Q Do you have any clues as to why all those laundry signs appear upside-down around town? S. S., Dallas.
A. You noticed! That’s the reason. According to John Ford, president of Kwik Wash Laundries, Inc., their topsy-turvy trademark (which cannot be registered) has been quite successful at attracting attention. His company started the technique about 13 years ago when Stanley Scott, vice president of operations, purposely reversed the sign at one of the Fort Worth stores. “He did it at about 4: 30 p. m., ” Ford says, “and this car came screeching to a stop, a man jumped out of the car and told us our sign was upside-down. If we could stop a drunk on a busy street with the sign, we figured we could stop anyone. ” Only one of the company’s 170 statewide stores has an upright sign; that’s because the city’s code won’t allow it any other way. Q. What are the pressurized tanks of gases with hoses in the ground that seem to sprout at many intersections in Dallas? I have not seen any in the Park Cities. R. P., Dallas.
A. Those tanks are filled with nitrogen gas and are the property of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. The nitrogen is used to keep moisture out of pressurized cables underground that contain telephone wires. You, probably see them most frequently downtown, because there is so much construction going on there. Whenever new phone lines are installed, the tanks are required. According to Kim Zauber, a network services supervisor for outside plant maintenance for Southwestern Bell, many of the cables in the Park Cities are in alleys and therefore out of the way of pedestrians and out of view. Zau-ber says that nitrogen is a nonexplosive gas and is not dangerous to passers-by. It must, however, be monitored in the manholes where cables are worked on. Several years ago, a man died in a manhole near D/FW airport because nitrogen (heavier than oxygen) filled the manhole and cut off his oxygen supply.
Q. I work in a high-rise office building in downtown Dallas, and the thought of a fire in the building really scares me. How would the Dallas Fire Department handle a highrise fire? D. S., Oak Cliff.
A. Very efficiently. The High-rise Safety Committee, set up by the Dallas Fire Department, has been working to make Dallas’ fire department one of the best in the country. The department is fully equipped with trucks that have ladders that can extend to seven floors and with Billy Pugh rescue nets, which are actually large boards covered with nets that can be lowered either to the roof or top floors of burning high-rises. Texas Army National Guard helicopters transport the nets, which can rescue at least 10 people at a time. The fire department is also developing a metroplex-wide rescue plan so that the high-rises between Dallas and Fort Worth will be equally protected. The firefighters in each district are familiar with the floor plans of all the high-rises in their territory; any high-rise fire is automatically a two-alarm fire (the second degree of severity). All firefighters entering the force as of 1972 must have 45 hours of college credit and must pass stringent physical tests.
Q. How was Turtle Creek named? G. T., Highland Park.
A. According to legend, in the 1830s, a group of men being pursued by Indians escaped to the creek. Their hiding place was literally filled with turtles; thus it was dubbed Turtle Creek. All this supposedly took place where the creek used to empty into the Trinity River.
Q. Is Highland Park Village the oldest shopping center in the country? P. J., Dallas.
A. The Country Club Plaza, an outdoor shopping center opened in the Twenties in Kansas City, Missouri, is officially the oldest shopping center in the country. When Dallas developers started plans for Highland Park Village in the late Twenties, they visited the Country Club Plaza to observe its Spanish architecture and styling. Two buildings in Highland Park Village were opened in 1931. Highland Park Village was the first shopping center to arrange stores so that they faced a central parking lot; the Country Club Plaza stores face the street.
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