October 25, 1992

They were seated around the kitchen table -- Arthur Ashe; his wife, Jeanne, and their daughter, Camera, now 6 years old. This was a short time ago and the conversation was unremarkable, about what Jeanne and Arthur had done that day, and what Camera was doing in school. Jeanne looked at Camera and then casually turned back to Arthur, and saw that he had begun to cry. "Camera didn't question it, because she knew that her father had been troubled, though I don't think she was quite sure of the depth of it," Jeanne Ashe recalled. "Then Arthur reached over and held her hand. And I rubbed his back. It was one of the few times I have ever seen Arthur cry. "Nothing was said."

A YEAR ago, he could not even watch his old teammates on television, if that was the group decision of his new companions. Otis Nixon had lost control of such decisions. The first step was to admit he had lost control. "Where I was, you don't even have control over the clothes you wear," Nixon has said. "But you accept it. You're a sick person. They're going to make you well."

HARDLY anyone seriously expects that Ross Perot will be elected President next week. But as the events of the last week have once again demonstrated, this is no reason to underestimate his impact on the 1992 campaign. On Monday, when the Presidential debate marathon ended with George Bush still huffing and puffing to catch up to Gov. Bill Clinton, many political analysts declared the campaign all over except for the voting. Then the post-debate polls were tabulated, and they told a different story. Almost without exception, they showed Mr. Perot steadily gaining support, while Mr. Clinton's lead was starting to shrink.

As the world has stumbled into what President Bush calls a global recession, the economic optimists have been comforted by one fact. The leading industrial nations, they said, had learned from the 1930's, when the Smoot-Hawley tariff sparked trade wars and "beggar thy neighbor" policies deepened and prolonged the Depression. Perhaps the optimists spoke too soon.

IN the past few months, motorists on Route 202 west of Litchfield have been startled to see a cougar crouching in the bushes, a seven-foot bear gripping a fishing rod, a wolf howling in broad daylight and a beaver stripping a sapling. None of the animals are real but it takes a second look to realize that the life-size creatures outside a small store called the Wildlife Workshop are made from wood. The figures are the work of Jim Laboudy of Bethlehem, formerly a logger and sawmill operator, who started carving white pine logs with his chainsaw a few years ago when orders for lumber began to decline.