re: SC roll call and rendezvous thread

Drove here yesterday with a beautiful cloudless sky. Thunder woke me this morning. And now there's a tornado warning. Woohoo!

We had planned to walk a lot of the campus today, but weren't all that keen on getting soaking wet. We drove into campus from every angle as much as we could. From far away the stadium is imposing - looks like an alien battleship. Up close it is jaw-dropping. Pictures just don't do it justice. Like SafetySam said, A&M started building the third deck during our 5th fall. It sure didn't look like this monster. And of course it wasn't anywhere near as damn pretty.

The only thing we got out of the car for was the Bonfire Memorial. That was mandatory. It made my Mississippi wife cry before I did. Very nicely done tribute. I ended up feeling guilty about those kids because as tragic as their deaths were, to me since it happened all I've been able to think about is, "Well shite. Now they won't know." Bonfire pretty much defined who we were for those that worked on it endlessly (and flunked every damn thing as a result). The memorial helps put things in perspective a bit.

What the hell did you guys do with the Zachry Engineering building? It was brand-spanking new when I was in school and unlike most of the campus it didn't look like a bunch of Russkies built it. And it's... gone? Or just swallowed up? I couldn't drive in far enough to see if the old Civil Engineering building is still there. It also looked pretty damn nice back in the day.

When driving up to Krueger/Mosher (which were built just before SafetySam and I arrived) I recalled that what made them stand out was the crapper between every two rooms, which made them unique at that time. (Everybody else had a community bathroom down the hall.) They weren't coed at that time, though. And then I remembered that TBird married a girl in his company who lived in the same dorm on the same floor. I still don't get how that works. We'd have all ended up in prison.

Miscellaneous stuff that made an impression:

Construction, construction everywhere. Off-campus, too. New buildings on campus, looks like a bunch of new apartments off-campus. And stuff where there previously was no stuff. The "Corps of Cadets Center", for example, sits where we ran our PT tests and F-1 guys beat the ever-loving crap out of everyone else. Because that's how we rolled.

The west campus blew my mind. When we were in school that was only Olsen field and a big arse parking lot (which I and a fellow ne'er-do-well ran to one night after torching the W-1 spirit sign. But that's another story.) Now... wow.

Looking forward to seeing a bunch of '79 and '79+1 F-1 guys. I hope to also run into some of you. As mentioned in another thread, a '79+1 guy has a tailgate after the game in Spence Park. Look for SafetySam's dad smoking a big honkin' victory cigar: