Nothgate and Eastgate

The main campus of Texas A&M University is roughly square, and has three primary entrances - one each on the North, East, and West sides. Befitting its military heritage, each of these entrances is called a gate, although there's no barrier on the road or fence around the campus. There was never a formal entrance on the South, and the original main campus entrance was on the West, facing the train depot that used to be on the railroad tracks there across Wellborn Road (F.M. 2154). When we were at A&M, the depot was long gone, and there was no "Station" in "College Station" - the main entrance to the campus was (and still is) the East Gate.

Commercial enterprises clustered around three of these main campus entrances, and those areas are known by the names "Northgate", "East Gate", and "South Side" (the land bordering the campus to the West is owned by A&M, and since we were students, has been built up into what's now known as the "West Campus.")

South Side (occasionally also called "South Gate" by students who didn't know campus history) was really on the Southwest corner of the campus, and only featured a Dry Cleaners', Madely's Pharmacy (that featured an old-time soda fountain), a fabric store, and a gas station. The Dry Cleaners is still there.

East Gate, however, had two enterprises especially attractive to Aggies - Ralph's Pizza Parlor and East Gate Lounge. East Gate Lounge, besides being a bar with the requisite pool tables and jukebox, also featured domino tables in the back. I believe a couple of our classmates spent so much time there, that they actually bought the place. Ralph's was mostly a beer joint, too - they sold just enough pizza to keep from being classified as a bar, but the main attraction was beer, cold and sold by the pitcher. The décor in Ralph's was Spartan but utilitarian - the tables were actually those huge wooden spools that telephone and electric overhead wires come on. The lighting was mostly black-light. The pizza was edible. There's an old song called "I'd Rather Be A Texas Aggie" that the Singing Cadets have sung since my Dad '44 was in the group. One of the phrases says, "…but if we lose, old pal, you're gonna hear me say, 'Let's go down to Ed's and drink our cares away.'" That referred to a bar on F.M. 2154 a few miles South of campus owned by Ed Hardlcka (for those non-Polacks amongst you, it's pronounced "Hardlikker.") Anyway, when I was a Singing Cadet, we changed the phrase to "…let's go down to Ralph's and drink our cares away." They've since changed it something else, because, to today's Singing Cadets, the reference to Ralph's is as obscure as the reference to Ed's was for our class.

Northgate, however, was much more commercialized, although it, too, was really at the Northwest corner of the campus. At the West-most end of Northgate, near Wellborn Road, was a burger joint we called "The Slut Hut", probably derived from the personal characteristics of the high-school girls from the local community that worked there. It wasn't until our Five-Year Reunion that I noticed that the name of the place was really "HandyBurger".

The next building Eastward was the Palace Theater, although, once again, we never called it anything but "The Groad Flick", because they ran R- and X-rated movies late at night on weekends. I do recall seeing the cult film, Easy Rider, there when it first came out. The movie was about two cycle-riding, dope-smoking hippies (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper) traveling cross-country with a "straight" friend (Jack Nicholson), and how Nicholson gradually adopted their lifestyle. The requisite social commentary (this was the early 1970's, remember) came at the end, when a pickup-load of rednecks armed with shotguns blew the hippies to kingdom come. Almost everywhere else that this movie was shown, that ending resulted in gasps, tears, and shocked silence, but not at The Groad Flick - the Aggies actually stood up and cheered! The building is still there, but it now contains a nightclub and some other stores.

Moving again Eastward across a side street was a rooming house known as "The Alamo", due to the shape of its façade. It was really seedy, really cheap, and really close to a beer joint, so, naturally, that's where Tim Davis and Randy McMullen lived after their Zip year. There they could sit out on the second-story porch overlooking University Avenue, drink beer, and cuss the non-regs and Maggies that came across the street. I think the current popular Aggie beer-joint, The Dixie Chicken, is located on the spot where The Alamo was in our day.

Farther Eastward, past a couple of shops, was Old Army Lou's, or Loupot's Bookstore. Old Army Lou, as he called himself, was, I think, class of 1943, and a very public benefactor of campus organizations. Unfortunately, he got that kind of money by selling textbooks to students at inflated prices, and buying them back at the end of the semester for almost nothing. By the way, Lou's son, Judson, was Class of '72, but didn't make it through his fish year.

On a side street behind Lou's were two clothing institutions - Zubik's Tailor Shop, and Holick's Boots. Holick's was where you bought your hand-made Senior Boots. It's still there, but the waiting list is so long now that if a pisshead doesn't order his boots that year from Holick, he won't have them in time for his sergebutt final review. That's odd, I think, because there aren't any more cadets in the Corps now than when we were students, and there are now several other vendors of Aggie Boots. Zubik's was where you bought your "midnight" - the dark olive serge cloth shirt that juniors and seniors could wear on semi-formal occasions in lieu of the Class-A blouse. You could also buy serge cowboy-cut uniform shirts there, if you didn't buy them from a graduating zip. By the way, the Corps now issues midnights to all cadets (including fish.)

Other than Campus Photography, there were only a few more shops and a Methodist Church at the East end of Northgate, across from A&M's main Post Office.

John (Yankus) Yantis\

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I still have fond memories of Ralph's from the summer between our sergebutt and zip years. I lived off-campus in a mobile home with Gonzo part of the summer and Twitch the other half. Each of them had a summer engagement with their branch of the military but on different halves of the summer.

We worked by day and closed down Ralph's nearly every night. I particularly remember one song from that summer that seemed to play perpetually on the jukebox. That song was "Sweet City Woman" by the Stampeders and I still get warm feelings all over again when it plays on the oldies stations.

And who could ever forget the Palace Theater. It was the place the be at midnight on Saturday nights. They always played X-rated movies at that time in a place (A&M) that was crawling with horny guys and few girls. The ritual was pretty routine - inflating condoms and tying them like balloons and then batting them around to pass the time until the movie began.

I remember an unusual scene a couple of occasions when the movies were especially bad. A group of fish would parade up onto the stage, face the screen and proceed to urinate as high and as long as they could. That show added enough flavor to the evening to keep everyone else from walking out.

Tom (TE) Schoolcraft