For one week during football season, "fish," or freshmen, in the Corps of Cadets walk around campus with bottle cap spurs attached to their shoes. These are known as "fish spurs," said Chris Johnson, a junior political science and history major.
The spurs are made of bottle caps usually collected at Northgate on the short alley known as "bottle cap alley," Johnson said. These spurs are removed before going in and out of buildings, but otherwise must be worn by the (freshmen) cadets at all times that they are in their uniform, Johnson said.
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The late 1960's was the heyday of the Southwest Athletic Conference. There were intense rivalries between the schools and football teams of this association of mostly Texan schools. The fiercest rivalry, of course, was between A&M and tu, but there were lesser rivalries, such as between A&M and SMU. Since Aggies were fundamentally farmers, and since the mascot of SMU was a horse, it was only natural that for the week preceding that game, CT fish would have to wear spurs as a part of their uniform.
4 comments:
This is hilarious! The Corp is always good for some form of entertainment.
Yesterday on my walk from the bus stop to my office I was met with that very distinctive jingle that only fish spurs can make.
I had always thought that the number of caps on each spur corresponding to the fish class year. I guess it's too early in the century for that though, because the set I saw was huge.
I think they have you do your class year plus 100, so that those class of '99 cadets could stick it to class of '00 and so on.
Some, like our outfit, only had to have 94 total, so I had 47 on each spur. But others required 94 on each foot, which made for some huge spurs.
Spurs hand-made from coat hangers, with rowels made from flattened bottle caps. The Sunday prior to the A&M-SMU game saw hundreds of fish out in the quad, pounding bottle caps, punching holes in their centers, and bending coat hangers. The coat hangers had to be bent just so, to keep the spurs attached to the shoes, without doing permanent damage to the required spit-shine. And since fish are fiercely loyal to their outfit, it would be only natural that the number of "rowels" on a fish's spurs bear some relation to the outfit number.
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