Current Farm Life Proves Electrifying for Iowa Couple

--Basil and Addie Messer saw the light for the first time last week. After more than 50 years on their 54-acre farm near Fairfield, Iowa, they have electricity. “The Messers were the only people living in a home in our territory who didn’t have electricity,” said Tom Bell, a spokesman for the Southeast Iowa Cooperative Electric Assn. After a crew wired the house, they showed Addie Messer, 81, how to work the switch. “They’re on! Thank you, boys, thank you!” she said as the porch light shone for the first time. “That refrigerator ought to be a-running,” said Basil Messer, 83, as he headed for the back porch and peered into the appliance. “It’s running! Oh, hell! There’s a light inside of the thing too!’ But the Messers have limits to how much technology they’ll put up with. They plan to continue carrying water from a well and will keep heating with wood and cooking on a kerosene stove. They also plan to keep their kerosene lamps, just in case. “I think it’s going to be nice to have this electricity, but we’ll have to try it a while and see if we get used to it,” Addie Messer said.

--Actress Victoria Principal was married to Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Harry Glassman in the city she knows well as Pamela Ewing of television’s “Dallas.” Only family members and close friends were allowed at the wedding Saturday evening at the Mansion hotel. But nearly 100 people waited outside.

--G. Gordon Liddy says the time he spent in jail for his part in the Watergate scandal of the Richard M. Nixon Administration taught his son to perform under pressure. “When you’re just a little kid standing on the front lawn being interviewed by Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters or CBS News, you’ve got to grow up a lot quicker than your peers,” he said in Pensacola, Fla. James Gordon Liddy, 24, was graduated from the Aviation Officer Candidate School at the Pensacola Naval Air Station and commissioned an ensign. He now begins Navy pilot training. “Very adverse circumstances can make you stronger or crush you,” said the older Liddy, 55, who now owns an industrial security company. Young Liddy said, “There was a lot of pressure, and it would’ve been easy to let it wear me down. . . . Instead, I chose to use it as a motivator.” Of his father’s role in Watergate, Liddy said: “He followed orders. . . . He did exactly what he was supposed to do, was given punishment and he served it.”