Bevo: The Real Story

I guess you guys need a shot in the arm every once in a while to remind yourselves how much you don’t care about A&M by dredging up 95 year old minutiae. Hell I’d probably do it as well if it were so obvious my master scheme to join the PAC-10 (a longhorn fascination since the SWC breakup) was foiled by your friends from College Station.

HA! HA! HA! HA!

GESIS, is this the best we can do between realignment and 2-a-days?

Bill – You’re usefulness has essentially expired. Get better at commenting or fuck off.

I’d long believed that our beloved ungulate got his name from a pack of mischievious Aggies who branded the poor beast with the score 13-0, took turns sexually molesting him with the help of distracting sugar cubes and a step ladder, and elected him as Corps Sweetheart, 1917. I may have embellished parts of that.

Nobody embellishes better.

Scipio – Interesting read as always. I think I prefer the inaccurate, “romantic” telling that was handed down to me by my father. I’m fairly certain that version, the wrong one, is the one I’ll relay to my own son when the time comes. No harm I figure.

Reality – You’re the shining example of why aggie leads the nation in self delusion. That you and many other aggies think that they were in anyway “in the driver’s seat” is cute, not surprising and hilarious. As a fan of the ags you’re face with two options. Either a&m did not have an unconditional offer from the SEC and had to scurry back to their Longhorn owners with their tails tucked between their legs like scolded puppies when it the SEC told them that if they didn’t bring their hot sister they weren’t getting into the party. OR the aggies did have an unconditional offer, but the a&m administration so enjoys the buttfucking your university gets from UT (in regards to athletic success, national prestige, national and state-wide popularity, recruiting, financial resources, etc.) that instead of plunging into the deep waters of the SEC, they came prancing back with extra lube.

So yeah your options are scolded dogs or prancing fairies. I guess compared to how you’re usually viewed, that might be an improvement.

Next up, the real story of The Incredible Sulk.

I suppose next you’re going to tell me that a Rice graduate didn’t design the Tower to look like an owl on UT’s campus, or that Jester wasn’t designed by a prison architect, or that the masturbating George Washington wasn’t a prank by a disgruntled sculptor, or that albino squirrels aren’t magical good luck omens that grant A+’s if you see one during exams. You’re ruining my rose-colored memories of freshman orientation.

Still, I’m glad to know that Bevo wasn’t defined by Aggies the way their existence is defined by us. I guess.

I hope that come September you fair-weather history fans don’t disappear into the woodwork.

I learned this story when I was an orientation advisor. I’ve also heard that A&M still has the framed hide somewhere, which, if true, makes it even more ridiculous that they believe the “changing 13-0 to Bevo” story. But again, I have only been to the business school and the stadium at that campus, so I have no idea if they really do have that hide hanging somewhere. Regardless, “Bevo” predates the branding, so there you go.

And no, the clock tower wasn’t designed by a Rice grad. From what I recall, it was some French guy that designed it. But it has been a long time since I heard that story. But the albino squirrel story… that one is TOTALLY true. :-)

http://www.utexas.edu/tours/mainbuilding/people/cret.html

Please use your powers to find film of Bevo VI stampeding the Rice bench.

Actually found a bunch of old Alcaldes on Google Books. Good stuff here.

And yet Musberger will trot out the 13-0 to BEVO story like clockwork during the first Bevo screenshot in the second quarter.

My grandfather used to relate stories from my Greatgrandmother, who owned a boarding house down by Waller Creek, of Comanche raids out of the Hill Country into the West Austin settlements. And a couple of floods that came all the way up to sixth. They used to have a picture from one of them up at the Nighthawk in north Austin.

I’ve always felt a nutless, drugged up bovine was quite the apt representative of the students of your fine institution of higher learning.

Longhorns and Aggies were fucking around on a football field playing grabass, while we were engaged in taming this land. We sent the money back to you and continued playing cowboy for another 90 years. You can thank us for putting a roof over your heads in the cafeteria.

Thanks for this, Scipio. Bevo the beverage opens up a window on the history of the ‘teens and ’twenties. It’s still unclear whether it was an alcoholic drink—and if so, how much alcohol it had in it, and when this may have changed. In December of 1914, for instance, the Supreme Court of West Virginia (a state which was dry by 1914) upheld an indictment against a man for selling “spiritous liquors, and ‘Bevo’, a drink of that kind and nature.”

Bevo was so successful that other breweries imitated it: Pabst’s “Pablo,” Miller’s “Milo,” Blatz’s “Barma.” The claim was that these were brewed extracts—like beer and ale, but with the alcohol removed. Still, I doubt they were completely or always alcohol-free.

Even the unions were unsure about this, debating whether it was a soft drink or a beer. This was important because, not surprisingly, union rules were firm about who could drive and stock what, and how much they were to be paid for doing so.

As always, I appreciate the write-up, Scipio.

When the legend becomes fact, print the one that improves your brand?

Bravo!

Having attended a high school with the colors maroon and white and the mascot moniker Farmers (sometimes Fighting Farmers) where, on occasions when the teacher would duck out of the classroom on business, the FFA boys would often casually reminisce aloud in mixed company about their latest livestock assignations, I can truly appreciate Scipio’s embellishments.

My grandparents lived in Elgin, and when I was visiting them in my early youth, we would sit on their front porch and listen to their stories. My grandmother told of one of her uncles who was ambushed and scalped by Indians. It didn’t kill him, and he crawled to a creek, removed his sock and soaked it in the stream, then applied it to his scalped head.

He got back on his horse and made it home, living to tell the story.

The tale of how Bevo got his name has been shattered.

I haven’t felt this way since I learned Santa Claus wasn’t real.

They ate Bevo.

OTH, are you from Lewisville near Dallas? I was there in the past year for work and was welcomed to the town with a water tower that read Lewisville Fighting Farmers and a picture of a buff overall’d but shirtless farmer with a pitchfork. Very menacing. I pulled over and took a picture.

Scipio, nice piece. I like the idea of letting Bevo roam the campus. When that idea failed, someone said “fuck it, let’s eat him.” Perfect.

Re Bevo the near-beer, I’ve been to the Bevo Mill, a restaurant, in St. Louis. It was started by Anheuser-Busch at about the same time they started selling Bevo. No UT paraphanalia in there.

Phenomenal -
 
Thanks. I thought about titling the piece “When Mascots Were Food.”
The sensibilities of that era were outstanding.

Phenomenal—Yup, LHS class of ‘67. That watertower was my bitch. But my younger brother, stuck there after I’d already spent a couple of years in Austin, had the brainstorm to climb the tower and, rather than spray SRS ’69 all over it, carefully painted all the Ls to Es. The next day or two, the Dallas Morning News ran a front page 3-col photo of the tower in EEWISVIEEE. The buff overalled dude came many years later. We had a little bright-eyed gnome with a straw sticking outta his mouth.

Bateshorn,

“My grandfather used to relate stories from my Greatgrandmother, who owned a boarding house down by Waller Creek, of Comanche raids out of the Hill Country into the West Austin settlements.”

Cool. Next time you come to town and take me to lunch I’d like to hear some of those.