Week 4: Renegade Foxhole Aggie Muster

For those of you just joining us, I am counting down the remaining weeks until my summer vacation from my teaching job by having one "adventure" per week, and documenting said adventure here. 

Week four's adventure took me to the elegant and exclusive Headliner's Club to celebrate Aggie Muster.  Muster is a Texas A&M tradition dating back as far as 1883 whereby Aggies around the world pause and honor fellow Aggies who have left this life over the past year.  Apparently there are Musters taking place at 300 locations world wide, and the official Austin Muster location is the capitol building.  For the past three years my family (immediate plus our extended Austin Aggie family) have attended the Muster at the capitol, but this year we decided to go rogue and have our own private and exclusive 7 person Muster at the Headliner's club (aka the Foxhole).

This is our view from our private room at the Headliner's Club.  Note that you can see the capitol from our foxhole, so, technically, we were "there".

From our cocktail area in the foxhole (did you know foxholes had cocktail seating?  I didn't.  Very New Army.) we enjoyed this view:

This is our host, Andy.  He's the one who suggested we skip the crowds at the capitol and go renegade, and I think I can say we're all grateful for his insight in addition to his hospitality.

No Aggie event is complete without a fair amount of good bull.  Here are Jimmy and Ronnie commencing with the bull.

Then arrives Fred with his own contributions of bull.

Of course there is always lovely wifely accompaniment mitigating the sting of all bull, making everyone look good, and lending credence to the naming of our venue the "fox" hole.

Cocktails and hilarity ensue, and then we move on to dinner.

Our beautifully set table gave us maximum enjoyment of the view as the sun set over downtown Austin.

Thanks to Fred's superb planning, we were able to incorporate some Muster traditions into our celebratory dinner.  I read the invocation.  Dad read Silver Taps.  Ronnie led the Roll Call for the Absent, and we all said a general "here" for all fallen Aggies.  We had a particular moment for Clarice's father and for fellow Bellaire High School grad and Class of '64 Aggie Jerome Levy, a good friend of Ronnie's.  I think Fred had planned to read The Last Corps Trip, but he didn't have a chance to get around to it before the bull started flying again.  Something about a squirrel?  I'm not sure...


All in all, it was a most lovely evening complete with excellent company, delicious food, a phenomenal view, and a thriving Aggie spirit.  It was, I'm quite certain, the best Muster out of all 300+ Muster locations of 2011.

Gig em!