Scorecard

Apparently the Pasco Packing Company of Dade City, Fla. does not know what it can get away with in this country. By accident, Pasco recently dumped a quantity of citrus waste into the With-lacoochee River, polluting a 16-mile stretch. Contrite Pasco executives immediately offered to pay the costs—$17,500—for purifying and restocking the stream. Too bad, but that kind of hoary sentimentality will never qualify Pasco for the mainstream of American thinking. In Maine, for example, a bill has been pushed through the state legislature reclassifying the Prestile Stream in Aroostook County to permit a proposed $14 million sugar-beet refinery to pollute to its heart's content. Governor John H. Reed read a special message to the legislature to help the company win its rights. A million-dollar soil conservation plan for the stream, as well as a recreation program, will now be abandoned.

Last week in Pennsylvania the state fish commission confirmed that Slippery Rock Creek, once proudly brimming with trout, was polluted by acid mine drainage. A commission executive said Slippery Rock would not be restocked, because a "continued potential for fish kill exists there." A bill to restrict such reckless drainage is now in a life-and-death struggle in the state legislature.

One other heartening thought. As liberal Folk Singer Joan Baez plaintively asks: "What have they done to the rain?" The answer: plenty. The conservative American Medical Association says that the rain now carries industrial dusts and pesticides and is radioactive in traces. Man, says the AMA, has not learned how to purify as fast as he can pollute.

THE SAGA OF CICERO MURPHY

Cicero Murphy is a Negro. He could blame his grandfather for the Cicero. He grew up in the tough Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, one of eight children. His mother is on welfare and his father doesn't live at home anymore. At 15 he was a high school dropout. One summer he learned to play pool in a PAL program and, except for short-term jobs, he has been playing pool ever since. His wife says he should quit hanging around poolrooms and get something regular, something permanent.

At 29, Cicero plays pool very well. He is good enough to challenge the old pros, the durables such as three-time world champion Irving Crane and two-time world champion Luther Lassiter. Good enough to challenge? Good enough to beat them. Last month he became the first of his race to play in the California "world championship of pocket billiards." He won. He was third among 150 in the hustlers' tournament in Johnston City, Ill. But don't call Cicero Murphy a hustler, because he doesn't like it. "Who's gonna play you?" he asks. He will, however, partake of an "exhibition game" now and then.

And then last week there he was, Cicero Murphy, the Brooklyn kid, playing in the New York "world championship." In a tuxedo. In a hotel ballroom. Under crystal chandeliers. And watched by hundreds of button-down Brooks Brothers types. In a blue-chip field of 15, Cicero finished fourth, losing only five games. He won $900. And he probably never will get a steady job, Mrs. Murphy.

FAT UNDER FIRE

For 15 years, or ever since they closed the House of Commons gymnasium for repairs and did not bother to reopen it, the way for a convening member of Parliament to exercise was to take a sharp stroll through nearby St. James's Park. So it was that as the British Empire shrank, British ministerial waistlines expanded (not just a coincidence, some suspect). In view of the facts, a move is underfoot to reopen the Commons gym. Says Sir Hamilton Kerr, a Tory M.P.: "The general level of fitness in the House is extraordinarily low."

Sir Hamilton is one of those few who did not go the fleshy way of his brethren; he runs every morning, plays tennis, takes cold showers, practices yoga and has, for the cause, allowed himself to be photographed standing on his head. Liberal Eric Lubbock, who once boxed for Oxford, keeps a skipping rope at the ready and steals off now and then for a sparring session with Vic Andreetti, a British lightweight. Lubbock is so fit he recently set a record in Kent by downing 2� pints of beer in 18 seconds.