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Steam Tunnels
At some point in A&M's history, someone
must have done some advance planning for the number
of buildings that were on the campus when we were students.
Those buildings were heated and cooled via a closed-loop
water system that circulated through radiator units,
most augmented with electric fans. The water was cooled
in the summer, and heated in the winter at the Central
Utilities Plant (CUP) on the North side of the campus.
The plant was easy to locate since it featured a smokestack
that cynical Aggies considered "the rectal thermometer
in the a**hole of the universe."
The pipes that carried the conditioned
water ran through tunnels under the campus, cleverly
known as the "steam tunnels." There at least
one access point to the tunnel system in every building
on the campus - you just had to know where they were.
In the Corps Dorms, the access was via a door under
the first-floor stairwells. Those doors were supposed
to be kept locked, but by the time we were students,
master keys were in pretty good supply.
If you had a map, or a good sense of direction,
you could enter the steam tunnels from one building,
and emerge in any other building on campus. Each tunnel
was just large enough for the pipes, which were suspended
on hangers along one wall, and one average-height person
to walk by them. Mostly the tunnels were unlighted,
but every now and then there was a light bulb. Some
of the joints in the pipes leaked, which created a dank
environment - in the winter, the water was hot enough
to create a permanent atmosphere of steam in the tunnels.
It was against University regulations
for someone other than maintenance personnel to be in
the steam tunnels, but I don't know of anyone during
our time there that even got caught using them, much
disciplined for doing so.
I remember a couple of situations that
involved the steam tunnels. For a description of one
of them, refer to the memory about the All American
Quad Squad. The other one involved light bulbs in the
crapper. For
a description of the crappers in the quad dorms, see
the memories about Sliver
Crappers and Steam
Showers.
The light bulbs in the crappers were installed
on the ceilings, encased in a glass globe protected
by a metal cage. I remember once when one of the bulbs
in the shower in Dorm 4 was out, which upset a couple
of zips who thought they needed light to shower. They
kicked off a senior detail (see that memory for a definition)
to replace that bulb. So, that night after midnight,
several of us entered the steam tunnels, traveled to
Dorm 8, snuck up to one of the third floor crappers,
and "liberated" not one, but two light bulbs
from it. Our thinking was that we didn't want to have
to repeat this operation, so we grabbed an extra light
bulb for insurance. We installed one bulb in our crapper,
and stashed the other one in one of our holes.
The next night, fish from Seagram's Seven
(who lived on the third floor of Dorm 8) made a raid
on another dorm, and "liberated" four light
bulbs - two to replace the missing ones in their crapper,
and two for "insurance". The next night, fish
from the affected dorm "liberated" five or
six light bulbs from another dorm - four as replacements,
and one or two as "insurance." And so on for
the next week or so, until there were NO light bulbs
in any crapper in any dorm in the quad. Whenever someone
wanted to take a lighted shower, they pulled a purloined
light bulb out of the stash that the outfit's fish kept,
installed it, took the shower, removed the bulb, and
returned it to the stash. Finally, the Supply Sergeants
of each outfit and staff put in a requisition to campus
facilities, resulting in a mass replacement of every
light bulb in every crapper in the quad, ending the
episode.
Apparently, use of the steam tunnels
became such a problem that the university got a law
passed making it a state felony for unauthorized personnel
(i.e., students) to enter them. Video surveillance cameras
were installed at strategic intersections, and monitored
by the Comedy Cops. My son, Thomas '03, reports that
one night when he had guard duty, that one of those
cameras detected movement, and the Trigon O.D. asked
him to accompany the bull down into the steam tunnels.
They found nothing, but Thomas was amazed at the amount
of graffiti on the walls and ceilings, indicating that
Aggies continue to access them thirty years after we
did so.
John Yantis (Yankus)
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