Texas Aggie in King Darrell's court

The annual renewal of the Red River Rivalry, Saturday in the Cotton Bowl forced to the surface memories from 44 years ago.

I may actually be able to claim some notoriety or at least historical quirk. After all, how many Aggies have been to a t.u.-o.u. game - in uniform?

It was my freshman year at Texas A&M. The Journalism Department head called me to his office and asked if I wanted to work at the State Fair for four days. The job consisted of running livestock judging results to the press office. Getting off campus and getting paid more than waiting tables in the mess hall appealed to me, so I said, "Yes."

Since I didn't have a car, I rode with Ronnie Bott, a junior journalism major from Tyler. Ronnie was no longer in the Corps of Cadets, so he would wear blue jeans that weekend. I put a fresh spit shine on my shoes and packed my uniform.
The trip got off to an interesting start.

Ronnie drove from my dorm to Zerape's, a nearby restaurant known for both its free queso dip and reluctance to check birthdates on student ID cards.

At this point, our story becomes a cautionary tale of what college students should not do. Drinking and driving is never a good idea and that night it proved to be a particularly bad plan. The one thing we got right was Ronnie insisting that we wear seat belts. The mandatory seat belt law was still almost 20 years away. Ronnie had driven an ambulance, however, the summer before and had seen enough to make him a true believer.

As we worked our way north out of Mexia, Ronnie dropped the hammer and we were soon doing about 85. We topped a little rise and found the road covered with a herd of about 20 Black Angus. We hit one cow in the flank steak and for a moment I thought about a ton of hamburger was coming through the windshield - horns, hooves, wild eyes and all.

The '65 Ford Galaxy sloughed off the bovine, tossing her into the ditch as we slid to a stop. Ronnie's car was totaled. We chewed Juicy Fruit and smoked cigarettes until the Highway Patrol arrived, remembering at the last moment to throw the beer bottles over the fence of the farmer who had tried to kill us.
Ronnie's dad got us to Dallas and to work the next morning. For the next three days, I performed my messenger duties, trotting from different judging venues to the press room in the Livestock Pavilion.

It may seem obvious, but the State Fair is in early October. I had been a cadet for only a few weeks, long enough to learn to say, yes, sir, no, sir and no excuse, sir, but I had not absorbed every detail. I didn't know that away from College Station, I could act like a human being. I treated the fair grounds like an extension of the campus.

Aggies speak to each person they meet. If they have met that person, they speak to them by name. 150,000 people at the State Fair for the t.u.-o.u. game and I was saying, "Howdy" to each one. Striding along the street between the Livestock Pavilion and the Cotton Bowl, headed to another poultry judging, I heard a familiar shout behind me.

"Fish Jones, get your butt back here, boy." I turned and saw a man in civilian clothes glaring at me. I doubled timed back and fell in step on his right side. My right arm bent at a 90 degree angle across my body and I extended my right hand. "Howdy, fish Palmer is my name, sir," doing my best to make my voice echo off the side of the Cotton Bowl.
It turned out that his name was Maj. Ericson, he graduated from Aggieland ten years before. He wanted to know what I was doing in Dallas when A&M was playing Houston that day in College Station. I was able to satisfy his curiosity. Ericson then asked, "What outfit are you in, fighter?" I executed the programmed response of bending at the waist with hands on knees and yelling at the top of my lungs my company chant, "Animal A…."

Crowds thinned as the game began. During the second half, Ronnie and I just walked in and found vacant seats at the back. Since my mother was an o.u. grad, I had been to several of these annual grudge matches. When I was small, I would do the Texas cheers just to aggravate her. This sunny Saturday, Ronnie and I watched the Longhorns prevail over the Sooners.

We finished our assignment at the Fair and returned to College Station without making any beer stops. The Texas State Fair and the Red River Rivalry are great traditions. Lots of people were at the game, yesterday, but somehow, I doubt if there were any Aggies in uniform.
Source dailytribune.net/