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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCampus Kids, Oral History taken Feb. 18, 1998 (3)A &M College Campus Kids 18 February 1998 Room 101 Moderator: Charolotte Bergstad Interview Group: E.B. Reynolds Alice Scoates Garner Bill Scoates Allen Kraft Note Taker: Pamela Einkauf Camcorder: Ben Molina 10:14 C: My name is Charolotte Bergstad and today is February 18th, 1998. I'm interviewing for the first time Mr. Bill Scoats, his sister Alice Scoates Garner, and Mr. E.B. Reynolds, and his wife Louise. And we are in room 101 of the College Station Conference Center on 1300 George Bush Drive in College Station. In this interview is sponsored by the Historic Preservation Committee and the conference center advisory committee of the city of College Station, Texas. It is part of the Memory Lane Oral History Project. And I'm going to ask each person to please introduce themselves and I'll start with you Mr. Reynolds. ER: I'm Elbert B. Reynolds, Jr., I went by a nick name that some people here on the campus call me an Eggie. And, that's all introduction that's necessary I guess. C: That's right. What we're trying to do is have the person who's going to be listening to this to transcribe notes is recognize your voice. Okay, Mrs. Reynolds. LR: I'm Louise Reynolds and I'm married to Elbert Reynolds. C: Alice? AG: Garner... ? ?? C: Okay. BS: I'm Bill Scoates. C: Okay. Alrighty. Now, since we've got all this formal stuff out of the way, I'm supposed to ask you to tell a little bit about yourselves. And Mr. Reynolds did. So Alice? AG: I grew up here and I've lived here all my life. C: All your life? AG: Yes. C: And, were you anything other than a homemaker? AG: Yes, we were in business here. My husband and I. C: What business was that? GA: Well, he had a store that was called Ed Gamer's. It was a sporting goods store it was originally a bookstore. At the Northgate. C: Okay. And it became a sporting goods store? AG: Yes. And a hotel. Sands Motel. C: Which one? AG: Sands Motel. C: Oh, the Sands Motel. AG: Of course it's not there anymore. C: That's the one that was on Texas Avenue right? Where Applebee's is now, or in that area. AG: ? ?? Where the other motel is. What's the name of it? C: Oh the Hampton Inn? AG: Yes, Hampton Inn. C: Aaahhhh Okay, I remember that. I, I think it was pretty much vacant when we moved here in `74. AG: Right. C: I remember, I remember seeing the signs. AG: We sold it. `85 was it? C: Hmmm. Okay. Well, it wasn't vacant then. (laughing) AG: There was a vacant area between that and... C: When they tore it down? AG: Uh huh. C: Okay. And Bill? BS: Excuse me. I came here in 1919. We came from Starkville, Mississippi. Mississippi A &M. And my father, mother, myself, and Mary, and Alice came in 1919 a couple of people. And, we also brought a family, Martins. Mr. and Mrs. Martin and Johnny Johnny was a little bit.. AG: My age. BS: Yeah, he was Alice's age. About two and a half years younger than me. And, Mr. Martin had come up to Mississippi A &M and she worked as a secretary. Which she did when she got here. She worked as a secretary for the AG Engineering College. And he was an Englishman. Born in England, got into Biloxi Mississippi and never could, never could speak. He never could read or write. BS: And she brought him up to Slarkville, and at that time they had sub grades in the college and they taught him to read and write. And when we came to A &M they came with us in the same car. Eight people in the big old 1919 hupmobile. C: Oh my. BS: and so, that's the way we got here. C: What did you do after you left home? BS: Oh, you mean... C: What was your livelihood? BS: I went to Consolidated through the ninth grade and then went to Bryan High School and finished there in 193. And went to A &M. I taught two years at Stephenville, at Tarleton then, I went to Ames, Iowa and got a master's degree in ag engineering in 1937 and 38. I stayed here in 1939 and worked for my father, and he died in 39. C: What did your dad do? BS: He was head of the Ag engineering department from 1919... and he said son, you got to go back to Ames and get your master's degree. Now he was a graduate of Iowa State in Ames, Iowa 1910. So I went back and got my master's degree from Iowa State. In 1938 when I went across the stage, Dr. Fralery who had been here at A &M as a registrar. He was president of Iowa State at that point. And I walked across there, and he stopped me. C: Because he knew you. BS: Yeah, he wanted to know about A &M. He talked for 5, 10 minutes up there. Old Aggies! And so, and he was president of Iowa state. C: How about that BS: So, then I went and worked REA, went and worked for them for three years before World War H. I was in the service in meteorology and most of the time I spent at the University of Chicago in meteorology. And one of the nice things about it is we built two instruments in those years that are still being built today. C: How about that BS: And then, they're commercially built and then I came back here and started testing fans for the engineering experiment station. Now this is my fifty- second year of being in the fan business. C: Well how bout that. BS: So, that's my history. C: We have a newcomer Mr. Allen Kraft could you, Mr. Kraft could you say something so the recorder, the lady who will be taking the notes can recognize your voice, just to introduce yourself AC: Well, my name's Allan Kraft. I lived out here three houses from Sbisa Hall on campus. I ate Christmas dinner, two different Christmases in the Sbisa Hall with the Dotips C: So, you were one of the campus kids? AK: Yeah C: Yeah. AK: My dad helped start Consolidated, A &M Consolidated School. I went the first day it opened up. C: You did! AK: Uh huh. And after school I use to rush down to Kyle Field and I ? ?? the footballs for DS Bible, the football coach. C: Did you really! How exciting. OK. I would like to ask all of you how old were you when you lived on campus at A &M. ER: Me? C: Yes, Mr. Reynolds, why don't you ER: OK Well, I was born in Bryan in 1924, September the 17th. And borrowing the few days I lived in the hospital I suppose with my mother, I have lived on the A &M campus from then until June 1942 when I went to the dormitories on A&M campus. Entered A &M at that time. C: Oh, so you spent four years there? ER: Yes. C: OK. So you lived on campus from 1924 to 1946 ER: Yes. C: Is that about right? ER: For a time I was in the army, but I didn't change residence. C: Oh, ha ha. OK Well how about you Mr. Kraft how old were you when you lived on campus? AK: Oh, I wasn't very old. When I first came here I rode a trolley to Bryan school in fourth grade. C: Oh. So what years did you live on campus? AK: I lived three houses from Sbisa Hall Next to let's see, I believe it was the Mitchell's. We ate Christmas dinner in Sbisa Hall (it's a private dining room) twice. C: Um. AK: And, then at that time, when you went to Bryan you had to go down the street. It was about a block from where we lived or half a block. We had to go down to Wellborn Road, and go to caught Bryan on that. And I took a street car to go to school, fourth grade. C: Wow. So how many years did you live on campus? AK: Well, You know I just can't answer that very accurately. C: Oh, give me an approximate. AK: My dad was professor of Ag education when he came here. Dr. Bizzel was the president and Dean Kyle was head of agriculture and let's see. There was a store called Boyette's store across the street or at the end of the street on where we lived. And you had to go to that and turn left and go down to Wellborn Road to go to Bryan. And they had a streetcar that ran from College to Bryan. C: OK AK: That's what I took when I went to school first. My dad helped organize A &M Consolidated School. C: OK AK: So, like I said Hived three houses from Sbisa Hall. There was the Board of Directors home first, then Professor A. Mitchell second and we lived the third one. And a bachelor lived on the corner where the post office is now. C: Oh, wow! OK, Ms. Garner, how long did you live on campus? AG: We came here in, my father came in 1919. We lived on campus until 1924. My father was one of the developers of the College Park area south of the campus. And he built a house there, still standing, and we moved off in 1924. C: In 1924? OK. BS: December the 17th, 1924. C: You can remember that date! BS: Oh, I remember that day real easy. C: How's that? BS: Oh well, they built the house. Just like it is today. And then they had to build a garage in the back of it. and they had a place for two cows and another one for a bunch of chickens over here, which her house now stands on, and so, when we lived on the campus, we had chickens. And we had cows. C: Oh, while you lived on campus also. BS: Oh yeah, we had.... Dad said it came kind of long after supper, we moved in and he said, "Son, Bill, we got to go get the chickens. Now these chickens had a brand new house!" C: But they didn't want it! BS: No. We had to go up there at night. And we went up there and picked them up and put them in some crates in the old model T shortbed and we brought them back down there and installed them each on there.. and about that time the wind changed out of the north. It had been a real pretty night until then. And Dad said, "Son, we better throw some wood down in the cellar because I think we're in for a storm." And he wasn't far from wrong. C: That's right, in December. BS: And it came a blue northern and then next morning it was real cold, but we fired up that old furnace up there. You had the furnace in the basement. And that's one of the few houses that still has a basement in it. And it still is the way it was. C: Now this is house off campus? BS: Yeah. C: Tell me about your house that you lived on campus, what was it made of, uh.. BS: It was a big old wood house, and a single floor. It was heated and dad bought a great, big of stove kinda bellied this way, and then bellied this way, and then went up that way. and he uh, they sat that up in the center of the house. Now it was kinda open in there and mother had a, I guess she bought that from over in Mississippi. She had a wood stove big as this thing I mean, just to cook on. C: Oh, just to cook on. Oh wow BS: See we didn't have gas in this country, in Bryan/College Station, until `28, 1928. So you cooked, you heated, everything with wood. They'd bring in ten cords of wood and then they'd get a guy with a tractor and a saw and saw it up. And that's what we heated the houses with, and that house was heated with that. C: OK. How many rooms were in your house? AG: When you walked in it was kind of a long hall and there was a .. BS: There were two rooms on this side and then the hall there. It had a big bedroom down there, and then all around this corner that you can't see here, was a porch - screened in. One bathroom C: One bathroom. We're talking about your house on campus, right? AG: Yes. C: OK So, did Alice and Bill, and Mary is your sister? AG: Yes. C: Did you all have the same bedroom? AG: Yes we did. C: You shared a bedroom? AG: Um, huh. C: Not like the kids do today. AG: No...cold in the winter time. BS: There bedroom was back there where the bathroom was. They had a bedroom back there. Oh, there was plenty of room to sleep in that place. C: OK So you had a living room and a dining room. Or a kitchen? AG: It was kinda like we had a parlor here and another room, a living room on this side. BS: Yeah, a big living room, a dining room, he had a parlor.. C: OK BS: And, uh that end of it you had a bedroom, it was full of beds, and you had a sleeping port and it had beds all over it. C: And you had a kitchen? BS: Kitchen? Yeah, it was on this side. C: OK BS: And it had a big stove and she fired that, and that was that. And she could make, believe it or not, my mother could make an angel food cake C: Yes you do! And you have to know what you are doing. AG: It had big high ceilings, you know. And it was cold in the winter time. C: But it was cool in the summer AG: I guess so. C: You don't remember. Ha, Ha. What about you Mr. Reynolds? What was your house like on campus? Was it brick? ER: Well, it was a one story wood house. C: OK ER: Originally it was built with no bathroom. And ultimately the end of the back porch was boxed in and that made a bathroom. The address of the house was 255 Clark Street. We actually lived in a house almost on Highway 6 on the complete west end of campus. We only were there for 4 years I guess. C: OK AG: Down where Cain Hall is now. ER: High ceiling house, 11 -12 foot ceiling. C: OK. Did you have any siblings Mr. Reynolds? ER: Yes, I've got two sisters. C: Two sisters. Just like Bill over there. Were you the oldest? ER: I was the oldest. Still am. C: Ha, Ha. You still are. What about you Mr. Kraft? What kind of a house did you live in on campus? AK: We lived .. . C: I mean, was it a brick house? AK: We lived in a wooden framed house. C: OK AK: And, it had a bathroom. C: Well that's good. AK: It was a next to a house on the end of the street. And Boyette's store was across the street so it, the street didn't continue. It stopped right at Boyette's store and there was a post office, a barber shop, and Boyette's grocery store there across the end of the street that we lived on. And we lived next to a bachelor, but I can't think of his name. C: Not to worry. AG: Dr. Asbury. C: Dr. Asbury. BS: Oh yeah. AG: That's another story. C: Oh he was the bachelor? AG: Uh huh. BS: He was a musician. AG: He worked for the engineering experiment station. He had all kinds of hobbies. C: Multitalented man? AG: He was interested in his end of music. He had records and he had three pianos, didn't he, in his house. Do you remember Dr. Asbury? ER: Didn't understand the question. AG: Do you remember Dr. Asbury? ER: I remember the name. I can' t really place Asbury himself AG: He use to a have parties. Remember whether it was Saturday night or Friday night he would have ice water party for the campus kids. C: Oh! AG: Do you remember that? BS: No, I don't AG: But he had all these records and pianos, and he'd let us come and we'd play his music and he'd tell us all about it. He wrote an opera one time for Texas history, and he had all his little stuff and he'd explain it to us and the history of it. C: Well how nice. BS: He lived up there near right across from the bank there C: The bank. AG: Well, when they built the post office his house. They moved it three times. They moved it across from where our store was. And then they moved it across up on the hill where Albertson's was. C: Isn't that funny. You call it a hill where Albertson's is. AG: Anyway, when he died he left everything to the University library, and I just don't know what happened to all his pianos and music and C: Oh my. BS: I had some. We bought a bunch of at that time, C: A bunch of what? BS: Storage cabinets. C: Oh, OK BS: I've got two or three of those. C: Where he put his sheet music and so forth. BS: uh huh AG: He had pictures on the ceiling. You go in the bathroom, he had pictures all over his house. He had pictures on the ceiling. He was an interesting person. BS: Just an interesting person. C: Well, yes. That is an unusual way to display your pictures. To be on the ceiling. AG: One time he got interested in rose bushes and he put roses on trellises higher than his house.. C: Well was he good at it? BS: Yeah. He was good at anything he done. AG: He rode a bicycle. BS: Very talented man. Are you asking about the brick houses? C: Uh huh. BS: They were on Quality Row. Do you know what quality row is? C: That was one of my next questions. What is quality row. BS: It's a road that runs from the physics building right straight south of there. AG: Throckmorton Street. BS: Throckmorton Street. C: OK BS: On the south end of that, at the very end there was a .... It was occupied by the Hayes, and later by the Winklers. C: The Winklers, OK. BS: Then you skip a house and you go to the Silvey house. It was brick. C: OK BS: And then you skip a house which was ... AG: Dean BS: Dean Puryear's house. I call him Pea bean. Dean Puryear's house. And then you get up to the next one ... Dr. Ball's house. Then there was a little street in there that went back to the school (this white school that they are talking about). I think they call it the music building C: OK BS: And then you went across the street there was another house there that was brick that Reverend Matthews lived in. Then you skipped a house and that house was the commander of the corps. His house was there. Then there was one on the corner. Now I don't remember who lived in that one on the corner. C: OK Why was it called Quality Row? BS: Because all these people that was on it, look at them, they uh, on the west side, we had this house where we lived. Next door to us, was Pres. Walton, before he was president. Then the next house belonged to the, uh, I don't know whether it was the extension service or the ag experiment station. That house was kept for that purpose. C: Mr. Reynolds, you were going to say something? ER: One of the houses was occupied by the O.B. Martins. O.B. Martins, as I recall, was the director of the ... AG: Extension service. BS: That would be this one just north of Walton house. It was considered, everyone that had that job, had that house. That house was dedicated to them. Many of the other homes, the home we lived in was dedicated to the entomology department. That's why they called it developing house. That's another thing you had this out here. All the departments had certain houses that they could... C: OK BS:... put there people in. C: OK. Alrighty. So it was mainly for the heads of the department. BS: Up here. And then Dean Bolton lived on the comer up there. And then Dr. Frapps lived across the corner next to the Guion Hall Now that's Quality Row. C: Dr. Ball was, biology? OK BS: And all of them were authorities in there own right. Now the preacher, when we came here. You got up in the morning and you got ready for to go to Sunday School, and you went to Guion Hall. And you went in there, and Dr. Reed, who was head of the poultry department. He had a class of little boys down here in the corner. C: OK BS: Next to the stage. And they had other ones all over that place. C: OK So you even had your own Sunday School classes and everything. BS: Well, there were no churches. There were no churches. C: Oh, OK BS: There were no churches available - that I know of. AG: The corps marched in to church service. C: Oh, so y'all went to Guion Hall And so everybody, everybody on campus. Whether you were faculty or campus kids or corps of cadets. AG: That's right. C: You know it's hard to imagine this when we see the campus now, and to see it through your eyes. When there wasn't that much. BS: Reverend Matthews would get up there and get up on stage and wave his hands around, and we'd all sing together. So that's the way it went. This was a close society, here, in those days. C: Yes, I imagine it was. BS: And it was coming out of a society where there wasn't any transportation. Because many of these houses had colored people live in the back of them. They had uh. I know the Hayes house, cause that's where we played was in a big old loft where they kept the horses. And we played in the C: In the loft. BS: In the loft up there. Climb up there, and the Hayes boys, were, he was a little older than us. And there was another boy, the Fermian boy, who was a little older. The Fermian people, he lived about where the Memorial Student Center is now, somewhere in that area. And uh, his mother died one evening. It must have been pretty late at night, and so the only place that you could go if you wanted to contact the outside world was to go down to where the tracks crossed like that. They crossed... C: The railroad tracks? BS: Yeah, just about opposite Kyle Field. C: OK BS: And there was a big tire in there, where it manned 24 hours a day. And you could go up there and they could send a message telegraph. C: My word. BS: And, it was two or three stories tall. And Uh, C: Did you all have telephones? BS: We had telephones, but you couldn't get out. The only way you could get out like Dr. Fermian was going to telegraph some of his relatives and he got on top, and he crawled those stairs up there, or walked up those stairs and started writing out those letters, and dropped dead. C: Oh my. AG: He left three children. BS: I only knew two which was his oldest one? AG: Two girls. But you see, the campus was our playground, wasn't it. BS: Yes it was AG: We could go anywhere on campus, we lived on campus, we just went in and out of buildings. We just had more fun, we'd just climb up on a Academic Building. We just did anything we wanted to. C: Is that right? Did you become friends with the guys in the Corps? Or ah, was that forbidden? BS: Oh yeah, you could have them out for summer C: What did you do in the summer when the Corps was gone? BS: Oh you, there was plenty to do. When the Corps left, they had a regulation in the dormitories. You had to leave your room clean, but that didn't mean the hallway was clean. So we'd go up there and go in there and gather up alarm clocks. I come home with just as many alarm clocks that I could haul. Preceded to tear them apart. C: Did you do things like this' Mr. Reynolds? ER: I did take clocks apart. C: Mr. Kraft, did you go and get the alarm clocks, too? AK: What did you say? C: I said, did you go get the alarm clocks out of the Corps hallways, also? AK: I didn't understand what she said. BS: It was a, it really was an interesting thing around there. There's a little ah, there's Prexy's moon. C: A what? BS: Prexy's moon. C: Prexy's moon BS: Prexy's moon. C: I don't know what that is. BS: On top of the Academic Building it came up here like this and like that, or like a big question mark. C: Ok BS: And there was a 1500 watt lamp in there C: all right. BS: That lit up the place, and ah, during World War H the State of Texas had a bill. You could go to A &M for one buck. C: Is it during the war, or after the war? BS: During World War I, After World War I. C: Oh, after World War I, Ok. BS: For one dollar, you could go to A &M. I think he was registered in the dormitory. Which you had paid three meals and your book. There were two dormitories in front of the Academic Building, on the left and the right. I don't know if you remember those. One of them I think was named Sul Ross, wasn't it? AG: Ross Hall. BS: Ross Hall, Ok. All those veterans came out of World War II with an army of 45. That was standard equipment and issued over seas. C: Excuse me Mr. Scoates, World War I or World War II? BS: World War I. C: Ok, alrighty. BS: And this was in the early 20's. C: Ok. BS: Ah, and ah, so they ah formed themselves a little club, out there in those two dormitories. And you could push the screen open like that and you could lay that old pistol in there and take a crack at prexy's moon. They knocked it out about every other night. For years I use to go up in there and look at that dome and it full of holes. It was. So, that was the kind of fun that went on. And they were dead serious about it. And then they'd go on the side of the wall, which was a plaster wall, and they'd go ? You could here them walk in the room and just tell how many heads that guy knocked down prexy's moon. Now that's a long shot for a forty-five. C: Maybe that's why it went out only every other night. AG: Is prexy's moon still there? I haven't looked in a long time. BS: I haven't looked in a long time, but it was there and his 1500 watt single. AG: You know we had a, where they had that animals, across the railroad tracks... BS: Yeah, they taught us to ride horses over there. AG: We did have a zoo. C: Oh yes, the zoo. AG: We had a zoo that cuts across the railroad tracks there. That's what we did on Sunday afternoon, we'd go to the zoo. C: Oh, and of course, you walked. AG: The zoo was still there. C: Did you go to the zoo Mr. Reynolds? ER: Did I what? C: Go to the zoo, on Sunday afternoons? AG: Do you remember the zoo? ER: No I don't. AG: It was gone. C: Ok, let me ask you this. This is one of the questions, and I'm curious about this. Tell us about the Shirley. AG: That was a hotel. C: It's a two frame, a two story frame building and the first campus, hotel on campus. I'm sorry I can't read. And it was later called the Aggieland Inn. AG: No, It wasn't that. They built a hotel on campus called Aggieland Inn, but that wasn't the Shirley Hotel. C: Ok. Why was it called the Shirley? AG: I can't answer that. It was the only place you could stay at that time. C: Ok. Is... AG: It was later made into some apartments, I think C: Ok. What, Is that where the visitors to A &M for dances and graduation, is that where they stayed, at the Shirley? AG: The girls came weekends, a lot of their dates would vacate their rooms and let the girls stay. BS: The Shirley wasn't big enough. There were only about ten rooms. C: Ok. AG: It was the only place to stay. C: So, they would just kind of clear out one part of the dormitory let all the girls stay there? And then the guys bunked in. BS: They also did that or the faculty people. C: Stay with faculty heads, Ok. BS: And when you add visitors that ah, you know came. Sometimes they stayed in your home. C: Ok, um, the girls that were on campus, were they ever asked to go by the cadets to the Corps dances? AG: Oh yes. We lived at the Corps. C: Well I mean when you girls got older, I'm sure that there was quite a few romances on campus. AG: In my vintage all the dances were fully chaperoned. C: Oh yes AG: So, they were all on Friday nights and we'd have a dance like Artillery ball or something like that. Saturday nights was the Corps dance. C: Oh so when the girls came for the weekend, there was two dances. I get that meant two dresses. AG: Yeah C: Or two different dresses. Ok, ah...Oh I'm sorry, AG: I can't tell you when Aggieland Inn was built, but ah, I know it was here in the 30's. My husband worked his way through A &M. C: Ah, BS I imagine that was built during the, it was built before... AG: 30 BS: 30, yeah, it was built by the college. C: Ok, who could tell me about the fish tank? BS: Oh -oh C: Mr. Reynolds? ER: On one occasion, I and two other Consolidated School Boys went to the Fish Tank, stripped all of our clothes of and went swimming completely naked. Presently a car with two or three women that we knew drove up in an automobile, so we couldn't quit swimming until the women drove way. Also, on the ground near the Fish Tank A &M apparetly had a rifle range, at some time in the past. On numerous occasions I picked up 30 caliber copperr jacked bullets from the ground. BS: Oh it was a place that ah, down beyond the, what is now the fireman's school. We went down there and went behind what's called the fireman's school. And there was a tank in there called the fish tank. And it was full of fish , I guess you could fish in it. Ah, occasionally I was down there, the whole time I was ever down there was when somebody had a big fish fry. They fried a bunch of fish. AG: We'd go on the 4th of July, that's the only place you can go C: Ok, well it said here, "Summer Picnics at the Fish Tank ", which was the swimming hole, you mean you didn't go swimming there? AG: They did, but we weren't allowed. AK: Go swimming where? C:...Beg your pardon? AK: Go swimming where? C: At the Fish tank. AK: I did! C: Were you allowed? AK: Hunh? C: Were you allowed? Did you have permission? AK: No C: No BS: It was just a fishing, it was just a tank back there, that's all there was to it. C: Ok BS: But it was a place you could go, there's not very many place you can go around here. Now here's another thing, on Saturday and Sunday was a time to go camp or go , the whole department go out to a place and all the kids and people and they'd have a big party out there. And ah, I remember going down the, on the Navasota river one time. C: Is this every weekend you had parties or picnics? BS: Somebody did. C: Different departments would have `em. BS: Yeah C: Oh, O.K. And, that was in the summer months. BS: Yeah C: Ok BS: And what they did, now this is another funny thing, what they did. Chiggers and ticks were bad. C: Oh yeah BS: So round up all the kids, and here's all you boys go over here to so and so, and all you girls you go over here to so and so. And they'd have a bunch of supper. You can go out there get a hold of your pants over and get yourself fully dusted. Then you'd go play. Well that was standard procedure. C: Do you remember doing stuff like that Mr. Reynolds? ER: Well, not really. C: Sounds like you led a very tame life on campus. What are some of your memories of living on campus? ER: The bulk of my memories on living on campus were playing with two or three other campus boys that I got to know quite well and we did things like ride bicycles around. And ah, sometimes we'd play hide- and -seek. We would hide and play around all the neighbors houses and nobody minded at all. I think I mentioned bicycles. Yeah, O.K., and then we'd.... C: Did you play marbles? ER: Yeah, some. And um, I recall distinctly that um, there was an old steam locomotive located somewhere on the A &M campus. I can't recall now just where it was, but ah, it was a lot of fun to go up in that thing and look at it and pull all the levers, and so forth. It was a workable steam locomotive. I don't know why it was on campus, but it was there. And then the Ag Engineering Department had a great big room that had a whole bunch of agriculture machines in it. Tractors and harvesters and so forth to so on. And I can recall that Duke Thorton and William Albert Bilsing, everybody called him Bo, but we'd go up there and play on the machinery and nobody minded. C: So that's ah, you don't remember doing other things on campus? ER: Well, no not really. C: Ok. Just rode your bicycles around? ER: Well, the bicycles, and it's not hopscotch really, but the boys and I would jump over each others back. C: Leap Frog. ER: Leap Frog! Yeah, O.K., yeah we did that. C: Ok ER: Sure did. AG: On Sunday afternoons, that was a band stand. By where the fountain is now, the band would come play. So campus people would just go sit on the grass and listen to the band. C: It was a, it was a more leisurely time that you lived in. BS: It was. Before they got the band stand, we had the air dome, and then they had another one around the same area. This air dome was directly South of what's now All Faiths Chapel and ah, all it was you would walk into it and there was benches and they just kept going higher and higher off the ground. And ah, they had ah screens. The screen was here and you walked inside of the screen, either side of the screen you had to turn around and look at it. Well, ah, my sister here and other sister they didn't like some of the programs that they were putting on swarshbuckeling ship things where they caught you know, people. C: Now these were plays? BS: No, these were movies. C: These were the movies, Ok. BS: And so daddy would sit, daddy and mother would sit on the front row right here. And the screen was up back here. And ah, so if they were doing something terrible we'd all go out the front door. And dad sat there and when it got good, well he'd give us a high sigh, and we'd go back in. AG: These were silent movies now. C: Oh, Ok. BS: These were silent movies. Now they replaced it later on with ah AG: Assembly Hall. BS: What? Assembly Hall. It was ah, well it had floor and then it had a balcony all the way around the outside of it and ah, the color just went in there you know, and we went in there and we had a movie, they had a screen. And ah, one of the people around here was ah, in that form, was Dr. Richey. He was head of Civil Engineering Department, I had classes with him later on. And ah, he'd go up to the, his wife was had to be wheeled in a wheel chair. So he'd park her at the end of the center section, the end of the center section here and he'd park here at the end over here. And then he'd clear walk to the middle of that thing right there of that whole thing, and he was bald, I mean real bald. And ah, sitting there with that movie flickering like that, his head just shone like a light. And that was the target for all the peanuts. Nobody would sit within three or four seats of him AG: The Corps boys all wanted to sit on the balcony and buy peanuts. BS: ...throw them off that balcony. C: Ok, so you had peanuts at the movies then. BS: Oh yeah, all you had to do was just reach down in the chairs. He had all that he wanted to eat. C: So he was on to their game, hunh? BS: Oh yeah, so he was a real nice fellow. I enjoyed him, and matter of fact, I worked for him And they gave me the first job I ever had at A &M. C: Is that right? BS: And that was 70 years ago. AG: But you know the campus kids could go anywhere. We could go in Assembly Hall, we could go down to the Stadium, we could go to the iron bleachers, but we would just go over there and crawl up on the bleachers, and watch the ball game or whatever track meet was going on. C: I'm sure there was a lot of things for you to do, really. When you stop to think about it. With interacting with the Corps, especially. At least watching them. AG: We did a lot for entertainment. C: Um, what about the Queen Theater in Bryan? Did anybody go there? BS: Oh yeah, The Queen and The Palace and the Queen and the ah, there's another one... C: How much did it cost to get in? BS: I don't remember. AG: Back in the 30's, it cost a dime. BS: But there were three theaters there. C: Oh, there were? BS: Later on, Dixie. AG: The Queen and The Dixie.... C: Well I know the Palace is down in Bryan AG: They were all right there together. C: Oh all three of them. Ok. Mr. Reynolds? ER: Well they, the three Bryan theaters which I remember were the Palace, and the Queen, and the New Dixie. C: Ok BS: There are three of them right together. Not very far apart. C: So there was none on campus, or near campus? Or up in Northgate at all? AG: If they had anything it was at the Assembly Hall. C: Oh at the Assembly Hall. Ok AG: They had all kinds of things there. C: Ok BS: That was a campus theater that was open much later than that. C: Oh O.K., alrighty. BS: I think it was probably opened maybe before World War II. C: Ok. What kind of refreshments could you get at the movies? BS: Oh you could get ah.. AG: Peanuts BS: Peanuts, and then soda pop C: Soda Pop BS: We had soda water, one of the best soda waters we had in those old days was ah, I think it came on the market here a few years ago and until they changed it to the more modern things, it was just like it use to be. But now you can't, C: It wasn't creme soda was it? BS: No, there was some creme colors, Ah...I forget what the name of that is. It cost a nickel. C: And they cost a nickel. BS: It was a real lot of money back then. C: Yeah AG: There was a swimming pool in the basement in the YMCA. My mother wouldn't let us go. C: You didn't get to go swimming' BS: I went swimming and I got to C: At the fish tank BS: No in the basement C: Oh in the Y, OK. BS: And I got sick in the basement. There was no chemical / elements to ensure the purity of the water. C: Ok BS: It's been covered over now AG: The Frapps boy was my age, the youngest was my age and he got pneumonia and died. C: Oh my. I know there was a Frapps that lived on Walton Drive. BS: Yeah I played with him. C: Oh did ya? BS: He was a little bit younger than I was but not too much. I remembered when he died. C: Yeah, it wasn't too long ago. AG: He died when we were in the 2nd grade I think. BS: And then the Bilsing boys - lost one of their boys. C: Okay did you do, ah let's see, explain experiences doing these things and I'm sure I'm going to jog your memory, but go ahead Mr. Reynolds. ER: Ask the question again? C: It says, "Explain experiences doing these things, roller - skating, riding horses, bowling, theatrical productions, swimming in the downs natatorium, was that at the Y or was that later? ER: later C: water fights between the south side kids and the north side kids on campus, playing cat pistols and Gine Hall in the dark, mud fights in the plant nursery, riding down Kyle Field ramp on a tricycle, playing inside the Bugle stand, outside the YMCA, playing in the Assembly Hall across from the YMCA, does that jog anybody's memories? ER: Well I had kinda played in a fashion in the Assembly Hall, I remember throwing the peanut, empty peanut hulls all over the place. C: Did you ever play cat pistols and Guion Hall? ER: I can't recall any Guion Hall, but I know we played cap pistols all over the campus. C: Um, what about roller - skating? ER: I didn't roller - skate, but now the bicycles and leap frogging deal , that was ah Henry Gilcrest and Bo Bilsing and Neal Reeves, Duke Thorton. We all did the leap frogging. C: Um, what about the water fights between the south side kids and the north side kids on campus? Don't remember that? What was the distinction between the north side and south side kids? AG: We didn't have any. ER: I'm not aware of any division either. C: Ah, alrighty. BS: There was no division as far as I could see, because several of the people knew and knew the school ah, BS: row of houses from the power plant north in there, ah where a number of the people worked for the college lived. And there was an heir's boy who lived there, and uh, he had something wrong with his leg and many times ha to have it worked on at least once every year or two and I haven't heard from him in a long time. Then there was another man out there and uh, when he would get sick he would blow the whistle and the whistle would blow at eight o'clock, noon, one o'clock, and 5 o'clock. Then there would be that old steam whistle over at that power plant. C: OK. Why was it blown at those times AG: To show it was 8 o'clock 5 o'clock, uh OK. BS: And when he'd get sick they wouldn't blow the whistle. AG: If there was a fire they'd blow the fire whistle. BS: Oh yeah, fire protection was in that you had ah, the college was divided into four zones, and they blew the whistle then they blew um to tell which zone it was in. C: How could you tell? AG: one, two three, or four. BS: Then your corps had fire companies and uh if it was blown, if you were on the fire detail, I don't know how you got it, but they were students. I've seen them drop their books and go. And uh, and uh, I remember when the Latty's house burned and uh it was there. They got the Latty's house when it was west of the Memorial Student Center, in the center, between that street. And uh, they had been papering the house, ah south of it. And they had a real high wind and ah in those days you had to cut that . had place to put the paper up with C: Oh yeah BS: And some of it was up under the Latty's house. And it had in the center of it, it had a little hallway, and she walked across that thing once and he smelled smoke and it started to sink in her and she called the fire department and the only thing lost out of that house was a kind of a, a big, it had doors on it and stuff that was in that hallway. C: OK BS: They recovered everything out of that house C: Wow AG: You remember the whistle don't you? ER: No, I don't. BS: Because they just ran through the house. The cadets just ran through the house picking up ? ? ?? C: Is that right? How wonderful! A bunch of volunteers. ER: I can recall hearing a whistle when something was on fire, but I had no recollection at all of how the number of whistles had indication of the fire's location. I just don't know anything about that. C: OK. Um, How did you and your family receive mail and phone messages? AG: Well, we had telephones of course a post office, we had a post office in the academic building what they call the academic building that was the faculty post office C: OK AG: Later we had the post office that's on the railroad tracks that was back in the thirties before they built the one on northgate. C: OK BS: Uh, you had excellent mail service. C: Uh, huh. BS: Excellent because you had two trains in the daytime and two trains at night. C: Ah, yes. BS: One train went north and you got the other, came south and the local trains and then in the night. They had those uh, uh, well you could - they would use the same technique. But they dropped all that mail off right there. They had a mail car on that thing and they were sorting mail all the time they were in transit, and uh.. C: Yeah. BS: So you could mail a letter, I done it, and it would be in Chicago the next afternoon. C: Wow. AG: No house delivery though. C: Oh, everybody went to the post office. BS: Yeah. C: OK. What was the Sunbeam Special? BS: Oh, that was a high speed train. Oh, you gotta go back on that and the same thing in your trains. The morill act of 18 -I can't tell you exactly. It's 186 - something. They call the moral act. It set up all of the uh, uh, state universities for all the state and one of the requirements is that the trains have to stop. C: OK BS: When they go to the... normally the trains stop here. But when they go tot the stream liner they didn't want to stop. But they got told real quick they had to stop at College Station and the next stop was Ennis Then Houston, College Station, Enus. AG: That was the only places they'd stop. That was the fast train. BS: That was the fast train that ran. AG: Of course, it wasn't all that fast, but we called it fast train. BS: Well it made it made Dallas in three hours. C: Well it was fast for that time. BS: It would um, those engines would run up to 100 miles and hour, but they couldn't do it. Now the track here, that was another one of the people that was around here. Name, was in the post office.... his dad ran the track on Chesapeake, that was his route. It's about five or six miles. I don't know how far it is, but all the engineers said that was the best track around and it would run 100 miles an hour. He always got the best. Well they said it was the best there was, and his son, most of them worked in the post office. AG: And that's another thing we for entertainment. Watch the trains come in... BS: Oh yeah, you had one come in at ten o'clock, you had one at two o'clock, and you had freight trains. C: Was that anytime during the day or was that... BS: Everyday. C: Well, when all did you go to school? BS: Oh, we went to school, e just went during regular hours. AG: School's on the campus, it was a consolidated school.. C: And that's consolidated meaning' AG: That they brought like, Wellborn kids and different places around. C: OK BS: But it was not in legal terms - it was not a consolidated high school, it was not a consolidated school. Because the A &M couldn't they wouldn't let anyone. They furnished the building and so forth. If we they had various areas around the college like the one on the southside. There was an area there and there was on over there and north and so forth around. I don't remember the boundaries of them at all. But that's where I got to go to Bryan High School cause my mother decided that she wanted to run for school board. These old men, Czechs and Germans, over there they didn't want no woman for school board. At that time in the state law, if you did not have a high school in your district, you could transfer anywhere you wanted to. So my mother transferred me to Bryan High School as well as my two sisters when they came of age. C: OK. So you went to ah, where was the grade school on campus? BS: At that ah, what they call the music hall now. It was the white looking building built about 1922 I think. Somewhere in that range. C: OK BS: And uh, that was a near tragedy as far as anything on the campus is concerned, because on day the ceiling which was concrete, cement plaster, on metal tiles, right was attached to the ceiling and the whole second grade, was it second or third? AG: Second, no third BS: You were there? You were there? Your sister, where was she? AG: She must be in the third BS: Third grade which was next to me C: And you were in the fourth grade? BS: I was in the fourth grade and I remember when that thing fell. C: Oh my. BS: The whole, the woman that was teacher, realized something was wrong. She didn't know what was wrong. So she organized a whole group and took them outside. AG: She did said the ceiling's falling and they had windows all the way around and ones closest to the window jumped out the window. BS: Two of them jumped out they were little boys. BS: No, Nobody was killed. It put that whole ceiling in the floor. If she hadn't of taken those outta.... we could of been killed. AG: They had a cloak room, we use to have a cloak room, you know where you hang your coats. C: Um, huh. I remember those. BS: I don't know what she said... what did she... AG: She said , "the ceiling's falling get outta here," or some such words and so we ran to the cloak room and out the hall everybody got out. C: That's wonderful! No did you, Mr. Reynold's, go to school on campus? ER: Yes, I did. C: Same building? ER: Presumably so. It was the two story framed building. BS: White - - plaster ER: and it was kind of stucco both inside and out. And the old wooden floors were just, had oil.... appropriate oil - don't think it was engine oil from all the wheels, but it was an oil finish on it. Of course we wipe a piece of paper or white handkerchief on it came off black. The high school that I ... well when I was in high school I went the first two years to I think it was Phifer hall on campus it was a condemned dormitory two story and the brick walls and started to spread outward that's why it was condemned. And the college used it as store room but then the school system, the consolidated the school system, asked if they use that building for a high school, so they put great big long steel rods end to end on it and side to side of it and put steel plates on the outside and these steel rods were threaded so they just squeezed the building back together. But even at that there was a crack of about three inches between the brick wall and the wooden flooring of the second story of this old dormitory. But it was safe enough because it couldn't spread any further. But then after, at the end of my sophomore year, why the new wooden building was built off campus. C: Where we are right now. ER: Called oakwood, yeah. AG: Right over here, where they tore that building down last year. C: The middle school, my understanding is that the College Station Conference Center, where we re now, use to be.... AG: the junior high school. C: the junior high school. Well it was one of the schools AG: They built the high school, what suppose to be Theodore building, that they tore down. C: Oh, OK. That was the middle school when my children came here. AG: Oh, really? C: Uh huh. Sure was. Did either one of you go to, well you went to Bryan High School, so you didn't even go to high school here, uh, but you went through the grade school here. OK Alright, let me ask you this. It says here resolution adoption in 1939 stated that on or before September 1, of 1941 all campus residences must be vacated and not be rented again. Explain what your family did at this time. AG: Of course, we were off campus. C: You were already off the campus. What about you Mr. Reynold's? ER: Okay, got the message that we would have to move off of the campus. Why my parents built a house what's now S. Oakwood and my recollection is that they bought the lot before the edict that everybody had to move off the campus. But so they started on the house - I guess it was the spring of 1941, and the house was essentially complete - C: They were to move off? ER: Yeah, in Jan 1942 AG: I know where that house is. That's that house that sits kind of kattycomer across the comer right down here. The name of the street? ER: I think we moved into it in, uh, well, probably January of 1941 cause Pearl Harbor day came on December... C: December 7, 1941. ER: And so we had just occupied the house for almost a year when World War II started for us. C: OK, So is this the house here? ER: Yes. C: 200 Pershing OK Uh, Yours was 101 Pershing AG: No. C: No? C: It was on Dexter, you know where the Lancaster's live? C: No, I sure don't. OK You say your house is on Dexter? AG: Uh -huh. It's the third two story off of George Bush. C: Alright. OK C: OK Who can tell me about Franklin Delanore Roosevelt's visit to the campus on in 1937. You were here, I know you were here. ER: I was here. Well, I recall that I got the message that he was going to be here and our neighbor across the street, the S.A. McMillians, were asked to use their car along with other people for conveying the presidential party. They were chosen because they had a Buick in place of a Chevrolet and I'm not kidding about that either. C: Why was that I wonder? ER: Well, bigger cars are nicer than smaller ones I guess. ER: And I do recall being in the Kyle Field Stadium and the open car that the President was in drove past very, very slowly and I could see him down there in the back seat and that was all that I remember about it. C: OK Well, now you were in high school in 1937? ER: Um... C: Or. ER: I don't think so. C: Maybe you weren't. ER: Maybe not. C: Uh....Let's see, when did you say you moved into the dormitory? In 1942? So you would be eighth or ninth grade. ER: I guess so. C: And both of you were gone by then, weren't you. Well, you were still living here. AG: I was away at school. C: Away at school. OK BS: In `37? I was teaching at John Tarleton. C: Yeah. AG: I was at Denton, I went to school my first year at A &M - that was they year they let girls go. C: Because you were a campus kid? AG: No. Because I was a daughter of a professor. C: Oh. BS: That was another story there. How many others were there? AG: Eleven of us. BS: Eleven girls. The appropriations from the legislature had ran and uh, they were appropriate before the crash came, so that the salaries were pretty good. It wasn't bad. I think it was $4000 a year and then the next biannual we had was terrible. There was a crush on getting any funds at all and so the legislature (it was enacted in the legislature) that girls with proper credentials could go to A &M. C: One year. AG: Just one year. C: Oh, just one year. BS: Yep, and my two sisters did. There were nine others. Is there any of them living here. AG: Margaret Mims BS: Margaret Duncan Mims AG: There were eleven of us and at that time the Battalion was a magazine. It came out once a month and on the centerfold of October, October magazine, it's got our picture. Eleven girls. I've got it framed. C: Oh, you should. AG: But Margaret Mims wanted a copy of it and I told her to go to the, what do you call it? Archives and they said they didn't have that picture. So I maybe the only one that's got it. C: Well, I'd keep it. AG: But anyway, that was only one year they'd let us go. C: Just one. Oh, OK. So, uh, there was no other year. OK, I understand. AG: Course nobody wanted girls here anyway. So they don't like to talk about it I guess. BS: Women could come to summer sessions. C: When did they start summer school? BS: Well immediately in June. C: No. No, when did they start summer school meaning, uh, other than the regular school year. BS: As far as I can remember. C: Always, okay. BS: But they could go. Now there was one other person, woman, that got her complete degree together but they would not give her the sheepskin, and that was Mrs. Marsletta, Dean Marsletta. Vet medicine. They never gave her the certificate. Although she had everything in place. They never gave her the certificate. Although she had everything in place. AG: They wouldn't let me go into the former students until `72. Until the first girl graduated. C: And you really are a former student weren't you? AG: I belong, I wanted to belong, but they wouldn't let me. They didn't want any girls. C: How about that! Well, you can't blame them since it's supposed to be an all boys school, military school. It's a shame though that the girls that wanted to, being family members, faculty members, that they didn't allow you to go to school. AG: Even our daughter back in the 60's couldn't... C: Didn't get to go. Well let me ask you, what special times do you remember being a campus kid? ER: Well, I really counted myself fortunate for being a campus kid because I could play over the whole campus and I mentioned before I had access to all the buildings. I could go up and ask people questions. Professor Reed was head of the Poultry Husbandry department and for some reason or another I got the idea I'd like some pet ? ?? chickens. So I consulted Professor Reed and he arranged to get me some little Bantam Seabright chickens. And I had two or three other chickens that were other breeds, I forget what they were, but anyway my dad built an enclosed pen for them, you know, chicken wire around sides as well as over the top so they couldn't get out. This was in the backyard and so for some years I had those things and at night during the winter, it would get real cold. Had little bushel baskets to put the chickens in that had a little lid on it and so, uh, by being on the campus I had access to people who were knowledgeable about other things. C: Did you consider yourself fortunate being a campus kid while being a campus kid, or has it been in your later years? ER: Well mostly, later years I guess, but I really was aware of the fact that I did have access to both things and people that were not available to the public in large. Specifically, after the nice, new swimming pool was built adjacent to the gym I guess it must of been about 1933 or something like that there, I could go along with my parents as faculty and there were several of our good friends in Bryan who were kind of offended that they couldn't go in there because if it was a taxpayer building how come can't we go? But they couldn't. But I could, I appreciated that. AG: We grew up in a special environment. C: Uh, huh. AG: Educators all around us and we were aware of that. I think it was pretty special. Children nowadays don't have that atmosphere. C: It would be interesting to ah, with all of the campus kids to see how many of them did become educators. AG: Yes, it would. It really would. C: Being raised in that environment bet very few of them followed that route. AG: I think quite a few of them did. C: Did they? AG: T.O. Walton, he's a doctor. Jackson went to MIT. He went up there and you know quite of them had that back ground. C: But I'd say the majority of them did not become educators, would you say? AG: I don't know. C: That'd be interesting to.... BS: Well, not all people can be educators. I can't... C: That's true. BS: I taught two years and I know enough that I can't come back down to the level of the student I'm trying to teach. C: Um. BS: And uh, we were talking about that, one thing my mother did and my father did. Mother tried to get me to play a piano. It was just mechanical. So dad came up and says, uh, if you'll go down there on Saturday morning down to ag engineering department and help Mr., what's his name, he ran the barber( ?) shop and he says you go down there and help him every Saturday morning an d you'll get out of that. So for years I went down to the ag engineering department and worked for professor down there. And I had already been down to the ag engineering department with Fred Jones and all the engines. I saw engines there that you never knew existed. C: Hmm. BS: Yeah, the ? ?? built in 1922. It was and eight cylinder engine. BS: No. This was purely voluntary. C: No. Voluntary. Did you have a part time job? Or... BS: I did. In 1928 I went to uh, my dad came to me and said you want to take these civil engineering students in the summer time to , there they surveyed a line from, uh, these tanks out here we got, the farm tanks, all the way out to the river. C: Right. BS: For the road in the railroad and so I had to take them onto a one ton International flatbed and hauled them out and they'd tell when they wanted to get off. And it went all the way up the river. Sometimes and then I had to go back to Sbisa Hall and they got two huge boxes. They were about this size here full of food. And I went out there someplace and figured out where about they were and then I'd... One day I went up there and I rang a church bell, I had all the people round out there come out to church. But they came over there and we fed them and that's where I really learned to ... Dr. Richey, we called him Cueball Richey because his hair. C: That's the guy that had the peanuts thrown at him. BS: Yeah, and so uh, I'd go out there and I was treated just like any other employee. And at the end of the day I'd went out there and kind of like threw them all up and took them back. And that went on all summer From 1928, I think I ran it for about four or five years. C: How much did you get paid? BS: It wasn't much. I didn't really want to get paid. I was interested in just doing it. Driving that old truck. I remember now, the thing I remember was the roadrunners. C: The roadrunners. BS: Did you ever see one? C: Yes, well no... Not a real one. BS: They use to follow and we'd, the boys standing up on the back of that cab you know... Skipper, speed up a little bit and see if he can fly. Sure enough he'd run down the road. If you got to close to him he'd fly and all the kids called me Skipper. AG: Something you haven't mentioned at the cemetery. C: I did know about the cemetery. AG: Nobody knows about the cemetery. We lived across as he said, on Throckmorton Street. The last house across the street....vacant space and it was the sheep pasture. But in the sheep pasture was the cemetery. And campus kids would play in the cemetery. C: Well, who was buried in the cemetery. AG: Well, one of the Presidents of A &M...Foster. But when they built the corps dorms in the `30's they moved the cemetery and I can tell you where the cemetery is. You'd be ashamed of it. I'm ashamed of it. C: Where is it? AG: If you go down Marrion -Pugh Drive it dead ends. You tum on that gravel road right there on that comer is the cemetery. And President Foster was buried there, and some friends that we know. There was an old Sergeant on campus. Sergeant Watkins. He's buried there and his daughter Ruth is buried there and several children. C: They are still buried there ? I mean when they changed the cemetery the didn't move it? AG: They moved it. C: They moved what? BS: The bodies. AG: I guess they did. I was away at school that year. C: OK They, what's the word? I don't want to say excavate.. ER: Exhume? C: Exhume, yeah. ER: Well, listen, I would challenge that term when I hear exhume I think that you open the coffin up. C: OK AG: Now I'm not sure that's the proper term. C: OK, well whatever they - they took the caskets up and reburied them someplace else? AG: I'm not sure about that. I just know that they moved it. BS: I'm sure they did. AG: That's been one of my soap boxes all these years that they should do something about our cemetery. C: Yes. AG: I think A &M should have a cemetery. Arlington National has a cemetery. Why can't we? C: Well, true. BS: They've got a number of people out there... AG: But I think it's a shame President Foster is buried there and stuck off there in the weeds. Nobody takes care of it. C: Well, if they moved the cemetery. I don't quite understand what you mean they left the caskets there. AG: I can't tell you about that. C: Oh, you don't... AG: I don't know because I wasn't there. I just came home from school and I knew that they'd moved the cemetery so they could build the corps dorms and uh BS: That was when the corps dorms were built. C: Oh, okay. BS: It went back all over that area. AG: And they moved it back off over here. C: OK AG: I talked about it a lot but don't seem to get anywhere. C: Maybe you just aren't talking to the right people. AG: Well when McKenzie was on the board, was interested in it and he pursued it for a while but he wasn't getting anywhere either he wanted to be buried there. But you hear all the time about people that want to come back and be buried. C: Yeah. AG: But I guess. It was interesting to me when they said the Bush's could be buried in the Bush Library. C: Yes. AG: They had to get permission from the state. C: Yes. AG: But they already have a secretary in state property, so I couldn't understand why they... C: Maybe nobody really know that there is the cemetery still there. BS: Oh yeah, they keep it up. Not very well. C: Well, who, uh, let's regress a little bit. This is probably a dumb question and I'm sure it is. I would imagine that all the roads, streets or whatever you want to call them on campus, when you all were there were dirt roads? There wasn't any paved roads? AG: No C: Oh, there were paved roads. BS: There were some paved roads. Mainly in front of the Academic Building and Military Walk. You know where Military Walk is? You've got to realize that at that point in time, A &M College was one faced. You faced west. You faced forward the railroad. C: OK BS: There was no, the back end you couldn't get out of. C: Hmm. AG: We did have when we came here there were iron gates on west gate and they closed them at night, didn't they? BS: Yeah, iron gates at the north one, and west. C: Was there a fence around campus? BS: Oh yes. C: Oh, I didn't realize that. AG: Big old beautiful iron gates that closed them. I don't know whether they took those down but I just awful wondered what they did with them. C: I never realized that they had a fence around A &M. AG: Apparently it really wasn't. BS: Well when it gets over the backend it's just an ordinary fence. AG: There wasn't any down on the south. BS: That was the veterinary end of it. C: Yeah. BS: They also landed some airplanes in there. Mostly there were cattle in there that the veterinary people used. C: I've got a question for you. It's not on my list of questions, but it's a curious... What was the polo field and golf courses are now, was that just open field? BS: That was where they kept animals for the veterinary AG: The horses. BS: See the veterinary was down there where the civil engineering people were that was built in `34. C: Oh, so the veterinary college was not the original. BS: No, they were not there originally. Those white looking buildings down there on the corner were built in 1934, same time ag engineering was built. C: Oh BS: It's an interesting story, it really is. See the legislature in all of it's wisdom. The original land grant for college was in East Texas so the people, the lumbering, go together and said well, we're going to put this in West Texas and so the legislature took that grant and gave it to West Texas where Texas comes down and goes to the county in there. All of that in there, all right where given to the funds for A &M. It was supposed to be for the University. Well in 1933 or 4, 1933, A &M 999999 University of Texas. They were going to get six million dollars. They were going to put it out in interest and so they get the interest back for six million dollars and A &M wanted two million of that and they were successful. And at that point in time in 1933 they built, they turned the college around because in 1934 is when they built Highway 6. C: So Highway 6 wasn't there when you lived on campus? BS: No. C: Oh. AG: That was an old gravel road. C: I thought Highway 6 had been there as long as the college. BS: It was built in `34. C: How about that! BS: And they turned the college around and two faced it. C: Oh. BS: And that's the Academic Building, down yonder. It cost 400,000. AG: The system's building. C: So the college up until 1934 faced.. BS: west. C: Well, it faced the railroad tracks. BS: That's correct. C: Oh. Yes, sir. AK: Had a question I wanted to ask. Brother Scoates, did he ever live on the end of Quality Row? BS: Yes, I did. Last house... I gotta picture in here AK: Yeah, I thought so. AG: Something I think is interesting is how you pronounce Sbisa. ER: I would say Sss- Beeza. AG: There you are, He says it right. Nobody says it that way. Everybody says Sa -bisa. ER: Well I didn't know it was right, I just did it. AG: But you just never hear anybody say it right. Mr. Sbisa was head of the dining hall. I remember Mr. Sbisa. He had white hair and a long white goatee. That was before Mr. Duncan. ER: I referred to it as the mess hall anyway. BS: One of the things interesting about Sbisa Hall when I went to school. They marched into that things in company front. Know what I mean by company front? All the way across. C: Oh, so they were one great big long line. BS: No, they were abreast. C: Yeah, that's what I mean, but it was one great big long line. BS: I don't know how wide it was. Two companies wide or something and there'd be one behind the other. And they marched into Sbisa Hall and by time the first one came in the last one would be out. Remember that? ER: I remember marching in, I have no recollection that, who left first. I just walked in and ate. C: Were you children allowed to eat in mess halls? BS: No, nobody was allowed to take anything out there. ER: Maybe I ought to make my statement a bit more specific. When I was a student at A &M I marched into the mess hall. C: OK. ER: No. As a campus brat, no. AG: There was no place to eat on the campus. You ate at home because there was no food service, except at the Aggieland Inn. C: Well where did the corps eat then? AG: They ate at the mess hall. C: Well, that's what I meant. Did the kids get to go to the mess hall? AG: No. BS: No. They formed up three times a day. C: Okay. BS: In company front, all the way down military walk and out that way towards the tracks and the had a formation three times a day. C: Did you all, let me ask this, What did you all do about bonfire? Did you help or did you just watch or Of course it wasn't as organized as it is now. BS: The corps was the main part of it. There were people in the corps actually that worked in the mess hall, uh some of those AG: You were talking about Bonfire. Bonfire was in front of where the MSC is - Simpson Field. BS: Early bonfires were on what is now called Simpson Field. C: Yeah, I know what it is. BS: We called it the drill field. C: Yeah, it's called the drill field too. BS: It was just a bunch of junk, or boxes, except that they had to have an outhouse on it. And some farmer would miss his outhouse every time. So the college got so they'd pay for this. ER: I know what I remember about the outhouse on top - they always had a sign, Commandment's Office, on the door's all I remember. City of College Station Memory Lanes Oral History Project Today is h , /%( (month) (day) (year) I'm interviewing for the i time Altd, - t at.i (Mr., Mrs., This is Yeettogthe ,L=/ 1 Miss, Ms., Dr., Etc.) This interview is taking place in Room of The t 1300 George Bush Dr. College Station , Texas . This interview is sponsored by the Historic Preservation Committee and the Conference Center Advisory Committee of the City of College Station, Texas. It is part of the Memory Lane Oral History Project. Have each person introduce themselves so their voice is identifiable on the tape recorder. The City of College Station, Texas Memory Lanes Oral History Project INTERVIEW AGREEMENT The purpose of The Historic Preservation Committee is to gather and preserve historical documents by means of the tape - recorded interview. Tape recordings and transcripts resulting from such interviews become part of the archives of The City of College Station Historic Preservation Committee and Conference Center Advisory Committee to be used for whatever purposes may be determined. with : I have read the above and voluntarily offer my portion of the interviews (Name of Interviewee) 1. /LL SY,MTES 7. 2.i 1 e0 iJ5 _ 8. 3 .C,7. 4 > = Y 1' oc s • ' y " 9. 4 - Louise" X'EY,,(/04.1)5 10 5 - » LL6/V r A; A 1/1 ' 1 11. 6. g i 0� cx moon -, In view of the scholarly value of this research material, I hereby assign rights, title, and interest pertaining to it to The City of College Station Historic Preservation Committee and Confere Center : dviso + mmittee. Interviewer (signatu e Date O:7 E Interviewer (Please Print) HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMITTEE City of College Station, Texas 77840 ORAL HISTORY DATA SHEET I hereby give and grant to the HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMITTEE, City of College Station, Texas, for whatever purposes may be determined, the tape recordings, transcriptions, and contents of this oral history interview. Also, permission is hereby given for any duplications of original photos, documents, maps, etc. useful to the history project to be returned unharmed. Interviewee releases, relinquishes and discharges CITY, its officers, agents and employees, from all claims, demands, and causes of action of every kind and character, including the cost of defense thereof, for any injury to, including the cost of defense thereof for any injury to, including death of, any person, whether that person be a third person, Interviewee, or an employee of either of the parties hereto, and any loss of or damage to property, whether the same be that either of the parties hereto or of third parties, caused by or alleged to be caused by, arising out of, or in connection with Interviewee provision of historical information, whether or not said claims, demands and causes of action in whole or in part are covered by insurance. 1/it • h 6 3-77 ) Interviewer (Please Print) 2iteirc e Signature of Ina i ett t /0/ Place of Interview List of photos. documents, mans. etc. it/iMaill 0, 5 e SZ Interviewee (P print) Signature of Name / I) li 5 - eca 't Telephone 5 --zYa '-o Date of Birth , /4( Place of Birth 4I k0,lfe iV Address INTERVIEW STATUS: Completed Interviewee agrees to and shall indemnify and hold harmless CITY, its officers, agents and employees, from and against any and all claims, losses, damages, causes of action, suits and liability of every kind, attorney's fees, for injury to or death of any person, or for damage to any property, arising out of or in connection with the use of the items and information referenced aboved by CITY, its agents, representatives, assigns, invitees, and participants under this grant. Such indemnity shall apply where the claims, losses damages, causes of action, suits or liability arise in whole or in part from the negligence of city. Date Initial ./ Interviewee In progress 0_& HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMITTEE City of College Station, Texas 77840 ORAL HISTORY DATA SHEET I hereby give and grant to the HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMITTEE, City of College Station, Texas, for whatever purposes may be determined, the tape recordings, transcriptions, and contents of this oral history interview. Also, permission is hereby given for any duplications of original photos, documents, maps, etc. useful to the history project to be returned unharmed. Interviewee releases, relinquishes and discharges CITY, its officers, agents and employees, from all claims, demands, and causes of action of every kind and character, including the cost of defense thereof, for any injury to, including the cost of defense thereof for any injury to, including death of, any person, whether that person be a third person, Interviewee, or an employee of either of the parties hereto, and any loss of or damage to property, whether the same be that either of the parties hereto or of third parties, caused by or alleged to be caused by, arising out of, or in connection with Interviewee provision of historical information, whether or not said claims, demands and causes of action in whole or in part are covered by insurance. > / L ��-- / - t P ) 9 *r 6719 Interviewee lease pri Signature of Interviewee Name ter-re - g6-7e6S�'/D Interriewer (P ease Print) Signature of Int Place of Interview List of photos, documents, mans. etc. INTERVIEW STATUS: Completed In progress Date Initial Address 3e 7 � 2 ( /)tq 6 %/ ,v Telephone Date of Birth 40-y20 /I / Place of Birth 6 - )/9-/42 V /V/ '4 C",0 ) Interviewee agrees to and shall indemnify and hold harmless CITY, its officers, agents and employees, from and against any and all claims, losses, damages, causes of action, suits and liability of every kind, attorney's fees, for injury to or death of any person, or for damage to any property, arising out of or in connection with the use of the items and information referenced aboved by CITY, its agents, representatives, assigns, invitees, and participants under this grant. Such indemnity shall apply where the claims, losses damages, causes of action, suits or liability arise in whole or in part from the negligence of city. HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMITTEE City of College Station, Texas 77840 ORAL HISTORY DATA SHEET I hereby give and grant to the HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMITTEE, City of College Station, Texas, for whatever purposes may be determined, the tape recordings, transcriptions, and contents of this oral history interview. Also, permission is hereby given for any duplications of original photos, documents, maps, etc. useful to the history project to be returned unharmed. Interviewee releases, relinquishes and discharges CITY, its officers, agents and employees, from all claims, demands, and causes of action of every kind and character, including the cost of defense thereof, for any injury to, including the cost of defense thereof for any injury to, including death of, any person, whether that person be a third person, Interviewee, or an employee of either of the parties hereto, and any loss of or damage to property, whether the same be that either of the parties hereto or of third parties, caused by or alleged to be caused by, arising out of, or in connection with Interviewee provision of historical information, whether or not said claims, demands and causes of action in whole or in part are covered by insurance. e./ 4e e-e6 STItb Interviewer (Please Print) Atbtka,A-4,0' Signature ok Intd<rviewer 4 62/14---/0/ Place of Interview List of photos, documents. mans. etc. EL8 T R. R i= YN a [ -'IBS 72 Interviewee (Please print) Signature of I nterviewee Name Address i-v.8Roc K Telephone(Rn<) - 195 (S6 6 Date of Birth �p�,- l t Place of Birthj? RVA N T x INTERVIEW STATUS: Completed In progress Interviewee agrees to and shall indemnify and hold harmless CITY, its officers, agents and employees, from and against any and all claims, losses, damages, causes of action, suits and liability of every kind, attorney's fees, for injury to or death of any person, or for damage to any property, arising out of or in connection with the use of the items and information referenced aboved by CITY, its agents, representatives, assigns, invitees, and participants under this grant. Such indemnity shall apply where the claims, losses damages, causes of action, suits or liability arise in whole or in part from the negligence of city. Date m6 Initial HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMITTEE City of College Station, Texas 77840 ORAL HISTORY DATA SHEET I hereby give and grant to the HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMITTEE, City of College Station, Texas, for whatever purposes may be determined, the tape recordings, transcriptions, and contents of this oral history interview. Also, permission is hereby given for any duplications of original photos, documents, maps, etc. useful to the history project to be returned unharmed. Interviewee releases, relinquishes and discharges CITY, its officers, agents and employees, from all claims, demands, and causes of action of every kind and character, including the cost of defense thereof, for any injury to, including the cost of defense thereof for any injury to, including death of, any person, whether that person be a third person, Interviewee, or an employee of either of the parties hereto, and any loss of or damage to property, whether the same be that either of the parties hereto or of third parties, caused by or alleged to be caused by, arising out of, or in connection with Interviewee provision of historical information, whether or not said claims, demands and causes of action in whole or in part are covered by insurance. J L e ,• s c /'S WE /Alok - I terviewe;Please print) — c .e_c_� J i Ear - -- -e e-a--- S cAt to2Tr i3R4S71) Inte viewer (P ease Print) Signature of Inteifviewer - /0/ Place of Interview List of photos, documents. mans. etc. Signature of Inte f v iewee Name Ad ess l c f C .4, ( I4/ 79sl/ - $oG 79.5 - /5 Telephone _ Date of Birth 8 JS Place of Birth )4 /» /NNeSv,o . ?% Interviewee agrees to and shall indemnify and hold harmless CITY, its officers, agents and employees, from and against any and all claims, losses, damages, causes of action, suits and liability of every kind, attorney's fees, for injury to or death of any person, or for damage to any property, arising out of or in connection with the use of the items and information referenced aboved by CITY, its agents, representatives, assigns, invitees, and participants under this grant. Such indemnity shall apply where the claims, losses damages, causes of action, suits or liability arise in whole or in part from the negligence of city. INTERVIEW STATUS: Completed Date Initial In progress I hereby give and grant to the HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMITTEE, City of College Station, Texas, for whatever purposes may be determined, the tape recordings, transcriptions, and contents of this oral history interview. Also, permission is hereby given for any duplications of original photos, documents, maps, etc. useful to the history project to be returned unharmed. Interviewee releases, relinquishes and discharges CITY, its officers, agents and employees, from all claims, demands, and causes of action of every kind and character, including the cost of defense thereof, for any injury to, including the cost of defense thereof for any injury to, including death of, any person, whether that person be a third person, Interviewee, or an employee of either of the parties hereto, and any loss of or damage to property, whether the same be that either of the parties hereto or of third parties, caused by or alleged to be caused by, arising out of, or in connection with Interviewee provision of historical information, whether or not said claims, demands and causes of action in whole or in part are covered by insurance. Inter r Print) Signature of Interviewer ROOM 101 CONFERENCE CENTER Place of Interview List of photos. documents. mans. etc. HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMITTEE City of College Station, Texas 77840 ORAL HISTORY DATA SHEET ALLEN KRAFT Interv) wee (Please print) Nye Add Tele• hone Date of Birth Place of Birth rvi 7 ( ( � 7 f ��d8 INTERVIEW STATUS: Completed Date Initial - 12(2.4 In progress Interviewee agrees to and shall indemnify and hold harmless CITY, its officers, agents and employees, from and against any and all claims, losses, damages, causes of action, suits and liability of every kind, attorney's fees, for injury to or death of any person, or for damage to any property, arising out of or in connection with the use of the items and information referenced aboved by CITY, its agents, representatives, assigns, invitees, and participants under this grant. Such indemnity shall apply where the claims, losses damages, causes of action, suits or liability arise in whole or in part from the negligence of city.