For a good time:
It may have started as just a bar, all those years ago, but it has been much more than that to many aggies. For over 50 years, we’ve been on Northgate, celebrating the big wins, knocking back a few after a tough test, reminiscing and reconnecting with friends. We’ve been there for the awkward first dates, the 20 year wedding anniversaries, the nights to remember and the nights to forget!
A short story and a long relationship
To keep it short… Let’s just say that I got the complete tour. Including an escort to Don’s office. Closest I ever got to the Wild West. Many amazing times with my buddies playing pool and 42. Still stop by for a burger and Tijuana fries when I can! Met Tara Long (now Hutton) on the Fish Camp bus and have somehow got her to hang around… Still convince her to shoot a little pool there now and then.
I noticed him immediately...
I walked in with friends in January 1986. He already knew my friends, and I was new to the Dixie Chicken scene 🙂 He was playing 42 at a table with his friends. I noticed him immediately, especially his long hair in the back LOL~ There was some chemistry and I asked him to a sorority dance. He turned me down because I had just broken up with a boyfriend and needed a date! He then asked me to a basketball game in Austin, and I turned him down because I legitimately had a fever. To this day he doesn’t believe I was sick.
Three months later, we ran into to each other in summer school, and we have been together ever since. We married February of 1989, and we have three Aggie children: two graduates and a current sophomore. We recently went back there to hang out (well we do that a lot because now we own a house 10 minutes from the Dixie Chicken) the day before our 30th wedding anniversary, and he stood up and asked a stranger to record us. He popped the question again for another 30 years!
P.S. We recently sat at the Chicken and re-learned how to play 42 on our phones before we pulled out the dominos to actually play again.
A story about Don
This story had less to do with the Chicken and more to do with Don but here it is. That year had been dry. Don owned a little place kind of west of town over by the power plant. His cows had gotten out and were running on a much larger place. Don knew this but he did not have any grass so he just left them there. Finally the guy that either owned or leased the other place politely told Don that he was going to take those cows to the sale and where did he need to send the check….LOL. So late one afternoon we had to go out there and find his cows, drive them back to his place, and fix the fence. Now we had never seen his cows and we had never been on the other place which was quite large. Well against all odds we managed to find his cows and get them back. That only left fixing the fence before we could call it a day. There were 4 of us but only Nathan and myself had ever built fence. We were stretching the top wire when Don decided to intervene. He said we had not stretched it enough. We told him nope it is plenty tight. He disagreed as only Don could so we made it tighter and tighter. Finally when you could play music on it he was satisfied. Nathan and I were both concerned that that sucker could pop at any moment so Don grabbed a hammer and a fence staple and started pounding that sucker in. He had one misfire and that was enough. The wire popped and a barb went right across the top of his bald head. It may have bled a little. After that he left the fence building to Nathan and myself.
Old Milwaukee longneck beers @ 40 cents a pop
Over the years, as a UT medical educator, I like to tell my Aggie students that I attended the grand opening of the Chicken in 1974. That year I stayed in College Station after spring semester ended, to attend the summer session and the Willie Nelson Picnic in College Station. You could have a good time on Saturday nights before 1 a.m. closing, with $3 in your pocket, drinking Old Milwaukee longneck beers @ 40 cents a pop, free crackers, and shooting pool!! It was our favorite hangout with my new (at the time) girlfriend I met that summer, now wife of 40+ years!
I met Don & his wife back about 2002ish...
I met Don & his wife back about 2002ish while sculpting in a Gallery in Jackson Hole, WY. He was at the back of a crowd watching me and I hear someone holler, “what year did you graduate?”! He saw my ring and after everyone cleared out he said, “ever heard of The Chicken? I own it!” I told him it was a post exam tradition and a great place to unwind! My son just turned 21 and his first beer purchase was at The Chicken! Don created a great place and a wonderful Aggie Tradition!
She said yes
He put a ring on it
Last April I decided it was time to propose to my beautiful fiancé (girlfriend at the time). I’m from a tiny town just North of Lubbock and she’s from a town outside of San Antonio. When I started school at A&M I met her through a student group that puts a high value on hanging out at the bird, so when the time came to ask her to be my wife, I knew exactly where I wanted to do it. I didn’t want to ask under the century tree, cause even though it is beautiful and has a fantastic story, it just was not us. I went to the front bar and asked the bartender to put the ring in a box of bones and to give me that specific box when I came to get dominoes. All of our friends were there already as she walked in. We sat down and ordered a beer ( I ordered a few more than one) and finally I asked if anyone wanted to play some 42. I went and picked up the box and came back to the table and asked her to be mine forever and she said yes!! I attached a picture of the moment, and the best part of the picture is actually my buddy joes face haha
Christopher Coulombe
Archive
Roger Creager playing to the crowd.
Dub Miller singing "Fightin' Texas Aggie"
June 14, 2014, the Dixie Chicken celebrated its 40th birthday with live music from Aggies and local talent.
Pat Ryan, Austin English, Dallas Shipp, Geoff Spahr, Rosehill, Clayton Gardner, Dub Miller, and Roger Creager all shared their talents to a large crowd packed throughout the promenade.
College Choices
Every summer my dad and I would take a trip to Galveston together and after my sophomore year of high school we were heading back home to Dallas and my dad said “why don’t we go check out college station?” knowing that I wanted to attend A&M. So we jumped off 45 and headed to Aggieland. But instead of going straight to campus or on a campus tour we went straight to the Dixie Chicken. Had a burger and dad had a beer (of course) and we hung around talking with the bartenders on staff. When we finally walked out of the chicken, probably 3 hours later, we both were blown away at how friendly everyone was and how when asked about Aggieland and Texas A&M their faces would light up, you could just see how much they loved this place and how different the environment was. I knew right then and there I wanted to be a Fightin’ Texas Aggie. I didn’t need a campus tour, I just needed a visit to the Dixie Chicken! ????�
Today it is still my favorite place to go on a Friday night. My husband and I have played many games of dominoes in there and it will forever hold a place in my heart.
(Also worked at Chicken Oil for about a year in 2010-2011)
Brittany Coker ‘14
My grandfather is my best friend...
Got a story for yah, Ags!…
It was the scenic route that took me to the only place I would want to transition from the military to civilian life at. My grandfather is my best friend and FTA class of 1945. I have been attached to him at the hip since I can remember. Whether it was at home, tending to the cattle and fences on the ranch, or one of his various project construction sites…he had an Aggie tale for me. My favorite probably being how he lost (and retrieved) his Aggie Ring by way of a pregnant cow in his veterinary days.
After a lifetime of these tales from my best friend/grandfather, I knew that if I was going to turn the page on a chapter as special to me as my 5 years in the US Navy was, it could only be because nearly 70 years after he left campus, I would be going to campus. He left FROM campus to go off to WWII and I came TO campus from OEF.
Now, school was never my strong suit, no matter how many times I “studied” all night at The Chicken; but due to my loyalty to Texas A&M and my grandfather, I was determined to graduate. Finally, in August of last year, graduation arrived. My sister came all the way in from Paris (not France) and my brother came in from Miami, FL to celebrate.
With the memories of decades carved in the very fiber of this place, I thought it only fitting that we celebrate at the Chicken to share with them some of my own Aggie tales I had gathered over “4 years and some change”, and reminisce of the stories our grandfather told us of this town that planted the special love of Aggieland within our hearts at a young age. Here’s to many more nights throughout many more decades…at The Chicken.
My grandfather couldn’t make it in town for graduation due to physical limitations at age 94 but I still wanted to include a photo of he and I at my little graduation lunch with just my grandparents and I in my hometown of Clarksville, TX. (He’s not wearing his ring because it was stolen about 10 years ago in a break-in at their house…but I swear he’s an Ag haha)
John Kelty ’16
PICTURED:
(Me, sister Laura, brother Brent)
(grandfather James F Kelty, Me)
I majored in Dixie Chicken Studies
To hear my momma tell it, in the Fall of 1994 I majored in Bonfire, but in the Spring of 1995 I majored in Dixie Chicken Studies.
The Bird – my favorite appellation for her – was a natural match for me in those days: dark and foreboding, but full of life and abounding energy. I spent countless evenings (and afternoons . . . who am I kidding!) shaking bones and drinking from glass pitchers, or sitting on the back porch telling lies holding a longneck bottle. I learned more about the best parts of life standing under dusty trophies of Hill Country bucks and rusted signs, listening to Johnny, Waylon, Willie, and Jerry Jeff, than I could have anywhere else in the world. I formed friendships that will last a lifetime, romances that lasted a few short hours, and sentences that couldn’t survive outside my beer-addled mind. I’ve seen Don’s office – the result of running afoul of his strict no fighting rule – the rattler tank from the inside, and the floor of the men’s room up close and personal. So many nights I’ll never remember, a few I’ll never forget, and some so cloaked in the hazy gauze separating reality from legend that I can’t be sure they actually happened. In the story of my life, The Dixie Chicken is not a setting, she’s a living, breathing, ever-present character. Walking in through the swinging doors or up the steps on the back porch today is like seeing a loved one after too long a separation.
I don’t know if it’s true, what my momma says about me and my misspent semester with the Dixie Chicken, but I can tell you this for sure: I don’t remember a single damn thing I learned in the hallowed halls and erudite classrooms across University Drive in the Spring of 1995, but I’ll never forget the lessons I learned shaking bones, drinking beer, and singing those old country tunes with all my buddies at The Bird.
Thanks and Gig ‘Em!
Nathan J. Bouchér
Fightin’ Texas Aggie Class of 1998
Archive
My family has always been Ags. My stepmom and brother both graduated there. As the only non-grad, I had to find a way to get there. As a firefighter, I was able to attend the annual TAMU fire school. When I became a Dad, I knew the college I wanted my daughter to attend. When she was in elementary and middle school, we made nearly every game we could. Each time we came to The Chicken.
At first, my daughter saw it only as “a bar where Dad drank beer.” But after her first bite of a Freddy burger, I knew she was hooked. Why you ask? Because I couldn’t get a darn bite! I bought it only as a hunch she might like it! Now. If we’re in town for a game, she will know the time the game ends and the time The Chicken gets crowded and let me know it’s time to go.
I’ve told her the history of the place and explained the names etched in the walls and th tables. After about her fourth trip there she snuck in a Sharpie and while waiting on our food, left our mark at the Chicken. It’s now or defacto place to go on trips there. She limits her dear old dad to two beers but states she’s not limited in her food choices or her places to sit.
As a single Dad, it gives me such an honor to pass on to my little girl, the sense of feeling that the Dixie Chicken is. For all of us that have inhabited it since it’s glory days and the gravel parking lot; we know it’s more than just a bar or burger joint. It’s a way of life, it’s a family dinner on Sunday, it’s the pace you see your friends, it’s the place you’ve shared losses and gains. More greater than that, it’s a place we call home. And the Beasley’s, Kristen and Troy, call it home too. Thank you for all the memories!
– Troy Beasley
A chance meeting leads to forever
