Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 23, 1993 TAG: 9303230024
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Madelyn Rosenberg
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DEFENDING HER RIGHT TO WHITE
A man in a blue shirt holds a heavy, black ball, pulls it close to his chest, breathes in, stretches back, releases.Pins crash. A perfect strike.
He may have been chewed out by his boss today. He may work 48 hours a week at a job he hates. And, in another few minutes, he may be heading home to a wife who doesn't appreciate him and a kid whose nose hasn't been wiped since last Tuesday.
But here at Triangle Lanes in Christiansburg, this man is a hero.
The bowling alley has been a mainstay of our culture for years now. But that's not why I go there.
I go because it's close to my office and it's a cheap place to eat lunch, to the twangs and plinks of the pinball machines, the roar of country and rock music, and the thunder of the lanes.
It's a place where you still can buy another mainstay of our culture: Junkfood. Tater tots and french fries - the crinkly kind.
But the other week when I ordered my grilled cheese, extra squished, and fries, extra crinkly, the waitress asked a question that still has me shaking.
It was phrased oh-so-simply, uttered without a bit of conscience: "Wheat or white?"
I've been asked that question a thousand times - at restaurants, delis, sub shops. But never within these sacred walls.
In panic, I scanned the menu. Hamburger, still there. Barbecue sandwich, still there. Chili, fried shrimp, fried egg sandwich, all there.
Nary a sign of tofu or hummus.
I closed my eyes in silent thanks and ordered wheat.
When you're faced with the wheat and white choice, wheat is the politically correct answer.
But you don't want it. You secretly want two slices of white bread, slightly toasted, with a dollop of mayo.
Normally, at a place like a bowling alley, you wouldn't have a choice. You could plausibly, to impress friends, ask for wheat and when the waitress says "Sorry, we don't carry that," you could smile and, in feigned disappointment, snarf up that white bread without a crumb of guilt.
But in this Virginia town, that's past now.
Perhaps there's still hope in the pool halls.
Speaking of health food, Virginia Tech has made a move recently to soybean oil-based inks for all of the university's publications.
That means you fill out your college applications on high-protein paper. Your graduation announcements are on the same stuff.
Tech officials believe that cooperative extension was the first state agency to adopt the inks, which are environmentally sensitive, as a standard.
The real plus, says Rob McCoy, manager of the Virginia Tech printing plant, is that the inks don't require some of the hazardous solvents and drying agents used with petroleum-based inks.
Virginia produced 14 million bushels of soybeans in 1991, and Tech's switch isn't likely to have too much of an effect on that.
(Nor is the Roanoke Times & World-News, which also uses soy ink for the color sections of the paper).
But consider: each pound of soybean ink is about 30 percent to 50 percent soybean oil. Calls to ink agencies did not determine the exact number of beans per pound, but Ron Russell, president of the Virginia Soybean Association, says they do add up.
One national printers association estimates that 30 million pounds of soy oil are used in printing each year.
The Roanoke Times & World-News uses probably 4,000 pounds of soy ink a month, though Dennis The Pressroom Manager isn't ready to swear to that.
Tech uses in excess of 1,000 pounds per year, McCoy says.
Multiply that times all of the newspapers and colleges in the nation and . . . I may be planning a new addition to my garden this summer.
At the very least, I know that the next time there's a blizzard and my supply of emergency ravioli runs out, I have options.
Madelyn Rosenberg, the Roanoke Times & World-News' higher-education writer, is based in the New River Valley bureau.