Pilot Gets Plenty of Mileage From Red Square Flight

--Mathias Rust, who has been criticized in West Germany for “marketing” for big bucks the story of his daring flight in a light plane to Moscow’s Red Square, said in an interview that he wants to go on a lecture tour for free to promote peace and international understanding. The weekly magazine Stern, which reportedly paid the 20-year-old amateur pilot $555,000 for exclusive rights to his story, quoted Rust as saying that he would avoid offers from Hollywood because “I cannot imagine such projects would serve my goal of peace. . . . Naturally, German-Soviet relations remain something close to my heart.” Another West German weekly news magazine, Der Spiegel, said a Swiss cosmetics manufacturer, an Italian publishing house and a West German candy company also want to sign him up. The magazine said a San Francisco department store is also offering him $444,000 plus expenses for a tour of 62 cities. “He does not want to earn any money this way,” Stern said. An adviser to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev told Der Spiegel in an interview that Rust was released last week from a Moscow prison after serving 11 months of a four-year term “as an act of good will.”

--Today, being 8-8-88, the cosmic vibes are particularly strong in Eighty Eight, Ky. Visitors created bumper-to-bumper traffic on the farm town’s only thoroughfare Sunday. They munched on 88-cent hamburgers and took part in festivities that included a parade, antique car show and commemorative cake measuring 8 feet, 8 inches long; 8.8 inches wide and 8.8 inches high. Among the visitors was Pearl Russie, a custodian at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill. She drove up to the front steps of the Eighty Eight Market in her Oldsmobile Delta 88, which has a license plate “ANY 88.” “I’m an 88 freak,” said Russie, 45, who had to buy a new set of tires to make the 500-mile trip. According to town legend, the name was bestowed by Dabnie Nunnally, a postmaster in the 1860s. He decided to give the town a digital name, reached into his pocket, and found 88 cents in change. The current postmistress, Donnie Sue Bacon, has been so busy with envelopes from stamp collectors around the world that the Postal Service regional headquarters in Louisville sent a mobile post office to help her with the postmarking. Events conclude tonight with the marriage of Tom Accardo and Deborah Muhlbeier of Casper, Wyo., at 8:08.