Highway 6 Runs Both Ways: Recollections of My Four Years in the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets

By Jack B. Holt

HIGHWAY 6 RUNS BOTH WAYS

The years 1962 through 1966 saw major changes occur at Texas A&M.

* Mandatory participation in the Corps of Cadets was eliminated
* Black students were admitted for the first time
* Women were enrolled as full-time co-educational students
* The name was changed to Texas A&M University

These changes signaled the end of an all-male military institution. Some said that old Army was gone forever. But with the passage of time the Spirit of Aggieland has not only survived but has prospered. We can look back on the past when we were students with pride and good humor as we recall those days that had so much influence on what Texas A&M is today.

This collection of stories from that time period is dedicated to the Class of 66.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491848203

Jack B. Holt

Jack was born in 1944 in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. He grew up in La Marque, Texas and graduated from La Marque High in 1962. He attended Texas A&M where he majored in Mechanical Engineering. As a member of the Corps of Cadets he served as Commanding Officer of Company A-2, was a member of the Ross Volunteer Company, named to “Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges”, a Distinguished Military Graduate and received his officer’s commission in the Engineer Branch of the U.S. Army. After serving a two year assignment in Germany, he joined Humble Pipeline Company (now Exxon). He held numerous management positions during a 25-year career while working in Texas and Louisiana. He then transferred to Exxon Company USA where he had assignments to projects in the US and Russia, traveling extensively overseas. He also had several long-term assignments in Alaska and retired in 2001. Jack was married to the former Lenora Mooney since 1972. They lived in Spring, Texas, near their children Matt and Elizabeth and their two grandsons, Jeremiah and Travis. Jack formerly owned Bonanza “Three-three-Mike” in which he flew burn patients to and from the Shriner Hospital in Galveston. He taught Bible study for over 30 years. Hobbies included golf, restoring classic cars, building model railroads with his grandsons, attending Aggie football games with his buddies, and kicking back at his place in the Texas Hill Country.

Book preview

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2014 Lenora Holt. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 1/9/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4819-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4818-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4820-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013923412

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1   My introduction to life in the Corps

Chapter 2   What am I doing here?

Chapter 3   The fish begin to fight back

Chapter 4   A brief glimpse of life in the Corps

Chapter 5   The bonfire is called off

Chapter 6   Raising the stakes

Chapter 7   How to kill some time during the summer

Chapter 8   Kings of the World

Chapter 9   A Few Final Thoughts

An Afterword

Preface

S omeone has said that when writing a narrative of some type that you never write the one you set out to write. This is certainly true of Highway 6 Runs Both Ways. My initial intent was to capture in writing many of the oral tales of life in the Corps of Cadets that I and my Aggie buddies have related to our children and friends over the years. We tend to recall and recount almost exclusively the humorous episodes, seldom spending much time reminiscing about the trials we encountered. But the passage of time allows a perspective not possible when we lived those events of half a century ago. We now find it possible to see the humor in almost everything about our college days. It is my wish that this account of those days can be read and enjoyed by others with the same bias toward laughter in which it has been wr itten.

The stories and accounts in this book have not been researched thoroughly. Actually, they have not been researched at all. What is written down is almost without exception taken directly from my personal recollection of events, places, people and conversations, corrected now and then by my associates Mike and Jim Bob. What this means is that my reporting of some of the events that follow may not always match up seamlessly with the facts. This does not bother me, and I hope it will not trouble those who read it, either.

A hallmark of Aggie lore is that the stories become more outrageous as the years go by. Each retelling is embellished a bit to enhance the listeners’ enjoyment. Factual accuracy takes a back seat to colorful narrative. It is in the spirit of this tradition that I have written my account of events from the days spent as an Aggie cadet. I have attempted to note where appropriate those events which were told to me by others, of which I was not a first-person witness. I also have tried to identify those myths or legends that were common knowledge by the students back in the day but whose origins have been lost in antiquity.

To those former cadets who may read this and wonder why the language I use is so sanitized from what they remember, I simply point out that I wanted to write a memoir that my grandchildren could read and enjoy without the need to censor parts of it.

Finally, many thanks to my good friend and fellow A-2 classmate Mike Rasbury for his contributions to this work.

Thanks also to J.R. Jim Bob Spencer for remembering details that I had forgotten

CHAPTER 1

My introduction to life in the Corps

W e started the year with forty-nine freshmen in A Company, Third Battalion, Second Brigade. My Aggie buddy Mike always said it was forty-four, but I am almost certain that I heard we had forty-nine freshmen, or fish as first year cadets are called, reporting in to Dorm 4 on that hot, muggy day in September of 1962.

I have a theory that might explain the difference in my count versus Mike’s. In the uproar of that first day, sweaty freshmen were lined up, pressed against the walls of the long dormitory hallway like ducks at a shooting gallery. A handful of upperclassmen who arrived a few days early to indoctrinate the new cadets strutted down the middle of the hall as they yelled instructions. My theory is that there were five freshmen who had been assigned to Company A-2 who got to the front door of the dorm, saw and heard the tumult inside, and never even entered. I imagine they ran back to the car before mom and dad could drive off and scurried back home to Decatur or Dilley or Dallas or wherever they came from. They probably signed up with the local junior college rather than subject themselves to the ordeal that surely lay ahead as a fish in the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets.

I must confess that there have been moments that I may have envied those five guys.

You signed up for what?

My high school friend Charlie and I had gone up to College Station prior to the start of school for a two day orientation. One of the tasks during our stay was to sign up for ROTC at the Chemistry Building located in mid-campus. Just inside the door in the main hallway there were two tables. On one side of the hallway was a table marked Air Force and on the other Army. Charlie got in line for the Air Force table and I got in line behind him. He was signed up for Squadron 8, nicknamed Animal 8. I was assigned to Squadron Seagram 7. Upon returning to the car where Mom, Pop and my brother Jim were waiting, Pop asked which company I was going to be in. When I told him Squadron 7, he nearly went ballistic. He was Class of ’40 and had been in Field Artillery, C-Battery. Didn’t I know that the Air Force required a four-year active duty commitment for officers, whereas the Army required only two?

Actually I didn’t know that. The guy we talked to at the Air Force table told us that the Army ROTC guys had to drill every Saturday morning with rifles, and then spend the entire afternoon cleaning the rifle. (The part about spending all day cleaning the rifle was not true.) He said the Air Force ROTC guys got to sit in an air conditioned hall and watch movies instead of drilling outside in the heat, and they had no rifle to clean. He was quite persuasive.

So I made a hasty trip back inside to the Army ROTC table. Soon I was signed up to be a future member of Company A-2. Pop was now satisfied since I was in Army ROTC, and I was on my way to becoming an officer and a gentleman someday. The pilgrimage was underway. I had no idea of the adventures, and misadventures, that the next four years would bring. All that mattered to me for the near term was surviving from one day to the next.

Freshman shock and awe

In a way, I was better prepared for the rigors of life as a fish in the Corps of Cadets than were some of the other freshmen assigned to Company A-2. My father had indoctrinated me, since birth I suppose, with tales of his days at Aggieland. I knew that I was free to enroll in any college or university of my choice, but if it was anything other than Texas A&M he would disown me. I say this not to be critical, but to note that his generation all served in the military and there was a certain expectation that their sons to also do so. In my case the expectation was unspoken, but the question of whether or not I really had a choice is for all practical purposes academic.

I determined to adapt as best I could and to embrace the path I was now on. But there were some fish who, unbelievably, did not even know when they signed up to attend A&M that it was a military school. I suppose when they enrolled they were told that, oh, by the way, ROTC was mandatory for freshmen and sophomores. So they signed up thinking it was just another course in their curriculum. Some of them did not realize that being in the Corps was a full-time affair. You could tell one of these guys by looking into his eyes. They had a look of panic, the kind that paralyzes a person and renders them perpetually unsure of what to do or say. The odds were that fellows like this were not going to make it. They needed some help, some mentoring, some words of encouragement. Most of them got none. This attitude did not bode well for what lay ahead.

Getting up to speed

The pace of those first few days was hectic. The first order of business was a trip to the campus barbershop in the basement of the Memorial Student Center where those beautiful duck-tail haircuts that were so much admired by the high school girls were left on the floor. Next was a visit to an ancient wooden warehouse that smelled of moth balls where we were issued khaki uniforms, fatigues, wool winter pants, Class A winter dress jackets, hats, shoes and combat boots. The poor guys at the end of the line had a choice between too small or too large. It was then off to the Exchange Store to buy our brass insignia, belt buckles, shoe polish and other personal items not already brought from home in our foot lockers.

After two days of orientation, provided by several juniors and seniors as our initial introduction to Corps life, the rest of the A-2 contingent showed up. Dorm 4 now was packed with students, as were all the Corps dorms. We actually had three fish in my room initially. There was a makeshift wooden bunk stacked on top of the regular bunk bed. I was the unfortunate occupant of the top bunk, and found myself with perhaps three or four inches of clearance to the ceiling when in bed each night. It was like being in a coffin. I quickly learned not to try to turn over or risk getting my shoulders wedged between ceiling and mattress. Since heat rises, my crypt was also the hottest space in an already hot room.

Only wimps need air conditoning

One reason that the cost of attending Texas A&M in the early ’60’s was so low must have been the lack of air conditioning. The only air conditioned dorm was the one the football team lived in. Many of my classes were in un-air conditioned buildings. The college administration apparently subscribed to the principle that molding young lads into