark winter days, often with tin thermometer hovering just ahoy( the zero mark, they set out tot the woods with a team and, bob sled, They wear high, heavy boots and caps with earflatea Homemade woolen knitten pro• test their hands from frestbitee Their axes and the big crosscut saw have been honed to, razor edge sharpness. They start by trimming the. logs and sawing them tQ the de- sired length. Then They haul them home on the sled and pile them high for the wood saw rig, which comes later on to out titans into stove-size lengths. Knotty chunks are ranked. to serve as heater wood, the tree limbs are dressed and chopped for in.be- tween fuel, the chips are gatle ered to serve as kindling, and even the sawdust has many uses about the farm. It is good hue bandry, and gives father and son yet another opportunity for working together. With Steam Power Bill Vaughan: A lot of friction on the highways is caused by half the drivers trying to go fast enough to thrill their girl friends and the other half trying to go slow enough to placate their wives. —NANA ff the neighbor constantly speaks of excessive moisture On his land he may be modestly trying to tell, you he now haft a swimming. pool on his, property. him, it has a personality ell its own. We womenfolk find it hard to tear ourselves away from this ex- citing show of early Americians and go about the humdrum busi- ness of getting the big harvest dinner ready to put on the table by eleven, when the whistle will toot again to mark the noon break. But there are meats to be bast- ed, potatoes to peel, cabbages to chop, chicken to fry, and the hot rolls and cornbread to be baked at the last possible minute in the ovens which only yesterday were kept hot for hourss for the cakes and pies and strudels. It is the same yearly routine, yet new eaclatirne, with fun and fellowship aplenty when the gen- tle net-capped. Amishwomen Em- meline, Trine, Anna, and Hilda combine their efforts to make the• work go smoothly and well. I am happy to be of service in keep- ing an eye OD the active twies, just to be one of this well-loved groups, writes Mabel Stack Shel- ton in the Christian Science Monitor. Amos. makes a yeoman hand at the task of the threshing. Almost as slender and supple as his son Eli, he shows no signs of tiring as the long day progresses. We believe that the exercise he gets in cutting wood is a big factor in keeping him fit. Tree felling, chopping and sawing furnish good exercise and helgets a lot of it during the run of a year. Amish people use a great deal of wood in heating their homeS, while in the season of canning and heavy cooking for hands it seems to fairly melt away, The big ricks of wood are replenish- ed each year during the slack season on the farm, and in two hitches. As soon as the sap goes says above the din,, with vast satisfaction, "not contrary like sometimes." I shout back above the clat- ter that it seems that what every- one likes best about a steam en- gine is that all the working parts are out where they can be seen. "Ja." He nods and smiles. "Good it is to see. Dependable she is most times," he goes on, "and not, as some seem to think, a do-nothing in the barnyard ex- cept at threshing time. Why, I've used her for just about every kind of work. Moved a house with her last week." It is plain that to Elmer "she" is not just an inanimate thing of big and little wheels, rods and pistons and a belching smoke- stack. He knows his machine in- side and out, what it can do, its strength and its weaknesses. To perspiring crew works manfully to keep the firebox fed, the steam up and the greedy separa- tor maw supplied. We all troop outside to see the work start, feeling as excited as children when the shrill toot from the engine by the man who acts as "feeder" signifies that every- thing is in readiness to begin. Then it is that Elmer joins us, wiping his steaming face with a blue bandana a n d grinning broadly because the machine has responded so well to all demands this morning. It is not always like this, we know. Sometimes there are breakdowns and time- consuming delays 'while some part is rushed to the smithy in town for repairs. "Good she acts. today," Elmer Threshing. Time -- The hot days grow hotter as summer comes to its peak of in- tensity, Heat shimmers over the fields and crackles in the long corn rows. The great sugar maples on the Zaugg lawn cast deep shadows which are tempting oases in the pattern of brilliant, burning sunlight. But who has. time for loitering in the shade? It is threshing time, and out in the barnyard there is the bark of the smokestack, the whine of the grain separator, the thrilling sight of golden straw rising higher and higher. • Elmer Yoder• owns the thresh- ing rig, which huffs and puffs its way to the farms in our com- munity, gobbling up wheat sheaves and pouring out bushels of golden grain, while the dusty, Somerset Maugharri once, said about the Iiotel Aviz, "I have only one thing against it, 1 hate leaving it." As a related thought, this Euge Usti storyteller and traveler would dislike watching t h e wreckers As they tear down this famous hate:, said. to have been the greatest small hostelry in the world That statement covers a lot of territory, but the people who knew the Avis logged millions of travel miles. They would in-. elude kings and queen; lesser royalte. diplomats, knowledge- able travelers, and more million- aires than there are in the Mid- dle East and Texas. They also would include many ex's, such as ex-spies, ex-couriers, ex-gen- erals and ex-expatriates, and add an elephont's ear of correspond- ents, "ex" and still extant. During World War II a Holly- wood film h a d its opening shots in what was supposed to be ihe Aviz, Anyone who saw that film and who knew the hotel would know the set dec- orations were too garish and too gauche ever to be confused with the Avis, What was it like to enter the Aviz, which shut its doors last June: Take Oi spring afternoon in Lisbon, when the air carries a, layer of filtered salt from. the Tagus River and the sea beyond. Stroll slightly uphill on Avenida da Liberdale, a. log right by the equestrian statue of Marques de Pombal, a Portuguese hero, con- tinua past the American Embas- sy. Then go left and enter the cool Avia. Walk through the hushed elegance of the public rooms and step into the garden. Take a chair by a mimosa bush, signal a groom and ask 'him to ask Raspetti, the maitre d'hotel, to send out a captain with a sail-size menu. Then order lunch and when it is ready enter the dining room and eat the gourmet food. That was a pattern this writer knew, also a lot of other people. One thing this writer, had in common with the others was the pleasant fact he could afford such a meal It cost only $2.75, in- cluding tax and service. That same low price helped bring around the end of the Aviz. It helped darken forever the Waterford chandeliers, the high- ' ceilinged bedrooms with the Frew furniture and carpets from Iran and linens from Ire- land and tiles from Portugal. et helped. shut off the power that ran. in meandering manner, the silk-hang tiny elevator which held three people. It was bureaucracy that shut- tered the Aviz, for it was a vic- tim of price control. In order to try to flatten the spiral and to attract tourists, Premier Antonio de Oliveira Salazar would not al- low hotels to raise their prices. Back in 1050 a single at the Aviz, including brealtfast, tax and tip, Cost $6.60. That was the price eight up to its end, Owner-.managing director Tony Ruggeront said he was not al- What Four Cents Gets U.S. Customers These Days Dump truck-sized containers disgorge thousands of letters. Mail here has already been segregated by class and size. Deft hands stack letters into plastic hoppers for trip to the cancelling machine, Despite automatic advancements in mail handling, human element Is vital in certain operations, )..‘,Z.!.i,Weeee.Fo‘kie tions are still employed, tons of letters are speeded mechanically between points in the building. Mechanical cancelling machine peetmarks letters at the rate of 10 per sec- bridt if a letter is upside down it is flipped over for proper cancellation. Colored enve- lepes confuse its "reading" operation, These are shunted aside for tretheal processing. As many tit 13,000 letters per hour are pOsktitirked 11T i`iiili machine, D' ettledt colored envelopes for hand tanetillifito Heart of the modern post office; From here, one man operates the "Mail-Flo" conveyor system, Letters in this Cleveland post office travel miles before they leave the building. lowed to liquidate the hotel and veil the land until the Lisbon Ritz opened last year. Youngish Senhor Ruggeroni, who flew missions with the Roy- al Air Force during World War II, said the $2,000,000 he got for the land does not completely al- leviate the sentimental "pangs" ' he feels about the end of the hotel his father started. World War II was the Aviz's greatest, if not finest, hour, and indeed around the world there are more than a few people who would argue that World War II was the hotel's biggest hour. Neutral Portugal saw spies, cou- riers, military attaches, diplom- ats, and other related individu- als descend upon Lisbon, The place they picked for their GHQ and club was the Avis, There were representatives from. the Axis and from the Allied side. Old-time staff people at the hotel would tell you that American and British spies sat within ear- shot of German and Japanese counterparts. It is claimed that the final touches for the Allied invasion to North Africa took place in the Aviz. It well could have happen- ed and it couldn't happen in a nicer setting. The wealthy re- fugees from Germany and East- ern Europe also enjoyed the Aviz, Here they ate and lounged while waiting for a plane to lift them high above Lisbon, with the flight pattern calling for New York, The Aviz became a hotel in 1932. Before that it was the pri- vate residence of a Lisboan whose daughter married in tan a wealthy Spaniard named Jose. Ru•ggeroni, Her father obligingly sold his three-story mansion to Senhor Ruggeroni. When the 1929 depression moved in on Portugal; Senhor Ruggeroni tried to sell hirhome, but there were no buyers. Instead, he bor- rowed $75,000 and converted the mansion into a hotel, which he named the Aviz, after an old royal family, and at the same time covered Portuguese history from A to Z. Happy with his hotel, he set down the manner in Which it, should be run. He never made any money. In fact, the Aviz lost money from the day it open.- . ed until it closed, writes Walter Hackett in the Christian Science Monitor. When Anglo-Portuguese Tony Ruggeroni, his son, came back from the war, be and his Ameri- can wife, Ann, took over the operation, He made the hotel into a synonym for gracious liv- ing, When his request to raise prices was turned down, Senhor Ruggeroni decided to call it quits. He auctioned Of most of the furnishings' which netted him $50,600. The balance of the furnishings will be used in a new small res- taurant he is opening on the banks of the Tagus. His combin- ed key staff practically forced him to start a restaurant for It told him it would not split up. And indeed • it was quite a team, Although there were onlly 25 bedrooms in the Aviz, the total staff numbered 121. In the kitchen alone,'chef Pono Pereira had 16 under him, In the dining room, Raspettl had 27 men to wait on guests. It seemed there always was royalty staying at the Avis. Its golden book could have' been borrowed from Debretts or Gota, There were the remnants of the royal family of Spain, including Queen Eugenia Victoria, her eon, Don Juan, the pretender, and young Juan Carlos, There was Umberto II, whose uneasy head, wore the crown of Italy for a few months, And there was Queen Marie Jose. •At certain times of the year you could see • the Comte de Paris, pretender to the French throne.. There was a nonroyal ex-regent, the man from Hungary called Admiral. Horthy, • During one stay at the Avis I dashed for the elevator and in doing so almost stepped on .0x- King Carol .of Romania and his son, ex-King Michael T. The late Calouste Gulbenkian, 'saideto be the world's richest man, lived in the Aviz for 16 years. At his insistence, his table in the dining room was placed on a raised dais. This fact bothered a guest of mine, an anti-Salazar author, and he said he rather resented the idea of Mr. Gulbenkian be- ing above everyone else in the dining rbom. He voiced this com- • plaint while eating caviar, as commonplace to the Aviz as ham and eggs are to an American breakfast table. Anyhow, the Aviz has bowed out, part of the elegant rear- guard that once numbered the original Sliepheards in Cairo, and still numbers the Grand in Rome, /taffies in Singapore, BeiiWita in tendon, and the Steel.- bourne fit When you en- ter such places, yeti have the feeling that the management vented time and in doing .s triode plenty of it. qefore they turned fo Mechanization, the nation's larger post offices were threatened with paralysis—so great was the dolly crush of carts, men rushing the aorta and to, olanches of mall. Now, many mall eon, ifroyee systems, such as the one Shown hero in Cleveland, Ohio. While some hood epercte SOLID POWER — Scientists ira, sped the first operational Mod- el of •ci segmented solid rocket motor which may open the Way for the U.S. to take some giant steps in spate. Recently test-fired 4he rocket delivered 250,000 pounds of rtheust. An attempt will be made later this year eo fire one of 500,000 pounds thrust. By clustering lay-, arc segmehts of such mo- tors, thrush as bleb as 25 mil- lion pounds tan be produced— far higher than the 000,000 pounds Which launched Rue- Oherreact Titoe, a