rom far and wide
A&M earns
THE BATTALION Page 9
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1975
By KEN STROEBEL
he following article was taken from
earlier issue of the Battalion. Ed.
Or. Jim Syler, 1957 A&M gradu-
defined an Aggie as a “soldier,
atesman and knightly gentlemen”
Jho "rides hard, shoots straight and
| veS his life in such a way that he can
Lf any man in the eye and tell him
Itogojo hell, if need he!”
T
J The ixipularity or accuracy of that
■elinition is uncertain but it might
L interesting to note what others
lhavesaid about Aggies and A&M,
Lriing normal censorship.
When 1 decided to become an
Iggie, my brother suggested my
I,rents change their name and
l 0V e to another city, He wrote
L nij “Got your last letter and the
Id news that the world has gained
Tnother Aggie.” And to me he
Irote, “Glad to hear you've finally
nnd a place that deserves you,”
[hatever that means. That's okay;
still thinks AMU stands for
loniic mass unit.
Those who saw “Patton” should
Jememher Gen. Omar Bradley
,l a yed h\- Karl Malden. The real
Pen. Bradley once said, “The men
Texas A&M can stand up to any
Sneii in the world and compare
favorably their education and train
ing and leadership — leadership in
lie pursuits of peace, and if it comes
|owar, leadership in battle.”
A century ago then-Governor
Richard Coke said, “An Aggie does
lot lie, cheat or steal nor will he
tolerate those who do; an Aggie’s
word is his bond.”
Robert Mitchum once told
Johnny Carson the worst movie he
ever made was about some two-bit
cow college in Texas in the ’40s.
And from the 1946 Daedalian, the
yearbook for Texas State College for
Women at Denton: “There’s a col
lege down near the Brazos strictly
for men; it’s a military college where
young boys fresh from high school
enter and graduate as men . . . it’s
called Texas A&M.” Whoop, who
op.
More recently, like several bon
fires ago, John Denver hailed Col
lege Station as “the culture capital of
the South” and “gateway to Snook.”
Fora minute I thought he was being
sarcastic.
But it seems entertainers gener
allylike the reception they get here.
During a performance that
rocked C. Rollie White, the Nitty
Gritty Dirt Band’s Jeff Hanna ad
mitted, “It’s always a shot in the arm
to come down here to play for you
weirdos ’cause you’re all crazy.’
John McEuen, who has probably
done more plucking than Col. San
ders and Churches’ put together,
reaffirmed this backstage as he
picked away at Opus 36, Clementi
on the banjo.
“We always look forward to play
ing in College Station,” he said,
smiling through his beard. He
added the Band would rather play
for a crazy crowd like the Aggies
than a screaming bunch of “teeny
hoppers.”
respect from many
And Henry Mancini s comments
last weekend were also flattering.
“We’ve had audiences before but
this is one of the best we’ve ever
had,” he said. “This is quite a group
you have here. ” Funny, I was just
going to say the same thing about
him.
Last spring Rod Selling un
leashed his nationally famous
glower through bushy eyebrows on
an innocent G. Rollie White audi
ence and said, “When I was a kid,
A&M was a power to be reckoned
with.” Considering his image, that
gives A&M quiet a distinction.
Flattery from the outside, from
civilized people, is great but it’s
even better from a former student
who saw the error of his ways and
tried to do something worthwhile.
After his freshman year in the
Corps, Dan Jordan transferred to
the Air Force Academy for “a more
professional atmosphere. He re
turned to the scene of the crime
about a year ago to report, “I still
consider Texas A&M to be the best
military school in the country.”
Compared to A&M, he said, the
Academy “damned sure doesn’t
have class spirit.”
Two Apollo 17 astronauts were
awakened on the moon last year
with the strains of the Aggie War
Hymn. Eugene A. Cernan and Har
rison H. Schmitt had discovered
orange dust on the lunar surface ear
lier that week and flight director
Jerry Griffin, class of 1956, made
that particular music selection.
“He said that if you could find
some maroon dirt today, instead of
orange,” explained capsule com
municator Gordon Fullerton,
“you’d probably get a lot more
cooperation out of him.
One of the better definitions of an
Aggie was one of those things which
mysteriously turned up in a quiz
Spiders invading
high-rise homes
Everybody should have
Somebody waiting
for him when
he gets
home.
Puppies and Kittens
Small Animals
Fish & Aquarium Supplies
Ask about our Fish-of-the-Month
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Animal World
Manor East Mall
CHICAGO (AP)— Spiders aren’t
asking flys to come into their parlor
anymore in Chicago. The phrase
these days is “step into my skys
craper. ”
And instead of flies, spiders are
attracting mud-dauber wasps who
are building nests on the balconies
of expensive lake-front apartments.
The webweavers, so small they
are blown by the wind, have taken
over the windows and ledges of
high-rise apartments by the
thousands. Pest controllers say they
have found nothing to stop them.
“We’ve spent a fortune to get rid
of them and there’s no way,” says
Turtle freed
after year
FORT WORTH, Tex. (AP) — A
tale of a trapped turtle that
triumphed emerged from an East
Fort Worth construction site Wed
nesday.
A builder and his employees
freed a small green four-ounce tur
tle from beneath a 30-pound hunk of
concrete under which the terrapin
had been trapped for possibly a
year.
Level with the flat underside of
the concrete was the underside of a
turtle.
Employee Eddie Bowen, 17,
pried it from the concrete and set it
down.
The turtle stuck out its head,
gazed around and began to amble
off.
Some area biologists seem skepti
cal of the story, but say if its true, it
may be a record for a turtle which
has lived this long under such condi
tions.
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Roland Ceragioli, superintendent of
Outer Drive East. “We put a new
chemical in the window-wash solu
tion and were charged for a double
washing. Three days later they were
back by the hundreds.
“We sprayed the top of the to
wers. We sprayed the bottom of the
towers. In a high-rise everything
has to be done off a scaffold and
we’ve spent an estimated $35,000 a
year just to wash those spiders out of
our hair.”
Entomologists have identified
the insects as orb weaver spiders, a
harmless variety. They say they ride
wind currents off Lake Michigan,
set up housekeeping on windows,
and live until the first frost, eating
gnats and laying eggs in crevices.
They also are attracting mud dauber
wasps who are dirtying up terraces
with their mud nests.
Robert de Celles, property man
ager of Lake Point Tower which has
an automated window washing ap
paratus, says he has returned to
window-washers and close-contact
sprityS to kill the spiders.
“We just finished a scrubout in
which two men with steel wool
spent four weeks scrubbing spiders
and eggs and cobwebs from each of
the 11,000 windows in the 70-story
building,” said de Celles. “We got
rid of about 75 percent of them, but
they’ll be back. ”
Darryl Sanders, a Purdue Uni
versity entomologist whose advice
was sought, said: “There’s no way
to escape from insects except in
outer space. They always have
learned to adapt to new habitats and
maybe having a building 70 stories
high has created a new critter en
tirely.”
Surprisingly, say managers, there
have not been as many complaints
as might be expected from residents
whose gaze out on Lake Michigan is
blurred by cobwebs on the window
panes. But one resident said:
“You start to get the feeling, with
radiation and everything, that they
may get big and fat and eventually
take over the building.”
file. It was titled “What is an Ag
gie?” and sadly sported no author
ship. It read in part as follows:
“After the security of childhood
and during the insecurity of second
childhood, we find a bunch of good
Joes’ whom we call Aggies.
“They can be found anywhere: at
drill, on leave, in love and always in
debt. Girls love them. Bryan toler
ates them, and the state supports
them. He dislikes answering let
ters, wearing his uniform, up
perclassmen and the Corps. This
guy likes to spend most of his money
on girls, some on beer, some goes
back into the game, and the rest
goes foolishly.
“An Aggie is a magical creature.
You can lock him out of your liquor
cabinet but not out of your heart;
you can get him off your mailing list
but not off your mind.”
At All University Night early this
semester, yell leader Grif Lasley
said, “If he’s an Aggie, you’re be
hind him. That’s what an Aggie is.
And yell leader Mark McLean ad
ded, “Deep in the heart of every
Aggie is a spirit that can never be
beat.”
Dr. Jack K. Williams couldn’t de
fine A&M that night but said it was
“identified by the friendship which
pervades this campus. ” And Coach
Emory Bellard defined his Aggies as
“a fightin’ bunch of devils. ”
To me an Aggie is the culmination
of a parent’s greatest hopes or worst
fears. He is the guy who walks ac-
rossframpus in the rain to make sure
his P.O. box is still empty. But de
fining “Aggie is comparable to de
fining “animal in the zoo — more
comparable than I care to think ab
out. So until Funk & Wagnalls gets
the word or until they consider try
ing to take us seriously, you’d best
decide for yourself what an Aggie is.
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