Texas Tech Pink Raiders

My son and his five loads of laundry have come home for spring break. I'm glad to have him back. He's looking healthy and happy, and I'm willing to ignore his hair. I suspect barbering has not yet been discovered in West Texas.

Mike has acquired a fair collection of Red Raider t-shirts and sweatshirts, but they look like they've yet to encounter a dorm laundry room. They are so very bright red, unlike his brother's Longhorn garments in college year four. The other clue that the Tech spirit attire has not been laundered is that Mike's "whites" are still white, not pink.

Can't exactly say I was proud to be one of the "Sons of the Pink and Black (fight for your alma mater)." Millard Lefler Junior High didn't have a mascot, but the school colors really were pink and black. It was a huge embarrassment to Alma Mater's sons in their difficult early adolescent identity crises. Alma Mater's daughters of 1970 weren't amused either. Pink and black were soooo old-fashioned, so Fifties, so poodle skirt. We wore fishnet hose with Twiggy minidresses, carried our day-glow "Slicker" notebooks and suede-fringed shoulderbag purses. We looked groovy in Jean Shrimpton Yardley white frosted lipstick and blue eyeshadow. We knew how to dance to the Jackson Five, and to chant, "War! Who cares? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" We listened to the Top-Forty countdown on our transistor radios every Saturday. We knew we should go to the refreshment table when the local band started playing "In-a-gadda-da-vida" during the dance in the gym. When the song dragged on and on, we could count on an unglazed donut food fight. In my mental file cabinet, in the "pink" folder, there's an image of chewed Double Bubble gum stuck in the combination lock of my salmon-hued locker outside Mr. Troester's social studies classroom.

Mr. Troester's student teacher assigned me a report and class presentation on the 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu. I wrote my index cards in turquoise ink with circles to dot the i's, but I was being forced into a world with larger issues than onion rings at the drive-in, and friendship rings.

In-a-gadda-da-vida, baby,
Don't you know that I'll always be true...

Spill the wine and take that pearl...
I was once out strolling one very hot summer's day...
I dreamed I was in a Hollywood movie, and that I was the star of the movie.
This really blew my mind, the fact that me, an overfed, long-haired leaping gnome should be the star of a Hollywood movie...
I was taken to a place, the hall of the mountain kings...
Out of the middle came a lady.
She whispered in my ear something crazy.
Spill the wine and take that pearl...