For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. In this humor-filled April 1983 Classic, alum Andy ‘Ace’ Collins recounts the mischief, roommates, and unforgettable characters of his mid-1970s Baylor days — from a hapless run-in with Coach Grant Teaff and the mascot bear to a shoe-polish prank gone wrong. Along the way, tales of eccentric friends, a Christmas ‘gift’ gone hilariously awry, and a near run-in with the Waco police capture the chaotic, close-knit spirit of college friendship.
Professors who labored so hard to get me through their courses will be disappointed, and the men and women who wrote the textbooks that I dusted off and read once in a while will probably be a bit shaken too, but my memories of Baylor are not of classes or books, but rather of people and relationships.
As the historians measure time, it has just been a few moments since I walked the Baylor campus and its maze of sidewalks in the early and mid-seventies, and yet my classmates and I have now gone on to the “real world,” and in the process have lost a bit of the spontaneous nature that made those days so much fun. Still, for a moment or two, when I return to those familiar paths, I am once again living those magical days when success meant having two dates in the same weekend, not having the house paid for by the time the kids got ready to go to college.
One of the moments that I remember best about my early years at Thee University was meeting Coach Grant Teaff. He was almost a saint—after all, he had given each of us a certain feeling of respectability. Along with several hundred other students, I met him one evening at the BSU. Naturally I wrote home to Arkansas to brag about meeting the man who was giving the home-favorite Razorbacks so much trouble. I probably rubbed it in pretty well, too.
It couldn’t have been more than two weeks later that Duncan Manning, the bear trainer, and I were walking the mascot to a pep rally. Striding along at a rather crisp clip, I felt like I had the world by the horns. Everything had been going my way in recent weeks. I had been having success getting dates to the football games, I had been getting good grades on tests, and most important, I had been winning our nightly card game of hearts. I was filled with sophomoric confidence. I was very cocky, self-assured (after all, I had had the same major for almost a semester and a half), and feeling like a true man of the world.
Just before we rounded the corner to the Union Bowl, we ran into Coach Teaff. His face showed an instant spark of recognition, and his voice was enthusiastic as he greeted us.
“Hello, Duncan! Hey, Andy. How is it going, fellow?”
I was sincerely moved. Here was a man whom I had met in the company of hundreds of people who not only remembered meeting me, but remembered my name too. My ego had never been soaring so high as it was at that moment. I really felt important now.
Then it hit me. At first I refused to admit it. Surely what I was thinking couldn’t be true. Still, as I looked at the bear cub walking on my right, my confidence started to waver. I tried to shake the awful thought from my mind, but I couldn’t. My soaring ego did a nosedive and came crashing down. I stopped walking and watched as Duncan and the bear went on ahead.
Duncan turned and said, “Are you coming, Ace?”
I just shook my head and answered, “No, you and Andy go on without me. I think I’ll watch from the back.”
Coach Teaff hadn’t even noticed me on the street. He had been greeting the bear. I had been knocked off my “high-horse” and out of the spotlight by a simple-minded, four-footed mammal. As my chin hit my chest, I resolved to start keeping better company, or at least company that would allow me a piece of the spotlight.
Duncan was a case. He was then and remains today one of the most eccentric personalities that I have ever come in contact with. He has a sarcastic wit and easy smile. In combination they could be lethal.
Duncan hailed from Gatesville, but during our college days he could have best been compared to British actor David Niven. He looked nothing like the famous actor, but his mannerisms were comparable, with a certain flair for charm and grace, and a deep love for almost anything expensive. Of all my friends he was the only one who seemed totally sure of which fork to use first at a formal dinner. Whenever any of the gang that I ran around with were at a banquet, we would always look at Duncan to see which piece of silver to pick up first.
Duncan lived with a host of different people during his tenure at Baylor. One of them was a hearts-playing buddy of mine named Keith Moore.
In a word, Keith was cool. He was almost impossible to rattle or excite.
He had his act together.
Keith was majoring in both accounting and religion, which may have been the reason he spent an extra year on campus. I was curious about his choice of these two seemingly unrelated majors, but for two full years I never asked. Then one night during a hearts game, I decided that I just had to know.
Keith was talking about having a religion final and finance final on the same day. He was dreading it, not enough to quit playing cards and go study, but dreading it nonetheless.
I piped up and asked him, “What kind of a person would major in both religion and accounting? What do you plan on doing with them?”
Keith pulled the queen of spades from his hand, laid it on the table, smiled, and said, “I want to be qualified for something when I get to heaven.”
I barely heard his answer, too busy counting the points that he had just stuck me with, but Si Ragsdale bit. “What do you mean, something to do when you get to heaven?”
Duncan quickly added, “If you make it.”
Keith peered back through his wire-rimmed glasses, and with a face as straight as a West Texas road replied, “I’ll be qualified to account for my sins.”
Keith then played his last card and won the game.
Keith was working his way through school, employed by Seventh and James Baptist Church as a janitor. This was not a job that caused hours of stimulating conversation, but it did buy books.
Annually, around Christmas, the Baylor Chamber of Commerce made a late night tour of the girls’ dorms singing carols. We made quite a production of this, taking along a small pump organ to provide background music, having one man in charge of conducting, and all of us carrying white candles.
In 1975 Duncan decided that the caroling was spirited enough, but the image that we were projecting was not correct. He had always been bothered by the fact that we dressed in regular clothes. He felt robes would add just the right touch.
It took Duncan quite a few hours to convince Keith that Seventh and James would not mind if we borrowed their choir robes for one Thursday evening. So, Keith, Duncan, and Bill Jones made a late night visit to the Seventh and James choir room, borrowed forty robes, and then sneaked back out. The plans were to return them just after midnight.
Our caroling was well received. The robes may have been the force that enabled us to hit notes that we had never hit before. At both Russell and Collins Halls we were called back to do several encores. But at midnight it all became very clear: there was candle wax all over the robes. With Sunday services just three days away, we were in trouble. I will never forget Duncan’s saying, “I wonder why we did this, anyway?”
I will also never forget the glare that he got back from Keith.
Friday morning found us dropping the robes off at the cleaners where Duncan had his shirts done. (This was an exciting discovery for me. Back where I came from everybody washed their shirts in a machine. I thought that a dry cleaners was just for suits. In one semester I had learned the order of usage of forks and all about cleaning shirts. And my folks were wondering if I was getting anything out of my college education!) We found out that it would cost us extra, but we would be able to get the robes cleaned and out by Saturday afternoon.
On Saturday we picked them up, with plans to sneak them back into the church. Our only problem was the amount of the cleaning bill. Neither Keith, Bill, nor I had the money, so we charged it to Duncan’s account. I have always wondered how he explained that bill to his folks.
Christmas was a special time of the year, a time for both giving and getting. One year a beautiful young Baylor coed named Judy Crow gave her boy friend, Roland Johnson, a gift that meant a great deal to him. She essentially sent him a “Dear John” Christmas card. Judy was just not ready to settle down, and Roland was the one who was in line to get the old heave-ho.
Most of us did not feel too sorry for Roland. After all very few of us had ever had the chance to take someone as beautiful as Judy out even once. Still, he did pine for a while.
Greg Stroud did notice Roland’s anguish, and he took it upon himself to find a Christmas present that would at least give Roland back some of his dignity. Greg was very proud of himself, and he told us all that this beautifully wrapped gift would be just the item that Roland needed to remind him of the time that he and Judy had together.
I think Roland was moved by Greg’s thoughtfulness. He took the box wrapped in red and green and tore into it with a vigor we all thought he had lost. Suddenly the smile on his face turned to a deep, questioning look. Just as suddenly, Greg hit the door running. Within a matter of seconds Roland’s size twelves were out the door and in hot pursuit.
Everyone in the room was puzzled. What could the gift be? I got up and walked over to the now partially unwrapped box and peeked in. Inside were an empty bottle of Old Crow whiskey and a dead crow. I shook my head. Some people just have a knack for getting the right gift at the right time. Nothing could have described Roland’s relationship with Judy Crow any better than Greg’s gift.
Of course gifts weren’t given just at Christmas. Many fortunate people got them the year round. As with the crow, it was the spirit with which the gift was given, and not the gift that was most important.
One of the most intelligent, attractive, wonderful, and special people that I had the opportunity to know at Baylor was an Abilene beauty, Jan Greer. Jan was a winner, a natural leader, who always had a big smile on her face. Because of these attributes, she attracted gentleman callers like a magnet. She practically needed an answering service to keep up with all her phone calls. It seemed that almost every guy at Baylor wanted to get a date with her.
One Thursday evening I was lucky enough to get to take her out to eat. We were just friends, so it wasn’t really a date. But to me it was a special evening.
The next Tuesday I had lunch with Duncan Manning, Tim Holcomb, Jay Rice, and Bill Jones. Jan’s name came up in the conversation. I mentioned that I had taken her to supper on Thursday. Tim patted me on the back and said that he had gone to a movie with her on Friday. A little set back. Bill chimed in that he had taken her out to eat on Saturday. Laughing, Duncan added that he had gone out with her on Sunday evening. We all looked at Jay. Jay smiled and finished his last bite of hamburger. Then he admitted that he had played tennis with Jan on Sunday afternoon.
Tim felt that we should commemorate the weekend in some symbolic way. He suggested that we all send flowers to Jan. Then he smiled and said, “I know just what should go on the card.”
Later that afternoon Jan received roses with a card that simply stated, “Thanks for meaning so much to so many of us.” At the time it was meant to be taken as a joke, but in retrospect it was a sincere commentary on just how many lives Jan Greer touched while she was at Baylor. I imagine that she is still making people smile now.
Jan took those roses and the card very well. None of us ever heard a word about them. Still, she had a plan and was waiting until just the right moment to spring it. That moment came on Halloween.
I lived at an old house on Speight Street about five blocks from campus. The wind would actually blow through the walls. We slept in sweatsuits with hoods just to stay warm in the winter. Still, it was cheap, and it was home to my roommates and me. My roommates numbered in the thousands if you counted the cockroaches, crickets, and mice. If you counted only the human animals, we numbered four.
Virgil Vickery was a graduate student who spent most of his time out with his girl friend or in the library. Tim Holcomb, when he wasn’t dating the same people that I was, was a fifth-year religion major who spent most of his time playing cards and reading. He studied only the night before exams. He still made great grades, but staying up all night cramming would occasionally throw his concentration for a loop. Once in Prof. Bob Reid’s Greek history class, he fell asleep during a lecture. He woke up two hours later, the lone person left in the room. Another time he was sleeping with his chair leaning up against the back wall during a religion lecture. This time he woke up right before his desk hit the floor. Fortunately he wasn’t hurt.
The other member of the household was Mike “Cowboy” Thomas. Cowboy was a junior with a major that changed as much as the Texas weather. He was 6’1″ tall, weighed well over 200 pounds, and had a full red beard. His beard matched his hair in color, but his beard grew all over his face, while the hair on his head was already retreating for higher ground. Cowboy’s other outstanding feature was his vision, or lack of it. Without his glasses he was legally blind. He actually had to have his glasses on in order to see well enough to put in his contact lenses.
His nickname was the name by which most people knew him. He almost always dressed in snap shirts, Wranglers and boots. On weekends he would also add a hat. For years we naturally assumed that he was a man of the range. Appearances and names can be deceiving. Two years after we all left Baylor, I found out that the only horse that he had ever ridden was at a pony ride at the circus when he was six.
Because of two seemingly unrelated events the entire household was now limited to using my 1968 red VW Bug, Old Bessie, as our sole transportation. Cowboy had blown the engine in his blue VW on the way to an Arkansas game a few weeks before, so his car was now calling Mount Pleasant home. Virgil and Tim had lost their vehicles on the same night, and at the very same instant.
We had always parked our four cars in a straight line in front of our house. With Cowboy’s car in the shop, our parking line had shrunk to three. I drove to visit some friends one evening, and dropped Virgil off at the library on my way. He would walk home later. Tim and Cowboy were home studying. Virgil’s Buick and Tim’s Malibu remained in front of the house.
At about nine o’clock, a car rounded the corner of Eleventh and Speight, took the corner too wide and proceeded to plow into Tim’s blue Malibu. Tim’s car lurched forward, hit Virgil’s white Buick, which then hopped the curb and struck a live oak tree in the front yard. The crash totaled all three vehicles.
Tim and Cowboy slowly came out onto the front porch. They couldn’t believe their eyes. Two hours later when Virgil came home, he couldn’t either. When I returned, my car had the whole curb to itself.
A month after we had given the roses to Jan, I had all but forgotten about the incident. So on Halloween night, Cowboy and I went to bed early, never expecting anything.
It must have been about midnight when I thought that I heard noise coming from out in front of the house. I got up, looked out the window and saw four people gathered around my white VW. I figured it was just some kids soaping windows. Then I realized that Old Bessie was red, not white. I looked again and recognized Jan Greer and one of her good friends, Marsha Kolinek. They were proudly staring at my car. They had taken shoe polish and painted it completely white. Tires, windows, bumpers, everything was white.
I woke Cowboy up, and we went charging out of the house in an effort to catch them. Wiping the sleep from our eyes, we watched them speed away in Marsha’s red and white Chevelle.
Cowboy and I were not going to overreact to this situation. After all, almost two and a half years of college had matured us. Handling this minor prank in a manner that showed our true character, we wiped off the windows and lights and lit out after the little hoodlums. By the time we caught up with them, they were safely inside Memorial Hall. Fortunately, Marsha’s car was outside the dorm, parked on the street.
Marsha prized this car. Her folks had given it to her, and she had promised to take good care of it. She always kept it clean, and there was not a scratch on it anywhere. Cowboy and I had brought white shoe polish with us, but it didn’t seem original to repeat their prank. So we decided to borrow her hubcaps and not give them back until after her parents came to visit her.
We left Old Bessie running in the middle of the street, jumped out, and popped off the caps. Cowboy finished first. I was just pulling Marsha’s back hubcap when my redheaded roommate hollered, “Ace, it’s the cops!”
As I ran toward the car, hubcaps in hand, I looked up the street and saw the patrol car. Cowboy was already in the driver’s side, so I hopped in the passenger side. Knowing how easy it would be to explain our actions to the Waco Police, we did what any upstanding young men would do. We gunned Old Bessie and scooted down the street like a bat out of Waxahachie.
Here we were with stolen property in our car, fleeing the police, and the first thing that Cowboy did was to stop at the first stop sign we came to.
“What are you doing, giving them a chance?” I asked.
Cowboy glanced back, and then realized what he had done. Overcompensating, he attempted to shove the VW into first gear and peel out. He killed the engine. Frantically reaching down to find the ignition switch, he turned the key so hard that it broke off in his hand. The car was now running, but if he let it die again, so would we.
Peeling out, Cowboy gunned down Speight Street until he reached Ninth. He turned right on Ninth, and then he slid the VW around a corner and into an alley. It was a piece of driving that Burt Reynolds would have been proud of.
Headed down this blind alley at about fifty, we hit a huge hole, and Cowboy’s glasses fell off. Now I was not only carrying stolen property in a car with a broken ignition switch, but my getaway driver was blind. I felt very safe.
Somehow we made it to our backyard, pulled Old Bessie through the back gate, and hid her under a tarp. We then went into the house, and Cowboy called a girl friend that was a police dispatcher. He found out that the police did have a certain interest in an unknown white VW. We spent what was left of the night washing off the white shoe polish. So ended my life in crime.
All in all. Cowboy was great. He put up with my humor. He was always respectful of me, and we liked the same kind of music. He was also one of the few people I knew who switched majors more than I did.
For some reason, everywhere Cowboy turned someone was witnessing to him. I thought it was the image that his style of dress gave him, but that theory literally went down the drain one night when a young man gave him a religious tract while he was taking a shower.
Cowboy wasn’t even immune to this concern for his soul when he was out on a date. While the rest of us were going to movies, concerts, or sitting on benches looking at the stars, he was generally getting another gospel tract and discussing scripture. All of his theological dates and all the folks who wanted to save or resave his soul began to give him a complex. He was starting to become quite insecure.
One Saturday night while we were still living in the dorm, I returned from a very nice evening of pizza and a movie shared with a beautiful freshman from Canyon to discover Cowboy sitting on his bunk reading Revelation. It seems that he had been given another tract and had spent the evening discussing the Second Coming.
I glanced over at his desk. It was covered with tracts. He must have had the only complete collection on campus. By now he had to be the best-versed Biblical authority at Baylor outside the department of Religion.
After I got into bed and was about to drift off to sleep, Cowboy started to talk about the major text of the sermon that he had received on his date. I was only halfway listening because of all the other activity in and around our room.
In the hallway a few of the guys were throwing a football back and forth. In our room the stereo was playing a Boots Randolph album in an attempt to drown out the noise in the hall, and our hamsters were digging in their cages. Our room was next to the tennis courts, where a couple of people were playing tennis. The noise was not the only factor that was disturbing — the tennis court lights also shined through our blinds. Concentrating on what my roommate was saying was a real challenge.
I was just about to drift off to sleep for the second time when the strangest thing happened. The tennis court lights were turned off, the football game in the hallway ceased, the record on the turntable finished, and our hamsters quit digging. The room was completely black and silent. It was so peaceful.
I didn’t hear anything for a minute and then I heard Cowboy’s voice, a bit shaky and very serious.
“Ace,” came the whisper, “you still there?”
Cowboy walked the aisle at Seventh and James the next day. Since that time he has backslid a little and is now a Methodist.
As a postscript, I must add that the next time that I ran into Coach Teaff was while attending a United Way breakfast in Hillsboro, Texas, where he was to speak. He and I arrived at the same time. As he got out of his car, he walked over my way. We exchanged greetings, and then he continued walking until he came to my car, a 1930 Model A. At least it wasn’t a bear this time!
I have since sold the car to a man in Bolivia.
