Our Trip to Aggie Land

My beautiful bride is a graduate of the Texas A&M University Fightin' Texas Aggie Class of '88.  This past weekend we had the boys take care of milking the cows and goats and collecting eggs and picking okra and we made a trip to College Station, Texas, back to Tricia's Alma Mater.  We arrived Friday night a little after 10 pm and headed for campus.  We parked in front of A&M's new stadium.

Honestly, I think Tricia married me because of my name.  A&M's stadium is called Kyle Field, but remarkably, the stadium isn't named after me.  12thman.com says:

"Kyle Field was named for Edwin Jackson Kyle, who served as Texas A&M's dean of agriculture and athletic council president. Kyle donated a 400-by-400 foot area of the southern edge of campus that had been assigned to him for horticultural experiments."

So here I am:

We accompanied thousands of students and fans who assembled themselves inside Kyle Field at midnight on Friday night for Midnight Yell Practice. 

Aggies don't cheer - they yell and they practice different yells as they are led by the Yell Leaders.  Hand signals are passed back and all the students take part in "Farmer's Fight" or other such yells.  The band then played the Aggie War Hymn and everyone sways and sings about 'sawing Varsity's horns off."  It is about their arch-rival, the University of Texas, that they call TU.

Tricia sat in front of the 'fish pond' that is located right in front of Sbisa Dining Hall where Tricia ate when she was in college. 

I took a photo of Tricia in front of a large Aggie Ring.  Below it is a plaque with the Aggie Code of Honor: "An Aggie does not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do."  Tricia is wearing her class ring.  She didn't always live by the Aggie Code of Honor, because she did steal my heart.  Ha Ha!

As we were walking to watch the Corps step off, we ran into a couple (The Browns) that we attended church with at Second Baptist Church in Houston and hadn't seen in 25 years.  Bryant's dad was a rice farmer in Dayton, Texas, so we had a lot in common.  It was nice to visit with them and catch up.

We stood by the Corps Dorms and watched all of the units step out and then watched the band march on the way to the stadium.  I tried to get a photo of Reveille, A&M's collie mascot, but I was not fast enough with my camera phone.

Here is Tricia in front of Kyle Field.  It is a state of the art, brand-spanking new stadium that cost $450 million dollars to build.  Texas A&M has an undergraduate enrollment of 53,065 and has the second largest undergrad enrollment in the country.

Finally, here we are at the end of the day in front of the stadium with the corps and the fans in the background.

We had a great time and it was nice to see the smile on my wife's face as she strolled down memory lane.