A convention by the National Association of Television Programming Executives in 1988 brought in an unusually high number of celebrities 30 years ago this month. And that wasn't the only thing going on in our city.

Here's a look at what went down in February 1988.

* David Sherman originally thought his parking meter had expired. Instead he became the first motorist to get the boot in Houston. The yellow contraption was designed to attach to a car's wheel, preventing traffic-ticket scofflaws from moving along until they settled up with the city. Reporter Kim Cobb was there when the attorney found out he'd made history.

Attorney David Sherman couldn't see the boot as he rounded the corner, but he knew what was up when he spied the bright fluorescent "do not remove this vehicle" sticker on his windshield.

"No, no, no, no, no!" wailed Sherman, as he approached his station wagon. With 15 unpaid parking tickets pending, the city marshals had him cold - the first victim of the Houston boot.

City marshals began immobilizing vehicles with three or more unpaid parking tickets this morning. People won't get the boot without a warning, and 23,000 letters were mailed out in December and January to people on the delinquent ticket list.

Sherman seemed puzzled at first, since he still had several minutes left on the parking meter in front of the Harris County District Attorney's building, 201 Fannin. "I'm not violating anything," Sherman said.

But when confronted with whether he knew he had 15 unpaid tickets, Sherman grew a little sheepish.

"That may well be," he admitted. He was kicking himself for not taking his wife's advice to pay off the pending tickets.

"I usually go down and pay them all at once," he said. "I knew it was coming. I should have taken care of this."

Richard Parris, director and chief clerk of the Municipal Courts, was pleased with the city's first booting.

"Fifteen (tickets)," Parris said. "Not bad for the first one."

Parris has been preparing for the boot program for months. He's convinced the boot will generate millions in revenue from people who are finally forced to pay their unpaid parking tickets.

If booted, the owner of the vehicle will have to go to Municipal Court and pay $100 to get it released. That fee, however, does not include the payment for the overdue parking tickets.

THROWBACK: See the Houston of old in our weekly dive into local history.

* You might not know the name Cu Ba Nguyen, but if you've ever seen "Good Morning Vietnam" then you remember his face. Nguyen played the overly amiable bar owner Jimmy Wah, who makes fast friends with Robin Williams' Adrian Cronauer. What you also might not have known was that Nguyen was a Houston resident. He got the part in the film after driving some of his friends to an audition at the Allen Park Inn.

He told his story to reporter Michael Spies.

Hollywood loves stories like [Cu Ba] Nguyen's. He came to Houston six years ago from Vietnam. He is Cambodian by birth, but escaped in 1969 to Saigon with his family. He served briefly in the army, then after the fall of Saigon in 1975, he spent 5 1/2 years in prison.

"After that, I made up my mind to leave the country at any price," he said. He had a cousin in Houston, so he came here when he had the chance.

The English he knows he has picked up from television, conversations and reading. He hasn't had time to go to school in the States; he had to go to work immediately in order to send goods back to his family in Saigon - sometimes up to 100 pounds of fabrics and sundries, two or three times a year.

But Nguyen has that winning smile and manner. A casting agent recognized that when she walked into the convenience store where Nguyen was working. She told him about the call for actors in three important roles - the boy Robin Williams befriends, the girl he courts and Jimmy Wah - and recommended he and his friends audition.

"I told the young lady I'd try to look, but I didn't think I could do such things myself," Nguyen said. "My friends, they took pictures of themselves, but not me. When the lady proposed me, she told me I looked very nice. Nobody ever said I was nice looking. She said I had lots character in my face."

Nguyen has not seen that agent since the casting session in Houston - but he hopes she knows he got the part.

In the end, Nguyen was the only one of the Houston hopefuls who made the cut. Then came the six weeks of filming in Bangkok, last May and June, a time that provided some bittersweet pangs for Nguyen, made even more difficult by the death of his mother last March.

"It was a little too close to being home," he said. "I had a nostalgia for my country, but I know I can do nothing. My mother was sick for a year, but I never knew about it until she died. They didn't tell me because they don't want me to feel bad about conditions there."

One brother has joined him in Houston, but Nguyen's father and eight more brothers and sisters still remain in Saigon. Nguyen has passed his citizenship tests and waits only to be sworn in as a U.S. citizen before he can begin the process of sponsoring members of his family. Nguyen becomes wistful talking about his father.

"My father is a romantic man. He writes poems. He was always something of an artist. He wrote and asked me about the movie. I want to make him feel proud of me, so I write him how I do and how I feel. I promised him I'd do my best in every field. When I was young, he told me I was his first poem, the first work he did. I'm the oldest."

The weather held up some of the filming on "Good Morning, Vietnam", but Nguyen said that Bangkok was much more civilized than Saigon. He was amazed at the lengths to which the movie company went to re-create the atmosphere of Saigon in 1965, down to the tricycle taxis that have since disappeared from the streets.

All the business in the film about Walter Brennan was invented on the set, with Williams and co-star Forest Whittaker trying out names until they found one that gave Nguyen trouble. Nguyen still doesn't know who Brennan is, and he has only become aware of who Williams is since the filming.

But he did think Williams was funny to work with and that the film's portrayal of the Vietnamese "is all right for the kind of movie it is."

Everything else went smoothly, although a scene showing the bombing of Jimmy Wah's cafe was nixed in Thailand for political reasons, and eventually it had to be shot in California, Nguyen said.

Many of his friends and co-workers are still not aware that he is in the hit "Good Morning, Vietnam" film, and Nguyen likes keeping a low profile, for now.

"What I feel now is that I enjoy acting," he said. "It's something I think I can do. One thing I like is using my imagination, for any of the characters I have to do with. If I want to go farther in my career, I will learn English."

1948: How a series of ballot initiatives could have changed our city

* Talk show host and Oscar nominee Oprah Winfrey dropped by Texas Southern University for a speech at the end of the month. She spoke frankly about her struggles and urged students to focus on education. From reporter Barbara Karkabi's story:

Talk-show host Oprah Winfrey danced onto the stage at Texas Southern University's Hannah Hall and told a capacity crowd that knowledge is power.

"TSU, how do you do?" she shouted to the cheering audience as the university band played a fanfare.

Winfrey, dressed in black leather pants and a white shirt, had the crowd eating out of her hand as she delivered an inspirational speech and fielded some questions. The crowd was gathered Saturday for the university's Weekend College and Continuing Education Division's 15th Anniversary Convocation.

During her 35-minute talk, Winfrey made some jokes, quoted from the Bible and recited a poem. But her main focus was on the importance of education.

"I would not be where I am today if someone had not shown me that knowledge is power," said Winfrey, who was in town over the weekend for the National Association of Television Programming Executives convention. "It's possible in our lifetime to be anything or anyone we wish. But you've got to start getting those A's. Next comes the money and the Mercedes Benz."

Winfrey told the crowd that she was born in Mississippi in 1954, the year that schools were desegregated, she pointed out.

"I started out being a colored girl. It's a long road from colored to black," she said.

She came from a broken home and was shuffled back and forth between her mother, father and grandfather, she said. Her early days were spent on her grandmother's farm in Mississippi, where she learned to read at the age of 3.

Oprah was a precocious little girl who was known as "The Little Speaker," and starred in Easter and Christmas church pieces. After one church performance, a woman praised Winfrey's talents and told her grandmother she had a gifted grandchild.

"Of course, she was right," Winfrey said with a broad wink. Because of the woman's remark she grew up believing anything was possible, she said.

"One of the tragedies of growing up poor in this country is not the day-to-day struggle, but the hopelessness and the feeling that nothing can happen to you," she said.

At the same time, Winfrey says she believes that everyone is responsible for their own lives - even if they have been victimized by the system.

Winfrey told the students that she was sexually abused as a child: At the age of 9 she was raped by a 19-year-old cousin. In spite of that, Winfrey says, she refused to be victimized.

"I'm here to tell you that it's not necessary to use our victimization as an excuse," she said. "Maybe your mother was victimized because she didn't have a B.A., or your father was an SOB.

But you've got to take control, and you can."

But Winfrey believes that blacks are on solid ground because of the sacrifices made by previous generations. They built bridges for today's youth, she says.

"We owe it to them to succeed. Every time we smoke a joint, say a curse word or shoot a gun, we let them down. As black people we all belong to each other. Together we can change the world."

Winfrey ended her speech with the poem "Phenomenon" and took questions from the audience for about 20 minutes, before being whisked off the stage into a waiting stretch limousine.

Most of the questions were serious. But one young woman - who offered advice on how to lose 25 pounds in one month - caused Winfrey to toss her head and place a hand on her hip.

"Honey, I need to lose 25 pounds by next Tuesday," she said, to the roar of the crowd.

Winfrey offered the students advice on how to get ahead, emphasizing that it was not a white world anymore. She urged them to take young children to the library and encourage them to read. And she told them they could be successful, just as she has been.

"Don't put me up on a pedestal. I'm just a working woman," she said, and left with a wave of her hand.