Baylor Bears - Part 1 of 2

For a long time - years - Jerry has wanted to go back to Baylor, where he played basketball his Freshman year to look around the campus and maybe see a game.  His good friend, Don Trull, who was a star quarterback during that time, called Jerry and said he was going to the game and would get us tickets if we wanted to come up. 

I had also wanted to visit Mom and Dad's graves and refresh the flowers for fall - Ed and Uncle Bo have been carrying the load on flowers and keeping a US flag flying in honor of Dad - and I had not been back to Rockdale since the funeral last spring.  So we decided to take advantage of the tickets and then swing back by Rockdale after the game, staying at the Rainbow Courts.

We arrived at Baylor and it didn't take long to locate the Gym where Jerry played basketball and spent hours running the bleachers for exercise.

And the Student Center where he studied.

His dorm has been replaced by this beautiful facility ... the name is the same, but it didn't look like this when he was there in the early 60's!

Of course, we had to check out the bear den.  He said it's in the same place, but these bears enjoy a pretty fancy set-up with tree trunks and water feature to keep them entertained and cool.  That said, it was 100 degrees on Saturday!

We tailgated with Trull and other Baylor alumni, then he got us into the Letterman's Club to cool off in the AC.  Thank goodness - I might not have made it to game time without that AC break!  Lots of Alums congratulating Don on his upcoming induction into the NFL Hall of Fame, this December in New York.

We got to see a fun Baylor tradition - the running of the Freshmen - where they all pack into the end zone and are led onto the field by Baylor President, Ken Starr.  For all his "fame", he seems like a pretty down-to-earth guy - he was hanging around the tailgate area and talking to people and looked like he was having fun running around in the heat with the kids.

Look at them all in the end zone!

The game turned into a blow-out and with the TV time-outs one quarter took an hour to play.  Since we needed to get to Rockdale and check in, we decided to leave the game just before halftime.  The timing was good, as we got into a strange weather situation ... big dark clouds, with cloud-to-ground lightening and at least one funnel cloud that never dropped low enough to be a danger.  It was sort of pretty with the open fields under the dark cloud.

As we were cruising down 79, we saw many strong downbursts that sent tree limbs to the road and these strange swirls of gravel/dust in the air.  All of this and not one single drop of rain.  At one point, we couldn't avoid a limb in the road and ran right over it - we were in Jerry's car, not mine, so we were lower to the ground.  We sort of flinched and kept going, but later realized we had a problem.

As we were nearing Rockdale, we drove into a storm and that was a good thing because the whole area really needs the rain.  We checked into our little Carriage House at Rainbow Courts and by then the rain was barely falling.  It lasted a short time, but certainly not enough to dent the drought.

Although they were in hiding until later that evening, we did see the 6 (maybe more) four legged, furry residents of the Rainbow Courts.  I was prepared this trip with cans of cat food that ours won't eat.  This friendly, sleek black cat was grateful for the meals!