Page Ten I HE MICHIGAN DAILY Friday, March 7-1,,1,91:) 1 Page Ten I HE MICHIGAN DAILY Friday, March ~l, LVI~ Tra vel,.. Escape... By SARA RIMER Two mad students took off for Toronto at the height of midterm mania last month in a break from the current infatuation with inflated grade points. Wearied by the thought of another day in the under- graduate library or one more visit to the print study gallery overrun with articulate art history whiz kids, Myra and Nancy (fearing parental reprisals, they asked that their last names be withheld) decided to subvert the usual Tuesday academic routine. "A day off," they reasoned, "would renew our enthusiasm for hard study- ing, clearing our minds for an onslaught of new infor- mation." At 12:38 p.m. Myra, -forced to give up on her film paper when neighbors complained about the type- writer's noise, suggested, "Hey, let's go to Toronto." Nancy, who was putting off the same paper, readily complied, and the two ran upstairs to pack before any harsh bouts of realism could put the roadblock on their trip. IN ORDER to make a quick getaway, they skipped suitcases and made five trips up and down the stairs with armfuls of clothes. Confronted by a friend who refused to believe the two were fleeing campus during midterms Myra demanded, "Where do you think I'm going with my pajamas?" However, jabbed by guilt pangs, she picked up her Smith Corona electric and stashed it in the back seat of the car. The two scrawled a hasty note to their roommate, who was holed up in the library, that read, "Went to Canada, see you tomorrow," and were out the door by 12:45 p.m. They hopped in Myra's Cutlass, stopped at the bank for fifty dollars, filled up the tank, and passed go, tell- ing each other, "You're only young once." With the ra- dio turned full blast on be-bop AM music, they regres- sed to a loud round of elementary school class trip style singing - "Hundred Bottles of Beer in the Wall." ONLY a thickening fall of snow daunted the two travelers and they reluctantly modified their initial Toronto plans, pegging London, Ontario as their new, closer destination. When they hit London after a three hour drive, they pulled up to a posh Ramada Inn, peeled thirty dollars off their wad of runaway bills, and ordered up a fancy room with two huge, double beds, a color T. V., armchairs oozing slick leather, and garish hotel art that would never make the print study gallery. Meriting no long-winded praise, the art deserved only a brief, "God, that stuff is ugly." Luxury-stuffed by their surroundings, Nancy and Myra bypassed the expensive hotel restaurant and The Ambassador Bridge stretches across the Detroit river, to Windsor, Ontario. It is one route which travelers yearn- ing to escape may take into Canada. headed instead for the Ponderosa Steak House. The spot was jammed with hungry families taking advan- tage of Bargain Night's $1.50 steak dinners. Between bites the two sputtered, "I can't believe we'reminCan- ada, we must be crazy." After filling up on meat and potatoes, they returned to the hotel where they discov- ered a heated swimming pool that almost spurred them to locate bathing suits. However, that brief burst of en- ergy quickly subsided, and they settled down instead for a night of tube-staring that included Marcus Welby, Mash, and Good Times. They each dried off after long showers with about a half dozen hotel towels. The bath- room featured a sunlamp, and they took turns waiting under it to turn a Florida tan. Myra pulled out the Smith Corona in a half-hearted attempt on her paper, but her hotel neighbors were no happier than her house mates with the machine's buzz. At 10:00 p.m. the two disgruntled businessmen next door called up to bark, "How long is that noise going to continue?" LONDON lacked Toronto's all-night fun and games, and at 11:00 the two dozed off with the T.V. still blar- ing. They awakened early, had a last fling with a room- service eggs, bacon, and toast breakfast, and snatched up a cache of matches and stationery as proof of their Canadian gambit. By 8:30 a.m. they were on the road back to Ann Arbor, hoping the snow would strand them in London for another day. However, they breezed back to town, this time making Jethro Tull's "Bungle in the Jungle" their theme song. Home by noon, they flashed their Ramada receipt to skeptical friends who said, "God, I wish I could do something like that." The two quickly slipped back into the old studying routine and hurried off to the library to make up for lost time." SOFT PARADE By BILL PERRY At first I thought I was sleeping on a train. My bed was shaking, rumbling and jumping sharply to a regular but monotonous clacking, and I imagined I was riding in a berth on the Orient Express, my eyes closed, my head in a drowsy stupor. "We're somewhere between Dayton and Toledo." AHA. I sat up and looked out the window. Rain was pouring from a cold grey sky and spattering onto a cold grey concrete highway. So I was in my car, and my two friends and I were driving back to Ann Arbor from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Ohio looked pretty dismal: flat, grey, wet and cold. The shaking, rumbling and jumping came from lumpy mounds of asphalt in the road. My berth was just the back seat of the car padded with a few dirty pillows. Twenty-two hours of almost non-stop driving in a rather compact Plymouth Duster had put me in a state of claustrophobic melancholy. I wistfully looked to the south and scanned the horizon, searching for one or two palm trees that might remind me of sunny green Florida. I looked east and west, trying to imagine the acres and acres of orange groves I'd seen just one sunrise ago. But all I saw was a half-empty, greasy tube of Native Tan Tanning Gel lying on the backseat win- dow shelf. That and an Ohio highway patrolman issu- ing a ticket to some unfortunate caught exceeding the speed limit. I began to think that I'd left my heart in Fort Lauderdale. Mytmind drifted back to retrieve it, and the car was suddenly moving in reverse, back to Florida. THERE was the black velvet night spent driving through the hills of Kentucky and the mountains of Tennessee. There was the honest old gas station man who innocently left his cash register wide open in my face as he cleaned a spoon for my midnight coffee. Then there was the orange-red brushfire burning up the Georgia horizon, casting a glow upon the low-lying clouds. And the sunshine. Pouring hot from the Florida sky and blasting away my Northern pallor. Making every- thing around me thick and green, giving rise to all the exotic plant and animal life a Michigander gets to see only on postcards. The finely-crushed seashell sands of Fort Lauder- dale were replete with people basting brown in the sun, three women playing frisbee, five men playing cards. A FORT LAUDERDALE beaches, like this one, are teeming every year with northerners who try to escape the winter blasts. But, most people must at some point return to home and reality. retiree snored contentedly in the sand. My ten Michi- gan friends and I dreamed up a petition which would request a U. of M. extension in Florida. IN A week's time I felt I'd become a converted Flor- ida man. Michigan seemed to be a lot farther away than the 100 miles indicated by the Ohio road sign. Somehow I didn't seem to fit in with all this cold and grey dreariness we were driving through. And this same cold, snowy dreariness awaited in Michigan. My face was burned, my body was tanned, and all I could seem to donow was think about the sun, sand and Florida green. Then I realized I was sitting on something uncom- fortable. I looked down and saw a history book I'd brought with me to study; and I was brutally reminded of a paper due Monday which I had completely forgot- ten about. My Florida memories suddenly faded and I instinctively gathered together some loose paper and a pen and began thinking and writing. I thought and wrote non-stop for the next hour, slipping into the groove again, wallowing in an academic mudhole of facts, figures and conceptual thoughts. I opened the book and searched through the cold, grey pages for substantiating quotes. I searched hard, thought through my now coldly academic brain. I dow. -all to fit looked up momentarily and glanced out the win- Once again I saw the rain, the sky, the highway so grey. I looked down at my work. And I began in once more. Hello, Ann Arbor. Shaky 'I'm a Scorpio, can fly lik fly, but sting like a bee. 'Got a hundred friends where I can go, yah, ahc where I want, and do w to do.' -Sh Jake: Aha, ha! By VINCE GREEN cea butter- Shakey Jake rasps out his sales pitch in a flashy white suit and shades that mark him apart from the average city street person. Staked out in Angell Hall with copies of the Ann Arbor Sun and a pile of Shakey and places Jake tee shirts, he pulls off sales in a cross between burlesque comic and bullfighter. A passer-by observes i, aha, I go the dapperly dressed black man with olive-drab glad rha t I wantbag and guitar and asks, "Who is that there masked man? Is he the itinerant Glad Man in disguise? A washed up bullfighter that's flipped out?" Spiffed up with a red carnation, panama hat, and ?akey Jake white shoes, Jake brandishes his wares at students with a top matador's bravado. Intermittent dog whistles fol- lowed by a few gutteral laughs beckon students toward his cape. A YOUNG woman in army fatigue pants and a J. C. Penney Tania Hearst beret walks by and Jake yells, "Still trying to get your shit together. I'm seventy five years old; I still got mine together. Aha, Ahaa, yah!" It's difficult to pin Jake down on his exact age. He darts around the question, "I'm a Scorpio, can fly like a butterfly, but sting like a bee." Jake does little to illuminate the personal life of one of Ann Arbor's most infamous characters. Ques- tioned about where he stashes his gear down and sleeps for the night he teases, "Got a hundred friends and places where I can go, yah, aha, aha. I go where I want, and do what I want to do. See this guitar, friends gave it to me." INSPIRED by his own lines Jake breaks into song for his interview. He grabs a mike hooked up to a one foot high buzzer amplifier and announces, "Shakin' Jake goin' do a concert while interviewed for The Daily." He scrunches down and begans pounding out a song on his guitar with no chords, but a pretty good rhythm. "Can't read, but I sure can play this guitar," Jake sighs in his raspy voice. Shutting off any more questions he packs up his things and struts down the hall. Shakin' Jake turns the corner and all that can be heard is his well-known re- frain, "Aha, aha, aha," echoing through the halls. Reflections in the glass String fig By MARY MILLERD "I'll make you a mosquito," he says, and his fingers intertwine in the string, twisting, and looping until they produce the string mos- quito. Tom Storer, a University mathe- matics professor and a Navajo In- dian, has been making string fig- ures for about 30 years. "MY GRANDMOTHER taught me when I was very young," he says. "I learned a lot more just travelling around, talking to people." Storer is still learning new de- signs; many from string game col- lectors all over the world. He also invents his own designs, such as his double flower. The best-known string figures, IL ires: An Storer maintains, are diamond de- signs. "The diamond signifies dif- ferent things in different cultures," he explains. "In places where water is scarce, it represents a well. In other cultures diamonds stand for suns, women, or ovens." NET FIGURES, consisting of in- terlaced squares, are also wide- spread, and can be up to 30 feet long, Storer says. Up to four people can make them, and he adds, "Two strings can be used, usually by two people." "Tricks with strings are also very popular," he comments as the string around his finger unties it- self and slips free. Another good trick, he says, is a noose which cuts off your head, "if you have enough rncient art confidence," he warns. Storer's fingers work as he talks, creating bird's nests, fish, kayaks, and flowers. As the string becomes a rigid zig-zag between his hands, Storer explains, "This is lightning. It is followed by the galloping thunder-horse," and the string turns into a horse. Next, he makes a design of three A figures. "People everywhere have a fascination for figures that re- peat," he comments. String design has a variety of functions, according to Storer. "Some are simple amusement," he says, while others have "religious significance." Storer does it for relaxation. "It's a personal thing for me." i Easy guidelines for a lush spider plant By MARLENE DAVENPORT Next to people and dogs, the most common living things growing in the city are plants-even in the winter. Caring for people is self explanatory, and dogs around here usually manage to take care of themselves, but plant care is another thing alto- gether. There are exotic plants which need special ferti- lizers, temperatures and humidity to merely sur- vive, and then there are the common household plants which could probably live through the win- ter outdoors; philadendrons, coleus's, wandering jews, jade plants, ferns, the list goes on and on. BUT EVEN if it's almost impossible to kill them, water it thoroughly allowing the excess to drain out of the bottom of the pot. But don't keep the run- off water in the saucer. If the plant is in a decora- tive pot with no drainage holes, be careful not to over-water it. Make sure the soil is dry before wa- tering it again. Too much water will cause the roots to rot and the leaves will turn yellow and drop off. THE SPIDER plant is adaptable to many lights, and can survive in semi-shade as well as bright sunlight. But it grows best at an east or west win- dow, though it should never be placed in direct sun- light. Then on the other hand, too little light will cause the white stripes of the spiders leaves to turn green. s ' :-