With the Woodson closed I’ve been digging around in my laptop quite a bit and I keep being surprised by what’s in there. This image of the band, dated 1927, stopped me in my tracks just now:
Those uniforms were really spectacular and I bet they allowed a relatively small band make a big impression, as here on a visit up to A&M:
But what caught my attention was something else altogether. See where they are? It’s here, just to the left of this little rarely photographed spot I was worrying about last summer. Where they’re standing is just out of this frame to the left:
Yeah, I know it’s not much but it kind of made my afternoon. Go here for the original post about what else we can see across Main Street in this 1918 image right above.
Bonus: What was I doing on February 1, 2017? It appears I was nosing around in Abercrombie, checking on some renovations. I don’t remember this but it certainly seems right.
I’m delighted to see five (!!) piccolo players in that ’27 band.
According to a roster posted in the 1927 Campanile (this image is from 11/26), they are:
Ernest Yeatts
(W. R. “Bob” Talley (Robert William), *claimed)
William M. Rust, Jr. (soph)
Sterling Hatfield (soph)
William “Bill” J. Grace
* Bob’s name isn’t on the roster, but he claimed membership in ’26 in his senior bio, and the photo with five piccolos backs this up
Are those the tracks for the old trolley that ran out from town along Main Street?
The suggestion is that the picture was taken when the band visited Texas A&M. I imagine they got off the train at the “College” station in Brazos County, and were crossing the RR tracks to enter the adjacent campus. (There was no City of College Station until 1938.)
Isn’t Abercrombie scheduled for demolition? If so save those pictures so a future historian can see. 😃
This image is from the Thanksgiving weekend in 1926, as reported in the 1927 Campanile.
Could someone with more knowledge than I provide possible identification of the non-band group dressed in what appears to be military uniforms over to the left of the picture that has the passenger train in the background? I realize that because I live in Brazos County, the A&M Corp uniforms are on my brain. If it is members of the Corp, the uniforms haven’t changed much as far as I can see.
They are very likely members of the Corps of Cadets, wearing the uniform(s) of that era.
There are no photos in the newspapers of either school for that weekend, but there are several in the 1927 Long Horn showing much the same mix of uniforms in the crowds.