Chapter 8: Fish Camp

Friday, August 10, 1984

We still got enough sleep. Judging from the way everyone else looked at breakfast, I didn’t think we were the only couple to decide they didn’t need to get to sleep right away.

Could’ve been after-effects from the wine, though. Who knows? It was very good wine.

We had our things packed and were ready to go by noon.

It took about two hours to get to Palestine. The highlight of the drive — an odd one! — was a tiny little town just outside Bryan.

Angie spotted the town sign first.

“North Zulch!” she said. “That’s one heck of a name!”

“It’s pretty small,” Paige said. “Cute, though!”

“Things no man ever wants to hear a woman say,” Jas said, giving me a nudge.

That got a groan from pretty much everyone.

“Is there a South Zulch?” Cammie said.

“Let me see!” Angie said, pulling out the map.

After a bit of flipping around, she said, “Nope. Just North Zulch. That’s it.”

“Weird,” Mel said.

“It’s on account of the war,” Paige said.

“Huh?” Mel said.

“The North Zulchians won and burned South Zulch to the ground,” Paige said.

There was a pause, then Mel smacked her forehead.

“I should have known!” she said.

Paige rolled down her window and shouted, “South Zulch shall rise again!”

Fortunately, there was no one around. Or, at least, I think there wasn’t.

The Lakeview Methodist Conference Center turned out to be pretty nice. Quite large, too! Not much of a surprise there, considering why we were going there, but it seemed like a nice place, as these sorts of places go. The housing was about the closest we’d get to dorm life, and we’d be separated by gender. Furthermore, they intentionally randomized roommate assignments, so every couple would be split up for the weekend.

My guess was that the girls wouldn’t make a point of things, but Angie and Paige were in the public eye, at least slightly. So was I, for that matter. Any of us might be noticed and outed — but we were likely anonymous, at least for now.

The official greeting at A&M — and therefore at Fish Camp — is ‘Howdy!’ That’s often — preferably! — accompanied by giving your name. Those in the Corps of Cadets are required to memorize every name they’re given. We who are not, are not, thankfully. In any case, we heard a lot of ‘howdies’ as we arrived and checked in.

We got checked in without any difficulties and headed off to put our bags away. When I got to my room — which was easy enough to find — I found my roommate already there. He was a big guy — at least three inches taller than me, and likely at least fifty pounds heavier, likely all muscle.

“Howdy!” he said. He had a voice to match the body, with a noticeable East Texas drawl.

“Howdy!” I replied, extending my hand. “Steve Marshall.” I didn’t try for a drawl, but unless you try not to, ‘howdy’ will generally come out in a drawl.

“Beau Grainger,” he said. “Nice to meet you!”

His handshake was the sort of test one gets. I’m pretty sure I passed. Of course, I had plenty of practice, considering Cal and Andy, not to mention Marshall Briggs!

“Where’ya from?” he said, grinning.

“Houston. Memorial High.”

He shook his head. “Groveton,” he said. “Ever heard of it?”

“Nope,” I said, shaking my head, smiling.

“Not that many people have. It’s probably smaller than your high school! Y’all were the 5A champions this year!”

“Yup. I was there.”

“So was I!” he said. “We were the 2A runners-up. Got to play in Baylor Stadium. Most of us decided to watch the 5A game.”

“Cool!” I said. “A couple of my close friends were on the team — and are going to A&M.”

“Heck!” he said, grinning. “Might be my lucky day! I’m hoping to get a shot at the 12th Man kickoff team. I doubt they’d really have an in, but if I get in, any connection to the scholarship guys would be cool. Who’d you know?”

“Andy Smith and Cal Preston. I was in a study group with them throughout high school.”

“Well, I’ll be darned! Those two pretty much won the championship game between them!”

“It was a team effort, and they’d be the first to say it,” I said.

“Well, yeah, but a forced fumble and a safety for Preston and a touchdown for Smith in the last ... what, minute? Two?”

“About that.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Steve Marshall! What’d you do in high school? Not football. Any sports?”

“Nah,” I said.

“Got the build for something,” he said.

I shrugged. “I keep in shape. My competitive skills are in another direction, though. I was in Speech and Debate for four years.”

“Good at it?” he said, grinning.

“National champion this year,” I said, grinning back.

He chuckled.

“Remind me to never argue with you!”

“I will do that!”

“I’ll have to introduce you to some of the guys. There are about eight of us from Groveton here. More here than any other college.”

“I’m sure there are a bunch of people from Memorial here, but I only know of five. My girlfriend, my sister, my former debate partner, and two other friends from my study group and from Drama. I wound up in Drama for three years, too.”

He chuckled again.

“Good thing you didn’t lead with that.”

“Don’t be knocking Drama! Several of my friends are national champions there, too, and one of the biggest guys I know was state champion in one of the drama events — and will be playing for Tulane on their line.”

“That I’d have to see!” he said.

“His name is Marshall Briggs. Played for Houston Booker T. Washington.”

“Never heard of him, but cool that he gets to keep playing.”

“It is. It’s also funny,” I said.

“How so?”

“His first name is Marshall. Our last name is Marshall. My sister was his biggest competition in Drama. She was state runner-up to him, he was national runner-up to her. Fortunately, they’re the best of friends.”

“Darn cool! Gotta love stuff like that!” he said.

“I think we need to be somewhere,” I said, checking my watch.

“Yeah, and best to be on time, too.”

We walked together, talking, to find a bunch of kids assembled in one of the big meeting rooms. I didn’t even try to find the girls. We’d discussed ‘gaming the system’ to try to get paired up, but it wasn’t worth the grief and was contrary to how they wanted to run things. Being somewhere random actually gave me better odds of being with one of the girls than trying to find them.

The head counselor got everyone quieted down about ten minutes later. He stressed the importance of being on time. As the inevitable latecomers straggled in, they turned into object lessons on the kinds of attention being late might bring. It was gentle ribbing, but gentle ribbing in front of hundreds of people is no little thing. Referring back to Public Speaking 101: one of the biggest fears many people have is being laughed at by a crowd.

Once he’d determined that we likely had about all of the kids we were going to have, he handed the program over to a Methodist minister for the inevitable invocation. The invocation itself was religious, of course, but quite bland overall. If one was offended by the very mention of ‘God,’ they wouldn’t like it, but it ascribed very little to ‘God’ other than that said being might be inclined to watch over us and bless us, in some vague and undefined way. Even with us being at a church conference center, it was a less ‘religious’ invocation than I’d heard at many football games.

The head counselor took over again after the invocation. He went over a bunch of the basics: mealtime, large group meeting times, expected bedtime, etc. We weren’t children anymore, and if we wanted to stay up all night we absolutely could, but he stressed that experience showed that people who got a reasonable amount of rest had a better weekend overall.

He didn’t have to sell me on that, but a bunch of these people would probably ignore it. That’s just how hordes of teenagers tend to act.

He strongly stressed that, while public events were co-ed, there was a zero-tolerance policy towards any significant romantic behavior while at Fish Camp itself. Meet a girl, or a guy, and get their number? Fine. Kiss? Once or twice would get you a warning (something I knew quite a bit about!) while anything more would get you kicked out. Our hosts had rules, after all.

Most of the kids hadn’t driven themselves, but rather taken buses from one of the big cities or from College Station. Being kicked out would be a bit more ignominious for them, since they’d either have to have someone come get them or be put in a far-away dorm and wait for the ride back (and everyone on their bus would know they’d gotten kicked out).

I wasn’t that surprised by any of this. A&M is well known for being fairly conservative, and while they’d probably encourage some light dating, they didn’t want this program to turn into a hook-up event, much less have some freshman turn up pregnant before even starting college!

After the orientation, they counted off numbers, breaking us into one of sixteen discussion groups.

After everyone got shifted around, I met the other ‘elevens.’ All of them were new to me. We had four girls and four guys, counting me. The girls were Ashley (from Dallas), Kelly (from Beaumont), Mary (from College Station), and Paula (from San Antonio). The other guys were Ed (from Bellville), Hank (from near San Antonio), and Clay (from Lufkin).

All of them seemed nice enough, and I fit in well enough, it felt like. Would any of us be long-term friends? Who knew? But we’d be fine for the weekend.

We sat by group at dinner. I spotted Jas at a nearby table and gave her a hug and a kiss, which prompted my explaining to my group that she was my long-time girlfriend.

There were a couple of hesitations in there which I suspected were thanks to her being Vietnamese, but I had no real basis for that. It might just as well have been skepticism of the success rate for high school relationships. Who knew?

I waved to Angie, too, but that was it — I didn’t see Paige, Cammie, or Mel.

Two of the girls (Ashley and Mary) were Business majors, so the odds of my seeing them again went up automatically. Kelly was an Education major, and Paula was a Biology major hoping to become a vet. Hank was also Biology pre-vet, so he and Paula immediately had a lot to talk about. Clay was an Agriculture major, while Ed was planning on Mechanical Engineering (and therefore perhaps a future classmate of Mel’s).

None of them seemed like lightweights, which wasn’t a big surprise. A&M wasn’t the hardest school to get into, but it definitely wasn’t the easiest. All of them had to have done fairly well in high school to be here at all.

Of course, we didn’t get into that. There’s little call for discussion of what your SAT score was or what scholarship you might be on or anything else. Instead, we just focused on getting to know each other as people.

Besides that, it’s not like I didn’t personally know people who’d had impeccable SAT scores and great scholarships who crashed and burned in college. Heck, Dave Winton had done a bit of that, and his brother Daniel considerably more. The guy two doors down from me my freshman year came in on the same scholarship I did and was out with a 1.0 GPA by December. Alcohol did him in, but there are so many temptations for a freshman away from home for the first time.

Part of the point of this program — amongst everything else — was to tell all of us that. It’s one thing to know vaguely that some people go off the rails at college. It’s another to have some counselor who’s only a few years older than you talk about their personal experience of seeing friends mess things up.