A&M at LSU

When we were at A&M, the Aggies were part of the Southwest Athletic Conference, which consisted mostly of Texas teams. Among the non-conference games that were arranged was with the Tigers of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Each team had loyal and rabid fans, and each meeting was guaranteed to pack Tiger stadium (for the four years we were cadets, all the games were in Baton Rouge.)

Our Sergebutt year, we saw an opportunity to do some serious partying where the legal drinking age was 18. Groups were organized around people who were willing to risk their cars. I went with Shotgun, Rob Rogers, and two others I don't remember, in Shotgun's Mustang, which he called "The Mule."

We left College Station as early as we could on Friday afternoon, and drove straight to New Orleans. We arrived in the French Quarter a little before midnight, just in time to have a couple of hurricanes before attending midnight yell practice at Pat O'Brien's, a famous watering hole. The rest of the night was a blur, but the plan played out pretty well - we hit all the bars, clubs, and street parties we could until daylight, piled into The Mule, drove 90 miles to Baton Rouge, and found a place to have breakfast. At mid-morning, we found a motel that would let us check in early, and booked a room for two for one night. That meant that the motel clerk only saw two of us, but all five of us crashed in the room. And crash we did, until it was time for supper.

We got up, donned our uniforms, grabbed some fast food, and made our way to Tiger Stadium for the game. I think that place is where they invented tailgate parties. There must have been hundreds of them in the parking lot, mainly featuring the consumption of large amounts of beer. Since it was obvious which school we represented, we attracted almost continuous jeers of "There goes Tiger bait!" as we walked through.

The tickets allocated to Aggie students were in one corner of the end zone, but we managed to make enough noise to let the rest of the stadium know we were there. The game was close the entire time, and with less than a minute to go, it was 18-13 LSU, and the Ags were on their own 21. Anxious to resume their tailgate parties, the Cajuns started streaming for the exits. On first down, Sophomore QB Lex James threw incomplete to Hugh McElroy. More Cajuns left. On second down, he tried to hit Brad Dusek, but failed. Almost all the Cajuns left. With 13 seconds to go, on third down James finally connected with McElroy at mid-field. Hugh got a key block, dodged two other defenders, and streaked all the way to the end zone. The extra point was good, the clock expired with the score 20-18, and the Ags put a "W" in the books. In one corner of the end zone, there was pandemonium; in the rest of the stadium there was stunned silence.

It was great fun to walk back through the parking lot, delivering the news to the unsuspecting Cajuns who were celebrating what they thought was another Tiger victory. More than once, we just had to yell, "Tiger bait my a**! We skinned us a Tiger!" Luckily for us, most of them were drunk enough that by the time the truth sunk in, we were out of range.

We went back to the motel, changed into civvies, found a place to party in Baton Rouge, and did so most of the night. Sunday morning, we checked out of the motel, grabbed breakfast, and hit the road, headed west and north. Shotgun was sleepy, so Rogers was at the wheel when we hit rain on the Interstate just east of Beaumont. On a long, curving overpass, Rob lost control and we skidded backwards off the left side of the road into the grass. Just a little ways farther, and we would have fallen about 20 feet onto the highway under that overpass. We came to rest, dragged ourselves out of the car and into the rain, checked ourselves for injuries, found none, and started to get our brains working again. At that point, Shotgun walked back up the incline to check the damage, found the car still running, and switched it off. He said later that that was one of the hardest things he'd ever done - it seemed like The Mule was still alive, but fatally wounded, and he put it to sleep. While he was doing that, from out of nowhere a huge black woman appeared, and she commenced to hugging all of us, screaming, "The Lawd was wif y'all!"

Funny, I don't remember how we got back to College Station.

We heard later that another car had a similar fate - Eddurds was driving Crackers' car, became the fifth person in the vehicle to go to sleep, let the car drift off the left side of a divided highway, and woke up just as they hit a crossover and went airborne. I guess the Lawd was wif them, too -- they all survived.

Next year, we did it again, although the football team didn't - the Tigers avenged their previous year's last-second loss with a 37-0 pasting of the Aggies. I remember being in a room in Baton Rouge with Eddurds, Nebbitt, and a couple of others. We had all become fans of a Southern comic named Jerry Clower - in one of his routines he talks about "dem biscuit," so we referred to a lot of things that way. On Saturday evening, after the requisite all-nighter in the French Quarter, we were stirring around, trying to stumble into our uniforms, when Nebbitt blurted, "Now where'd I put dem boot hook?" We almost died of laughter; it was the funniest thing we'd ever heard him say. OK, you had to have been there.

John (Yankus) Yantis