By SARAH GREENE

IT WAS NOT a good day for fans of the Texas Longhorns when they witnessed, either in person or on television, the trouncing their football team took at the hands of traditional rival Oklahoma University, 55 to 17.

UT fans would have had more fun at the State Fair just outside the Cotton Bowl. And quite a few evidently did, judging by the way the stands emptied in the second half.

This Texas Ex wore her burnt orange UT tee shirt and waited for the Longhorn band to play the unofficial state anthem, The Eyes of Texas, shortened by some to The Eyes.

What I never heard was the song that’s most appropriately played for the traditional Thanksgiving shootout with the Aggies. For the record, it goes like this:

Texas fight, Texas fight, and it’s goodbye to A&M.

Texas fight, Texas fight, and we’ll put over one more win.

Texas fight, Texas fight, for it’s Texas that we love best—

Hail, hail, the gang’s all here

And it’s goodbye to all the rest.

Yea orange, yea white, yea Longhorns,

Fight, fight, fight!

This year will mark another important change in what was once a classic Southwest Conference rivalry between UT and Texas A&M.

Now university and not college, A&M is leaving the Big 12 to go to the Southeastern Conference.

The Big 12 recently extended an invitation to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth to replace the departing Aggies. TCU accepted that invitation Monday night.

TCU has been very successful since being left out of the group of Texas schools which helped form the Big 12 in the mid-1990s after the demise of the Southwest Conference.

IN THE OCT. 5 issue of The Mirror it was noted that 60 years ago, a Marchiesta was set for the Yamboree, conducted by Jack Mahan. That would have been the 17th Yamboree, and the news item brought back seasonal memories for me.

Mahan was an area band director and, as best I remember, the author of March Yam.

For the record, here are the words as I remember them:

East Texas is the home of Yamboree, a great festive show,

Where each one should go

Who loves our hills, our lands, our pines our yams,

The best place on earth to be.

We ask you all to join our happy throng,

And come on with us, where you all belong,

Among our hills, our lands, our pines our yams—

Our Yamboree!

The Marchiesta was held on the old football field on Bledsoe St., next to the old Gilmer Elementary School campus. The many bands that came to march in the Yamboree parade performed individually and then combined for a massed band playing of March Yam.

It was quite an event.