Blue Highways: Stonewall, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapThis post explores perceptions of good and evil, focused around Stonewall, Texas as the birthplace and home of President Lyndon B. Johnson.  Seems like a lot more than what William Least Heat-Moon intended, right?  That's the beauty of our Littourati journey - we can take side trips!  Click on the map to see where Stonewall is located, and explore your own nature and motivations as you read!

Book Quote

"The road went directly into a sunset that could have been a J.M.W. Turner painting. Colors, texture, the horizontal composition were his. I'd never thought Turner a realist. The land, now cattle and peach country, wasn't so rocky and dry as the great ridges I'd just crossed. West of Stonewall, I saw the last of dusk, and under a big desert night, I drove in the small coziness of my headlamps until Sonny's beer made me stop. While I stood, an uncommon amount of noise came invisibly through the brush. Whatever it was, I felt vulnerable and tried to hurry. The moonlight wasn't much, but what I could make out looked like a tiptoeing army helmet. I was moving backwards when I realized it was an armadillo. I stopped, it waddled on, sniffed me out at the last moment, and shifted direction without hurry."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 5

President Lyndon Johnson's birth-site, LBJ Ranch. Photo by Timothy Tray at www.city-data.com. Click on photo to go to site.

Stonewall, Texas

LHM references J.M.W. Turner in the quote above, remarking that he "never thought Turner a realist."  In an article on Wikipedia that I read recently, it turns out that Turner may have been a realist after all.  A lot of volcanic action around the world during the early 1800s created especially bright and vivid sunsets that he captured in his paintings, as well as a "year without a summer" in which temperatures were so cold in Europe during the summer months that crops were ruined, leading to a food shortage crisis.

But that was just a little interesting fact that I learned.  What I really want to write about is good and evil.  LHM either misses, or just simply doesn't remark about, that just west of Stonewall lies the Lyndon B. Johnson Ranch - now a National Historical Park.  Why should that bring up good and evil?  Bear with me a moment while I coalesce a few points around this theme.

Very recently I went to a production of the musical Wicked.  The Broadway touring company came through Albuquerque and we paid outrageous prices to go see it.  We were interested in the musical because a few months earlier we had read the book to each other.

Both the book and the musical had as their subjects the nature of good and evil.  The book is much darker and more subsumed in philosophical, religious and political themes than the musical can be - the musical focuses on easy to reach themes and is in essence a love story.  The book, which author Gregory Maguire wrote partly because of questions unanswered in the original Wizard of Oz books by L. Frank Baum, examines what made the Wicked Witch of the West so evil.  We learn that sometimes people are evil not necessarily because of what they do, but how others perceive their actions and the consequences of those actions.  It is also an exploration of how some can come to believe themselves evil, which filters into their persona so that, in essence, they become what they believe.

The Wicked Witch of the West is portrayed, in MacGuire's Wicked, as a young woman named Elphaba who is idealistic, a believer in and protector of the rights of Animals (in Oz, animals that have capability of higher thought and speech), but who also has some strikes against her - namely that she is green, and therefore a freak.  She is a zealot, willing to fight for what she believes, but her actions are considered dangerous and she is hated and wanted by the government for her evils.  On the other hand, Glinda, the Good Witch, is really a bubble-headed, vacuous and shallow person who is "good" simply by the virtue of her beauty and her connections.  Eventually, the Wicked Witch of the West, through her own actions, events not in her control, politics and her own self-loathing, becomes that which she originally despises.  She becomes wicked almost because there is no other choice for her.

How does this relate to anything about Stonewall?  I see President Lyndon Johnson in similar terms.  He was a remarkably complex man, driven by an intense desire to do something to bring the country together and who pushed through some of the most comprehensive legislation to deal with poverty that the United States has ever seen.  He was a Texan, a vice-president under Kennedy who was put on Kennedy's ticket to deliver southern Democratic votes but who was not thought highly of by the Kennedy administration.  Back then, vice presidents were basically around to perform ceremonial duties and to break the occasional tie vote in the Senate.  However, when Kennedy was assassinated, this "hick" from Texas was thrust front and center.  His War on Poverty was rooted in his own poor depression-era background and his experiences teaching in small Texas schools.  He was ruthless as a politician, and was feared and admired for the pressure that he could put on an individual to get what he wanted.  To this day, the programs enacted in the War on Poverty and in his vision of a Great Society are hated by conservatives as the epitomy of big government and government intrusion in people's lives.  For these programs, some people regard him as "evil" while others praise his attempts to deal with some of America's most pressing issues.

Johnson also did a number of less-than-honorable things.  He authorized FBI wire-taps of Martin Luther King, Jr. (continuing a policy started by the Kennedy administration) and he supported the overthrow of a number of democratically elected left-wing governments in Latin America.

The Vietnam War, however, will always be associated with Johnson.  While he did not get the United States involved in Vietnam - U.S. involvement was begun by Kennedy and the situation was bequeathed to Johnson - Johnson escalated U.S. involvement.  He believed that if South Vietnam fell, a domino effect would lead to communist takeovers in other countries and threaten democracies and capitalism everywhere.  He believed in the military power and might of the U.S.  To him, South Vietnam's defense was necessary to maintain U.S. power and influence, and his own reputation.  While his motivations were complex, consisting of good but also self-serving elements, his actions committed thousands to death and untold numbers more to consequences felt throughout their lifetimes in the form of injuries, addictions, mental disorders, and broken lives.  Does his single-minded pursuit of victory in what became an unwinnable contest make him evil?  Some think so.  Eventually, Johnson was dissuaded from running for a second full term as president because of popular opinion and demonstrations against the Vietnam War which was largely blamed on him.

Regardless of where you stand on Lyndon Johnson, the Vietnam War, the War on Poverty and the Great Society, a visit to his ranch gives an inside look at a very complex individual who had a great impact on our country.  Regardless of how you view his actions, some of the popular perception of him does not fit.  His actions had consequences, but like most people, his actions also were rooted in personal beliefs that he was doing good, but rendered more complex by human psychological frailties and wants.  Good or evil?  We all confront our actions and sometimes those actions and events combine to create consequences that are labeled one way or the other.  It is easy to make the world black and white, but really Johnson's life, like the themes of Wicked and countless other works of literature, show that those black and white labels conceal a lot of gray, like hair color on a 60-something person.  In the end we really don't have much control over how others ultimately categorize our lives, our actions and ourselves.

Musical Interlude

In my new effort to highlight some musicians from Texas that I really like, I present you with Junior Brown. Though born in Indiana, he's became a sensation in Austin, Texas playing a double necked guitar of his own invention that was a combination electric guitar and steel guitar.  The song attached below is Venom Wearin' Denim and is in keeping with the subject of witches, good and evil.  We've all met and sometimes been hurt by such people - though I keep in mind that though their actions seem meaning to be damaging, sometimes they may be the result of complex psychology.  Enjoy!

If you want to know more about Stonewall

Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Site
Lyndon B. Johnson State Park
Stonewall Chamber of Commerce
Texas Escapes: Stonewall
Texas State Historical Association: Stonewall
Wikipedia: Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park
Wikipedia: Stonewall

Next up: Fredericksburg, Texas

Blue Highways: Johnson City, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWilliam Least Heat-Moon (LHM) leads us to speculate on wanderlust today as we drive with him through Johnson City, Texas.  Satisfy your wanderlust by reading through the post and click on the map thumbnail if you want to see where the wanderlust has led us so far.

Book Quote

"Johnson City was truly a plain town. The 'Lyndon B. Johnson Boyhood Home,' pleasantly plain, is here; and commercial buildings on the square were plain and homely. The best piece, the refurbished Johnson City Bank of rough-cut fieldstone, was perhaps the only bank in the country to be restored rather than bulldozed for a French provincial Tudor hacienda time-and-temperature building."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 5

Downtown Johnson City, Texas. Photo by William Beauchamp on TexasEscapes.com. Click on photo to go to host site.

Johnson City, Texas

I have been reading a set of daily meditations for men, and a recent mediation was "wanderlust."  The questions I was supposed to consider were whether I ever had wanderlust and what I did about it.

I think I developed my wanderlust early but was a little timid to do anything about it.  I grew up in Northern California, and went to college there.  After a year-long relationship in my junior year that ended and left me somewhat heartbroken, and then a short and intense relationship in my senior year that abruptly ended, I decided I needed to get out of California and see something of the rest of the country.  I joined a volunteer program and went east of California for the first time in my life, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  I lived there for 10 years, and it was there that my wanderlust truly kicked in.

I was lucky enough to eventually have a job that allowed me travel to other states.  In particular, I loved my trips to the East Coast.  I would take the car provided with my job and drive through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, down through New Jersey to Phillie, back through West Virginia and so on.  I took small roads when I could, much like William Least Heat-Moon (this was before I ever read him).  I turned off on side roads to see places with interesting names.  It was during my time in Milwaukee, in my early thirties, when I made my first backpacking trip to Europe and visited nine countries over the course of 2½ months.

I am lucky enough to marry a woman who also loves to travel, and together we've lived in exciting places (Milwaukee, San Antonio, New Orleans, Albuquerque) and traveled together to Europe twice (once as international observers to Northern Ireland, once to Germany for a wedding which involved side trips to Poland and the Czech Republic).  I've been very fortunate to have some jobs that allowed me to travel as part of my work.  In San Antonio, I made thrice yearly trips to New York City, and made a fact-finding trip to Bangladesh as well as the international observer trip to Northern Ireland.

Even in Albuquerque, I have been able to travel.  Once on a day's notice, I helped a 70 year old woman deliver a van from Albuquerque down to a rural community in the state of Guanajuato in Mexico.  I traveled to El Salvador for immersion Spanish lessons.

I write all this not to chalk up my traveling experiences.  Others have traveled more widely and extensively than me.  We have a friend whose goal is to visit thirty countries by the time she's thirty, and she probably will.  But in the spirit of my meditation assignment, what stands out to me is my willingness, not necessarily my ability, to go places and to explore my world.  Take my life in San Antonio, for example.  While there, my wife and tried to explore Texas as well as we could.  In particular, we wanted to see the Texas hill country, which we heard was beautiful, especially when the wildflowers bloomed in the spring.  That exploration took us a few times to the environs of Johnson City.

Originally, when I thought of wanderlust, Johnson City would not have been the first name that would have come to my mind as a destination.  Wanderlust initially meant to me exotic climes and adventures in faraway lands.  For example, under this paradigm, my trips to Bangladesh, El Salvador, Mexico, and even Europe, would have been considered by me true examples of the product of wanderlust.

But wanderlust means so much more than trying to take a trip to some faraway place.  There's nothing to say that wanderlust can't involve a plain sounding place like Johnson City.  It was our wanderlust that brought us into the Texas hill country - we'd heard of wonders like Pedernales Falls and Enchanted Rock (more on that when we get to Fredericksburg) and the historic LBJ Ranch.  We knew that a place like Luckenbach existed in that area, where Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and other musicians were known to frequent.  It was those draws, plus a willingness to see new things and experience something different that brought us there.  And, we even stopped in Johnson City to eat at a place called Uncle Kunkel Barbecue, simply because it reminded us of a person that lived in Milwaukee with the same last name.

So to me, wanderlust is a desire to go anyplace, see anything, and to constantly have that yearning to travel.  Wanderlust is not confined to the high marquee places.  A person who has true wanderlust is one who will turn off a main highway because a name looks interesting, or because they're just curious about what's up that road.  True wanderlust leads us to places like Johnson City as much or more often than places like St. Croix, and allows us to learn if there is anything there.  Most of the time, we'll find something interesting.

I have wanderlust.  I try to travel.  When I can't, I read and scratch my wanderlust itch through others' experiences and words.  And now I write in this blog about both experiences.  As Terri Hendrix, Texas singer-songwriter from the Texas hill country, sings: "Take me places I've never been before."  I hope I never lose this affliction and gift.

I leave you in this post with a video of Terri Hendrix, a marvelous musician and one of my favorites, singing Jim Thorpe's Blues from her album The Spiritual Kind.  The guy playing mandolin is her longtime collaborator Lloyd Maines, who is the father of Natalie Maines, lead singer for the Dixie Chicks.

If you want to know more about Johnson City

Johnson City Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Center
Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park
Pedernales Falls State Park
Texas Escapes: Johnson City
Texas State Historical Association: Johnson City
Wikipedia: Johnson City

Next up: Stonewall, Texas

Blue Highways: Austin, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapNon-Texans may not agree, but there is a little bit of heaven perched on the edge of the desert in Texas - Austin (and San Antonio, where I lived).  William Least Heat-Moon notes Austin on his way past, since he doesn't want to spend time in the urban areas.  But we'll take a little stop so I can reminisce about Austin and traveling up there a few times a year to do and see interesting things.  Click on the map thumbnail at right and see just how far we are across Texas, and how far we have to go.

Book Quote

"At Austin, on a hill west of the Colorado River - not the Colorado River, but the one flowing from near the New Mexico line to the Gulf - the desert began. Desert as in dry, rocky, vast. There was nothing gradual about the change - it was sudden and clear. Within a mile or so, the bluebonnets vanished as if evaporated, the soil turned tan and granular, and squatty trees got squattier with each mile as if reluctant to reach too far from their deep, wet taproots."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 5

Austin, Texas. Photo by Rhea Thomas at uptake.com. Click on photo to go to host site.

Austin, Texas

Every so often, my wife and I would leave San Antonio in the early evening and head up to Austin.  It was about an hour and a half drive up I-35 to downtown Austin, but usually we would hit some traffic on the outskirts of Austin just before we crossed Town Lake into the downtown.  After leaving the downtown skyline of San Antonio, muted in the fading light, the lights of the buildings of Austin reflecting off of the waters made for an interesting contrast with San Antonio.

Perhaps our goal was to have an evening at one of Austin's many good restaurants.  Perhaps there was an event, like a concert, that we wanted to see.  Sometimes it was the opera that beckoned us.  We had season tickets to the Austin Opera and only missed one - when it was too icy to drive and we had to turn back because, even though we were used to plows and salt and sand trucks in the Midwest, they had few of these in the South and even worse, people did not know how to drive in icy conditions.

Once we went to Austin to see the bats fly out from the Congress Avenue Bridge.  Austin, if I remember correctly, has the largest urban Mexican red-tailed bat population in the United States  They roost under the Congress Avenue Bridge for a certain amount of months each year, and quite a crowd gathers when they fly out in the evenings to look for a meal.  We stood under the bridge, listening to the barely audible squeaks of the bats, and soon, a few flew out, followed by an ever increasing torrent.  They made a cloud over town lake as they flew and swooped chasing down mosquitoes and other insects.

But to us, the jewel of Austin was located in Zilker Park - Barton Springs.  Barton Springs is a spring-fed pool straight from the aquifer below the city.  The water remains at a constant temperature, around 68 degrees.  In the summer, there was no better place to swim.  Well, at least I thought so.  One could always go up to Lake Travis and the beaches there, including a clothing-optional beach called Hippie Hollow.  I never went to any of those places, though.  Barton Springs was just my speed.

One of my best memories, though, was leaving Austin late, usually after the opera.  We'd drive back to San Antonio usually around midnight.  A wonderful public radio show, Blues Before Sunrise, usually came on and went into the wee hours of the morning.  At those moments, after having enjoyed a good time in the capital of Texas, driving through the night down I-35, it was easy to forget that we literally sat perched on the edge of the semi-arid desert just to the west.  West of Austin and San Antonio one could drive for hours before coming to a city of any consequence - it was 10 hours to El Paso, probably 12 or so to Albuquerque.  In between lay a lot of flat scrubland, gradually giving way to Chihuahuan desert to the southwest.  But we raced down the interstate, knowing that at the end lay our home in the Mahncke Park area of San Antonio, and our wonderful white dog waiting for us.  As the blues played, and my wife slept, sometimes it seemed like a slice of heaven.

For your listening and viewing pleasure, a band from Austin that unfortunately will not be touring any more - the Asylum Street Spankers.  Another Austin treasure to be remembered.

If you want to know more about Austin

Austinist (blog)
austinwebpage.com
Austin American-Statesman (newspaper)
Austin Bloggers Metablog
Austin Chronicle (alternative newspaper)
Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau
Austin Daily Photo (blog)
Austin Food Carts
Austin Food Reviews
Austin History Center
Daughters of the Republic of Texas
Slow Food Austin
University of Texas at Austin
Wikipedia: Austin
Wikipedia: History of Austin
Wikitravel: Austin

Next up: Johnson City, Texas

Blue Highways: Dime Box, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapIs Dime Box, Texas the everytown that William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) wants us to consider for the human condition?  Or did he just need a break on a long trip across Texas, stopped here for a time, and decided to fill some pages writing about its inhabitants?  I'm not sure so I speculate below.  You can speculate too, and if you want to see where Dime Box is located, click on the map thumbnail conveniently located to the right.

Book Quote

"Across the Yegua River a sign pointed south to Dime Box. Over broad hills, over the green expansion spreading under cedars and live oaks, on into a valley where I found Dime Box, essentially a three street town. Vegetable gardens and flowerbeds lay to the side, behind, and in front of the houses. Perpendicular to the highway, two streets ran east and west: one of worn brick buildings facing the Southern Pacific tracks, the other a double row of false-front stores and wooden sidewalks. Disregarding a jarring new bank, Dime Box could have been an M-G-M backlot set for a Western.

"'....City people don't think anything important happens in a place like Dime Box. And usually it doesn't, unless you call conflict important. Or love or babies or dying.'"

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 2

Downtown Dime Box, Texas. Photo by "Ms. Vicky" at the blog Mariah's Zepher. Click on photo to go to host site.Dime Box, Texas

Given the amount of text that LHM devotes to Dime Box, Texas, you might think that it is a pretty big place.  Now take a look at the Wikipedia page that I link to below.  Dime Box's entry is all of two sentences.

Now that begs a question.  Why did LHM put so much attention into Dime Box?  He stops in a diner, where nothing is going on except for the occasional small talk of some extremely bored people, and where the most exciting thing that happens occurs when an old woman stands up and farts, causing one guy to make the comment that she doesn't need any more beans.  He then visits the post office and talks to the woman at the counter, and she tells him a little about how the town got its name, its ethnic background, and states her speculation on what "city people" think of small towns like Dime Box.  I quote that above.

He then gets a haircut and devotes another section of the book to the barber who gives him a haircut.  He learns that the barber used to press clothes and gets shown the large pressing machine in the back, long unused.  He sees the tree that is in the process of uprooting the corner of the barber's building.  He declares the haircut the best he has ever gotten.

He then stops in a bar and watches men of Czech and German descent play dominoes.  A man with a Czech accent tells him about his war experience and asks him a philosophical question.  Given a choice of one of three implements that he could use to survive, which would he take - a hoe, a fishing pole and line or a gun.  LHM says he'd take the fishing pole, and the Czech says he'd take the gun.

I'm somewhat stumped about LHM's reasons for giving this much detail to this out of the way stop.  Is he making a point about how slow it can be in small towns?  I'm from a small town, so this isn't news to me, and it probably isn't news to others either, whether they come from small towns or big cities.  Is he pointing out that time has a different meaning in places like Dime Box?  Yes, we move faster and time seems to move more quickly in places where there is a lot more action.  In contrast, a small town in an out of the way corner in Texas may seem like time stands still.  It moves, if one looks carefully.  People age, homes and farms change hands, businesses die and sometimes don't come back.  The town experiences booms and busts and sometimes the busts kill it off.  I suspect this isn't news to most people either.

Or is he making a point that places like Dime Box are still here, and that life happens anywhere, even in such a small place.  The quote from the postal clerk points out that small out-of-the-way places have controversy (she states that Dime Box was embroiled in racial politics over busing like a lot of other places in the 60s and 70s), and that people are born, fall in love, have families and die in places like Dime Box just like any other place.  People get their hair cut, they sit in diners and talk, and they sit in bars and drink and play games.  They work.  They live.

Perhaps that's the point that LHM is trying to make.  We get caught up in our own lives, think of ourselves and perhaps our own joys and problems.  We insulate ourselves in our surroundings.  We live in our cities and towns and forget that in other places, people more alike to us than unlike are dealing with similar problems and facing them in similar ways and coming to similar ways of resolving them.  In that way, the most powerful banker in a penthouse suite in a skyscrapered metropolis is connected to the most humble farmer in the smallest town in the middle of the east corner of nowhere.  The tools that each uses to deal with life are different.  One has access to money and the best technology, and one may just have a pair of hands and a voice.  But the things that life throws at us are the same across the board, and we remember that when we stop in a place like Dime Box and a second generation ethnic Czech war veteran from Dime Box tells a story about connecting with Czechs from Chicago over booze and gambling while fighting a war against a fascist regime bent on world domination.  We are all connected through the similar problems that we face.

At least that's what I think that LHM is getting at.  But I might be completely wrong...and it wouldn't be the first time.

If you want to know more about Dime Box

American Profile Magazine: Dime Box
Mariah's Zepher blog post on Dime Box
Texas State Historical Association: Dime Box
TexasEscapes.com: Dime Box
TexasTripper.com: Dime Box
Wikipedia: Dime Box

Next up: Austin, Texas

Blue Highways: College Station, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe pull into College Station, Texas for the night with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM).  If you've lived in Texas, you know that College Station is Aggieland, and just how big their rivalry with the University of Texas is.  To see where College Station is located, click on the map, and gig 'em, hook 'em, or whatever you feel like doing!

Book Quote

"...on the way to College Station."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 1

Photo located at forbes.com. Click on the photo to go to host site. 

College Station, Texas

This was the first Aggie joke I ever heard:

A pickup truck with two University of Texas students in the cab and two Texas A&M students in the bed of the truck skidded off the road and went into a lake.  The two University of Texas students let the water fill inside the cab, equalizing the pressure, and then opened the doors and swam to safety.  As they reached the surface, people pulled them out and onto shore.  Somebody asked, "what happened to those two Aggies in the back?"  One UT student said responded: "They're still down there.  When we swam by, they were still trying to get the tailgate open."

Okay, so the you get the picture.  Texas A&M is located in College Station, Texas and Aggies are Texas A&M sports teams and students.  It is a pastime in Texas to tell these jokes which highlight just how unintelligent Aggies are purported to be.  Here's another I learned:

Texas A&M had to close the library because a student went to the library and checked out the book.

Wait for it...wait for it...okay, there, you got it!  But there's more...

The library had another tragedy this week.  The student returned the book, and had colored in the pictures.

In Texas, almost every ethnic or stereotype joke can be made into an Aggie joke, which makes such jokes acceptable in public locations.  The funny thing is, most of the jokes I heard about Aggies were told to me by an Aggie.  Sam, who lived downstairs from me while I lived in San Antonio, attended Texas A&M and took perverse pleasure in Aggie jokes - he knew practically all of them.  He was also a Mexican-American from El Paso, and knew practically every Mexican joke ever uttered.  Perhaps it was a way of reducing the power of these jokes by taking ownership of them.  That's my politically correct liberal interpretation.  In reality, I think he just liked them and found them funny.  He certainly didn't match any of these stereotypes - he is one of the quickest and most intelligent people I ever met.  He's an engineer, and a good one, and probably makes more in one year than I do in five.  So, Aggie stereotypes, as usually all stereotypes, don't quite add up.

Here's another I found on the web:

There was a group of Aggie science students that wanted to send a probe to the sun, but some UT students said that was impossible and that the probe would burn up long before reaching the sun.  The Aggies replied that they planned to send the probe at night.

Of course the University of Texas Longhorns got ribbed by Aggies.  Because it is the flagship school of the state of Texas, the students there could be regarded as from the Texas elite.  The stereotype was effete snobbery, leading the UT students to be called "tea sippers" or simply "tea sips."  When an Aggie referred to a University of Texas student or grad, he or she might call the Longhorn a tea sipper with a hand gesture that resembled someone holding a cup of tea.

Other hand signals used, especially around the annual Texas-Texas A&M football game involved making a fist, holding it up with palm sign out and then poking out the pinkie and the forefinger while shouting "hook em' Horns!"  Aggies, on the other hand, stick out their thumb like they are hitchhiking and shout "gig em' Aggies!"

Here's another one:

There was an Aggie that was down on his luck. In order to raise some money he decided to kidnap a kid and hold him for ransom.  He went to the playground, grabbed a kid, took him behind a tree and told him, "I've kidnapped you."  The Aggie wrote a note saying "I've kidnapped your kid. Tomorrow morning, put $10,000 in a paper bag and put it beneath the pecan tree next to the slide on the north side of the city playground. Signed, An Aggie."  The Aggie then pinned the note to the kid's shirt and sent him home to show it to his parents.  The next morning the Aggie checked, and sure enough a paper bag was sitting beneath that pecan tree. The Aggie opened up the bag and found the $10,000 with a note. The note said, "How could one Aggie do this to another Aggie?"

Beyond the fun and games, Texas A&M is a very good school.  The George H.W. Bush Presidential Library is located there.  I'm a political scientist, and a position in the political science department at A&M is considered to be a plum position.  Texas A&M has its own military corps, called the Corps of Cadets, of which 42 percent go into a commission in the U.S. Armed Services, according to Wikipedia.

On the eve of the big football game with the University of Texas, Texas A&M had a tradition called Bonfire.  A huge structure of logs was built and set alight, symbolizing A&M's burning desire to beat Texas.  Tragically, in 1999 the structure collapsed while being built and killed and injured a number of student volunteers working on the building of the structure.  Since then, there has been no official Bonfire, and a Bonfire memorial was created to honor the victims.

I appreciate Texas A&M because some great musicians have gone through College Station and the university.  I will end this post with one that I really like - Robert Earl Keen.  He is so beloved in Texas by Aggies that they follow him around to his concerts.  The story is that he and Lyle Lovett, another Aggie, lived together and played around College Station together before going on to their own musical careers.  The YouTube embedded below does not give any video, but is his song, The Front Porch Song, from a live album he did some years ago.  The story he tells in the middle of the song references College Station and Aggies, and is a good companion to this post.  Enjoy!

If you want to know more about College Station

Bryan-College Station Convention and Visitors Bureau
Bryan and College Station, Texas (blog)
The Eagle (newspaper)
Left of College Station (blog)
Texas A&M University
Wikipedia: College Station

Next up: Dime Box, Texas