By Walter Agnew Moore II, Ambassador of Western Civilization among the
Howling Savages of East-Central Texas
30 August 2002, College Station, Texas

So, I went to Waco when it was known to be full of cultists. I went to Amiens when it was known to be a dreary rain-lashed waste. I even went to Paris when it was known to be the home-base for generations of unbearably pretentious American tourists. So, when the call came that it was time for College Station, land of the Texas A&M "Aggies", and supposed arch-rival of my old University of Texas, when it was time for them to feel the pimp-smack of Walter-Moore-style language teaching, well, there I went and here I am.

A&M is the "Practical" side of the usual twin combo of universities you find in American states. As in Iowa, Iowa State. Etc. Sometimes the names aren't that clear-cut, eg, Alabama, and Auburn, but the essentials are the same. The one with the "State" tag on the end turns out engineers and veterinarians, the "non-state" one turns out lawyers and literary critics
and film reviewers. No, wait, get your hand off the button, we don't want to nuke the one with the lawyers. Not yet. Because, see, the overall purpose of this pairing of schools is not to produce scholars at all. They exist, two-by-two, to provide lucrative football rivalries.

Don't believe me? Wander into any bar in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and criticize the University of Alabama's business program. Insult their liberal arts majors. Laugh at their graphic design students, their historians, their biology labs. At worst, people may turn their backs to you and ignore you. But open your yap and say that Bear Bryant was a big sissy, that Auburn has a better stadium, that *Yale* could give the Crimson Tide a run for their money these days, and the building will implode as the citizenry rush in to give you the thrashing you so richly deserve.

In most states, these quaint rivalries quicken the blood on fall days as half-remembered cheers and healthy slugs of bourbon make the alumni feel young again. Then the game is over, the inter-office e-mail jokes start, and it goes on at a low key until the next match.

Not so at A&M. They cannot turn loose of the sublime madness of game-day. It is all they have to do.

Let's examine this rivalry. UT is in Austin, which is the closest thing to Renaissance Florence that you will find in the Central Time Zone. Music. Film. Natural Beauty. Quirky Hippy Chicks. Good Restaurants. Bad Restaurants. Everything In Between Type Restaurants. A Bridge With A Million Bats Living Under It. Tarantino hangs out there, but every place has a downside.

College Station, on the other hand, is no Austin. It is not so much a town as it is the outer residential crust encircling Texas A&M University. A couple of decent bars, a few shopping centers, you know the drill. Up the road 5 miles is an actual decaying town, Bryan. College Station got its name because it was the railroad stop just south of Bryan where the students got off to go to campus. The main thing to do at A&M is join the Corps of Cadets and go marching around in a nightmare combo of Mississippi State Trooper-meets-SA Brownshirt gear.

The usual Athens-Sparta comparisons come up, but if Austin is Athens (the town *is* pompous enough, how I love it...), then College Station is some forgotten village in the hills outside of Sparta.

I suppose the UT-Texas A&M rivalry was the stuff of legends once. Of course, the UT students, if they know when the game is played, probably still want UT to win. But it takes lots of energy to be as cool as a UT student and still go out and do things in Austin. Not much left for football.

The A&M students, or Aggies, on the other hand, never stop thinking about it. I see more anti-UT stickers on cars here than I see pro-A&M ones. I just now saw a girl with 13-0 painted on her overalls, which I suppose is the score of *last year's* game.

There is a certain childlike quality to this. The Aggies want everyone to believe in it as much as they do. They call their school and the surrounding area "Aggieland". They come off as UT's dim-but-eager-to-please little brother, still wearing his costume weeks after Halloween and begging to go trick-or-treating again. When no one else will go along with it, he resorts
to name-calling. UT is not UT to Aggies, it is "t.u.", always backwards, always lower case. It looks like something a crank would use in letters to the editor: "RE: My last week's analysis of "w.g.bush"s energy plan", by Howard Z. Lonelyboy"...

How am I, a UT man, supposed to take a rivalry seriously when the best insult they throw at me is one step above "nanny-nanny-boo-boo"?

They also have a holier-than-thou sticker, one where they take the UT symbol of a longhorn steer, but with the horns snapped off. Underneath is a Bible verse to the effect of "he shall break off the horns of the wicked".

Now, I'm no theologian, but I seem to remember one about "judge not that ye be not judged", and I am pretty sure that if we go back to the original Hebrew. we find that one of the first verses wasn't about creating Adam and Eve at all, that it actually said "Thou shalt not take Bible verses out of context for the purpose of selling bumper stickers that will be slapped on the enormous-in-such-a-way-to-make-Freud-irrelevant trucks of 18-year-olds who think they get bonus points for winging pedestrians cuz, hyuck, hell man they'z in the crosswalk."

OK, so now I'm gonna get judged as well. Great.

The Aggies, when they aren't being scary, are incredibly nice. People smile, say hello, help you with doors and packages. Keep them away from those big trucks, and they'd probably never harm a fly.

Perhaps because the town seems so homogenous, I am constantly spotting interesting people. My new landlord, Mike, was in the Polish Army in '39. Not the place to be. Then he was in a German Prisoner Camp for the rest of the war. Again, not the place to be. Followed by 15 years in the Belgian Congo, a nice double-whammy experience. When that went south, he worked in New Jersey. Hoo-hah. Then College Station. A good man, but with a curse on him for sure.

The handy-man, Harvey, is just like having George Carlin working around the place. Fine-tuned bitterness, hilarious, just like George, down to the New York attitude. But just as Barney the Dinosaur used to scare kids to death when they'd see him walking around in a big purple suit, having your own personal George Carlin, aka Harvey, right there in front of you can give you the willies too. The man is obviously cut off, yet lonely.

I am in a store buying all the little things you need to move in. Dishes, bowls, glasses. I think, "I only need one of everything. It's just me. I don't need the set of four!"

It is a very logical, caustic, Harvey-type statement. After a moment's reflection, I leap across the aisle and get the four-person place-setting.