Farm Town Offering Sanctuary--to Urban Refugees

--Folks from Japan to Virginia are filling the mailboxes at City Hall, the Chamber of Commerce and the local newspaper as they respond to ads from the northern Oregon farm town of Condon for “a few good residents.” Worried about a population that has shrunk from nearly 1,000 to about 700, Condon put ads in the Los Angeles Times and the Oregonian of Portland. Nearly 200 calls and letters had been received so far, said Max Stinchfield, editor of the Condon Times-Journal. “It’s been unbelievable,” City Administrator Bonnie Parker said. “There are a lot of people in this world looking for a way to get out of the big cities,” she said. “Most of the people who have contacted us are retired people living in smoggy, unsafe, congested communities, and they would like very much to get into a country setting.” Some say they long to return to a rural community like the ones they grew up in. “To put it simply, I’m homesick for the wide open spaces, small towns and most of all the West,” Joan Lohrenz of Hixon, Tenn., lamented. Some people are already looking Condon over. “There are people driving around town now,” Parker said. “You see probably three or four cars a day. You can spot a stranger around here, you know.”

--A brand-new $3-million antebellum-style mansion, which did not meet with the approval of its owners, has been razed by a wrecking crew that included five bulldozer-riding Dallas socialites. The women paid $75 each at a charity auction to climb aboard the bulldozer and help reduce the 19,000 square-foot brick mansion to a pile of rubble. Owners John and Paulette Post were unhappy with the mansion because of wall cracks and did not trust safety assurances given by the contractor and city inspectors. Jerry Goolsby, a spokesman for the contractor, contends that Post disliked the design, “so he’s knocking it down and building another one to suit his wife.” Paula Ulmer, one of the women who won a turn at the bulldozer’s controls, described the demolition as “the greatest way to clean up a kitchen.”

--People weren’t going for shoeshines any more, so why not bring the shine to the people, thought William Stuart. And that’s how Mr. Shine Inc. came to roam the streets of Englewood, N.J. Stuart, 39, and his partner, Norbert T. Auerbach, operate two Mr. Shine vans that carry shoe polish to every doorstep in the city. Mr. Shine polishes shoes in the driveways of customers’ homes and by the desks of corporate clients around Bergen County, an affluent section of New Jersey.