Am I Losing You?
I think Dad said it best when he said all the changes in College Station, aka “Aggieland”, were “amazing, scary, sad, and magnificent.” No one ever wants their beloved to change, to become new and unknown, to belong to anyone else. There’s absolutely no help for it – the darn kids are going to make it their own no matter what we old Ags have to say about it. The only consolation is that we thoroughly pissed off previous generations of Ags when we instituted our own “new” traditions.The first thing I noticed is that I had no clue where I was. Landmarks have changed, new hotels have emerged, shopping centers, restaurants, even new buildings and parking lots on campus. The only indication I was back in College Station was the smell that greeted me as I got out of the car: wet, green humidity. I remember when Dad first brought me to school, when I believed without question that I was going to melt into the pavement as we walked across campus to the Southgate Loupot’s. At 2 o’clock in the afternoon, dew still weighed heavily on the grass. Breathing the air made me long desperately for gills. But after a while, I couldn’t remember ever being anywhere else, and I was rewarded for all my suffering come spring, when the highways are alight with popping bluebonnets and fluorescent Indian paintbrush.
Northgate, the kitchen table of Texas A&M, was hardly recognizable. Oh, the Dixie Chicken was there all right, and Freebirds, Dudley’s Draw, the Dry Bean Saloon, even Shadow Canyon. What was gone was the atmosphere Robert Earl keen immortalized in “The Front Porch.” The dirt and tobacco juice alley that used to line the back of the bars, where I hid with my stolen pitcher from the Chicken – a memorial to the emerging ring-dunking tradition – was bricked and paved over with some civic-minded businessman’s idea of a more aesthetic community. Meters and parking stripes covered the old residential blocks where we used to cram our trucks in so tightly we couldn’t puke without hitting a car nine spots over. Hell, even Bottle Cap Alley, where the few sober pissheads go to find material for their spurs, had a plastic arching sign announcing its presence to the world. It was only slightly less ugly and disappointing than the McDonald’s twin arches a block away.
The only saving grace is this guy:
Standing rather remotely behind the Chicken at the entrance to Bottle Cap Alley, this embodiment of the Aggie Spirit is almost enough to make me forget about the plastic ugliness of the rest of the changes. Alas, in life he is no more, as the Bonfire has not risen since it fell in ’99, and any Aggie will tell you we lost a lot more than twelve lives that day.
My dad, stepmom and I shoved our way into the Dixie Chicken – whose interior, thank Christ, has not changed a whit. We snagged some Shiner and removed to the back porch…where we began the Great Encounter.
Dad sipped from the pitcher so it wouldn’t spill, and received a “Hey, you can’t drink from the pitcher, buddy” from the back door bouncer, whom we fondly named Bubba.
(May I add that this no-drinking-from-the-pitcher rule is wholly and completely the fault of my generation of Aggies. You see, when we started the ring-dunking tradition, you had to drink the contents of a pitcher within the second of your class year. Completely and utterly illegal, this activity spawned the end of an era – the end of my 17-year-old self being able to buy beer at the bar, and the beginning of the now perpetual TABC probation imposed on said bar. So now they sell some half-ass “schooner” for the kids to dunk out of, which is lame and not red-ass at all.)
Well, Dad kidded around with the modernized ape for a few minutes, to no response. And then Dad proceeded to be Dad as usual, which meant hollering “Howdy!” at everyone who passed through the back door. This translates to something like 5,987 howdies. Bubba was not impressed.
It wasn’t until we returned from Midnight Yell Practice that the full effects of my father’s personality were felt: we were going back through the Chicken for a bathroom break on our way to the car, when Bubba stopped Dad and tossed him out because he was “too intoxicated.” On three beers. For those of you who don’t know my father, he is not a small man. His jaw dropped and he made those boys bust their butts to call over the manager.
In a highly amusing conversation, he informed the manager that he was not drunk, that Bubba was quite a rude young man, and “I was a student here before that kid ever even thought about being born. I was here before there was a Chicken!” My father has officially become that belligerent old guy. Sweet.
Anyway, the manager could see pretty well that Dad wasn’t drunk, so he let us in. On our way out the back door, Dad made sure to stop and make nice with Bubba, which I’m sure had no effect on Bubba’s rather flat brain wave pattern. We later learned he’d tossed friend of mine after only two beers. It’s a wonder they do business at all, considering they’re now a bar where no one is allowed to drink or have a good time.
As for Midnight Yell…we made it, anyway, somewhat the worse for wear. We stopped in at the Memorial Student Center for a bathroom break, which turned out to be not quite soon enough for my stepmother. I heard her enter her stall and sit down, then she let loose an exasperated “Well, shit.”
“What?” I asked.
“When I tripped on the stairs just now, some pee came out.”
Okay, I’m thinking. That happens to me sometimes. I don’t get to pee before a soccer game, get whacked in the bladder with a ball, and wind up with a spot or two. Or I sneeze. Who hasn’t sneezed and peed their pants? So her underpants are a little damp.
I offered her some paper towels, but when she came out from the stall it was clear that solution was woefully inadequate. Some pee hadn’t come out. All of it had. She was wet front to back, crotch to knee.
I didn’t know what to say. Actually, I was afraid to speak, for fear that I might laugh. It’s not good to laugh at someone who’s just wet their pants and now faces the prospect of spending the next several hours amidst tens of thousands of people. I couldn’t even pull a Billy Madison and wet my pants, too, because…well, because my stepmom’s not six years old. I doubt she’d buy that all the cool kids were doing it.
When we emerged, humbled and embarrassed, from the restroom and informed my father of the situation, his reaction was “You wet your pants again? At least this time it was only pee.” (A story for another day…)
Other than that, Midnight Yell was a rousing success. Other than the unexpected – for me and Dad, anyway – numbers of people, it was just as it’s always been. Dad kept saying when he went to Yell, only the Corps of Cadets attended, a few thousand in the corner of Kyle Field. When I attended, it was around ten thousand, in a corner of Kyle Field. This time, it had to be 30,000 people filling up the entire lower deck of the student section.
But the Yell Leaders still started everything off with “I got a story for you, Ags…” and there was only one new yell we didn’t know. Some guy always managed to yell “Uncover!” in my ear, and another guy always managed not to hear it. The “wood” is still insanely instable from thousands of students standing on it for three hours at a time – I’m amazed there hasn’t been some mass-fall incident at Kyle Field. Everyone would go like dominoes.
The last stop of the evening was Whataburger. I don’t think I’ve had a Whataburger in near to five or six years. Why, oh, why does anyone ever go to McDonald’s? The sheer joy in the orange and white striped bag is overwhelming. I almost cried.
Game Day dawned, if not early, then at least early enough for a bland continental breakfast. Dad abandoned us in the room to dine with a horde of really old codgers – the class of ’46 reunion: “I looked around,” he said, “and I thought I was in a nursing home. Look at all the old folks – oh, wait, I guess I’m an old fart, too.”
We went on to the hardest part of the trip: the Bonfire Memorial. Dad told us he’s never even been able to visit Pearl Harbor, fearing the emotional toll. I knew I would cry, I knew it would be awful, but I couldn’t help but feel these twelve kids deserved at least fifteen minutes of consideration. They literally died for the spirit of Aggieland, for the love of the school, for their pride in their community.
The Memorial, situated in a circle around the site of the bonfire – complete with a granite plaque in place of the center pole commemorating the date and time of the collapse – consists of a timeline for every year of the bonfire since its inception in 1909, and a large gateway into the circle facing the hometown of each of the students who died. In that doorway you can read about them, their lives, what their families said about them. It was just a fancy cemetery until I got to about the 5th monolith, where a quotation from the boy stood out: “Help my buddies first.” Lying in the fallen stack of logs that had once stretched six stories high, hurt, dying, he had directed rescuers to half a dozen other injured students that he could see before he would allow anyone to pull him from the wreck. I don’t know what I would have done in his situation, but chances are I wouldn’t have been that kind of hero. Looking at that bronzed phrase, a knot tightened in my throat that I could not swallow, breaking into a round of tears as I completed the walk around the circle. Like Dad with Pearl Harbor, I’m not sure I’ll ever have the heart to face that memorial again, but I know that image will stay with me until the day they write my epitaph.
Somewhat less jubilant, we left the polo grounds and the site of the memorial and headed to the various bookstores around campus to let some shopping lift our spirits before the game. The only truly notable item I purchased did not show its true Aggie colors until we were in the car, receipts in hand. I had needed a new visor, having left my old one out in the sun until its deep maroon faded to more of a happy pink. I got my nice new A&M visor out of the bag and proceeded to fit it on my melon, when I noticed something strange: the “Texas A&M” embroidered on the velcro closure strap was on upside down. Yes, folks, an official NCAA piece of headgear was constructed upside down.
“Do you want to go back and exchange it?” Dad asked.
I grinned. “Hell, no. This is hilarious. If I’d have known it was upside down, I would have paid double for it.” I guess you have to be an Aggie to understand things like this, things like drive-thru windows on the right-hand side of the car, throwing away your winning lottery ticket because you were reading the numbers upside down (I mean, I’ve never done that…), and putting your hurricane boards up on the inside of your plate glass windows.
We made our way across campus to the game, having secured free parking from one of the lovely merchants, pushing our way through the circus that has become Kyle Field on game day. Tailgaters who must spend 75% of their income on BBQ pits, flags, portable satellite TV systems, and pimping out their ride to match the A&M colors were packed into every park and every parking space, the aroma of beer and brisket permeating the air. We even saw a converted “short bus”, further testament to the mental prowess of former Texas A&M students.
Adding to the chaos was the endless amount of promotional booths and games. I’ve been to carnivals that were less successful. We could sit and watch every college game on TV that day, stop by for some free Hershey’s Kisses, win a really ugly car, catch a football from a mohawked, maroon-painted loonie, even pig out at our choice of five different chain-restaurant huts. I suppose charging us $75 a seat for the new horseshoe wing just isn’t cutting the payments.
Though so much was new and made my father and I want to cry and tell everyone to go away, that this is sacred ground, for crying out loud (for those who don’t know, Kyle Field is a memorial to all Aggie who have died fighting for our country, and no one is allowed on the field unless they’re the band, the football team, or in the Corps of Cadets – a fact which has led the Corps to, shall we say, remove with force numerous Lubbock dirt monkeys from our beloved stadium), one ceremony remained true: the march-in. As always, an hour before the game, the entire Corps of Cadets marches into the stadium in full dress. And while I myself was a non-reg, Fightin’ Texas Aggie Class of 1998, my father was a member of M-12, back in ol’ army. I’m not saying I’ve never seen my dad cry (okay, so my dad cries a lot), but it still makes me smile to think of how he always wells up at the sight of those boys (and girls!) in khaki.
Finally, we made our way up…up…up…and several more ups beyond the point you think you can up no farther…to our seats in the horseshoe. I was bemoaning our location – oh, yes, all the way at the very tippy-top, practically hanging from the flagpole – and the exorbitant amount of money we paid for bleacher seats, until the game began and we had an unprecedented view of everything: Kyle Field, the game, the stands, College Station beyond, and the full A&M campus behind us. The view of the band at halftime was better than I’ve ever seen, from the echoing “Now entering at the north end of Kyle Field, the nationally famous fightin’ Texas Aggie Band!” through the how-the-hell-do-they-not-knock-each-other-over formations, all the way to the patriotic tribute to end halftime. We even had entertaining seatmates: to our right, a nice man with a radio broadcast significant events in Game 3 of the NL Championship series to the delight of all Houstonians in the vicinity, and directly in front of us three very happy young ladies, one of whom offered up the quote of the day – “He’s getting married? Not to the sideburns girl!?!”
Of course, watching the boys beat the hell outta o.s.u. 62-23 didn’t make for such a bad experience, either. The cherry on top was seeing the 12th man (number 12 on the football team is always a walk-on, and represents the entire student body) intercept a pass on one of the final plays of the game. Nothing makes Kyle Field louder than seeing the 12th man touch the football. We sang one more happy round of the War Hymn, the fish carried the Yell Leaders off to the Fish Pond for a victorious dunking, and everyone lived happily ever after. (That is, until we play a team that doesn’t suck. And then we’re the team that sucks. Yet another defining characteristic of being an Aggie.)
Despite being thrown out of a bar, wetting our pants, and me getting ruthlessly sick on the way back to North Texas (ah, how I’ve missed Taco Cabana), this trip was one of the best in recent memory. I’ve even taken up Dad’s mantra from my first trip to Aggieland: “When I was a student here, this was all wilderness. Wilderness, I tell you.” I didn’t understand it much then, but now, only seven years out from my graduation ceremony (which famously took place in a coliseum that only the year before had been “wilderness”), I can feel the heartbreaking loss of my beloved. She stays the same in so many ways, but I fear the day when I wake up and no longer recognize her at all.
I figure I’ll just have to go back all the time to keep the romance alive.
posted by Lyle Skains @ 1:08 PM
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