Posted by Jim Pell
I have a B team story that I hope some of my teammates will add to. It still is kind of amazing to me when I think about it. Coach must have decided at the last minute to take us B teamers to the 1957 state tourney in Austin. Otherwise, I don’t know why he would have put us up at the Acorn Motel. The A team and Coach stayed at the Mt. Vernon Motel, as I recall, and I suspect it was probably near the U.T. Campus. Coach Henry Bauerschlag, our B team coach, stayed with the A team at the Mt. Vernon as well. We, on the other hand, were dropped off at the Acorn, which was at least a mile south of Town Lake. The buildings are still there but it has been converted into condos with all the large, beautiful oak trees still in place.
The interesting thing about this is that we were both un-chaperoned and on foot. Heck, we were tickled to be un-chaperoned for three days, and being on foot didn’t seem to be a problem, except that it took so long to walk the three or four miles from the Acorn to Gregory Gym. Maybe Coach thought all that walking would tire us out so much we wouldn’t even think about getting into trouble. We probably thought about buying some alcohol, but I think we were never able to manage that. There was one incident of experimentation by one of our teammates, who will remain nameless, but otherwise I think our stay at the Acorn was pretty uneventful. We were very happy to be along for the ride and appreciated Coach Carlisle’s generosity.
It's time somebody commented on this. I wouldn't want Jim or anybody else to think his B group was the only one with more than a few "cut-ups". Coaches Carlisle and Bauerschlag also took our 1954 B team to Austin. The varsity was not in the State Tournament that year, but we all got to go anyway. I can't remember, but the varsity probably stayed at the Mount Vernon you mentioned. I remember our team staying there in '56.
The B team stayed at the Driskill Hotel, a far nicer place than the Mount Vernon - with some differences. We all stayed in one room and nobody had a bed. We all slept on the floor in what must have been some kind of ballroom or meeting room. It was so big there were several floor-to-ceiling stone pillars throughout. We loved it, of course, but talk about an invitation for trouble, that was it. But disciplined as we were, we drew no complaints from any guests or management. There really wasn't much time for that though, considering how much time we spent on our hands and knees picking up every last feather from the carpet after the most bodacious, in the dark pillow fights I've ever been a part of. That was my last pillow fight, in fact. Nobody ever knew for sure who started it. To this day, I believe it was the Smith boys, Garland and Lawrence. The fight continued until a loud boinnnnnnng sound prompted the turning on of the lights. I can see clearly, even now, Paul Blanchard standing in the middle of the melee, his specs hanging from one ear, totally covered with feathers. We picked up every trace of a feather in that "ballroom", put them all in a very well stuffed pillowcase along with several busted pillow cases and sent it sailing out a window. I don't recall who got the honors for that, but several slept without pillows that night. We were a little concerned about who may have gotten bombed on the street below, but the feathers landed on the roof of a lower addition to the hotel. We often wondered how long it stayed there. As far as we know, Coach Carlisle and Coach Henry never heard about that.
Posted by: Patrick Jensen | January 23, 2006 at 03:20 PM