Bare Chested Fans at Texas Baylor Game in Dec. 2013
Above: Harley Clark, flashing the Hook 'em Horns hand sign at the 2013 Gone To Texas freshman convocation. Harley passed away in October 2014. Photo by Marsha Milling machine.
Harley Clark adored to assure the story. It was the second calendar week of November, 1955, and the University of Texas eleven, "towering on brain superpowe, but low on brute force," was preparing for an crucial contest against the 6th hierarchical TCU Horned Frogs. The game was to be played in Austin along Sat good afternoon, November 12th, at the usual 2 p.m. kick-off.
The UT squad hadn't fared all that well. Though Memorial Stadium had just been outfitted with lights and night games were played first, the squad was 4-4 overall and 3-3 in the Southwest Conference. But league front runner Texas A&M was on probation for recruiting violations and not eligible for post-season play. If Lone-Star State could pull a mighty upset over TCU and then win out, the Longhorns would spend New Year's Day at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
The hebdomad in front the game, Texas fans did all they could to support the team. Signs were hung on the Texas Union. Impromptu football rallies were held almost all night in front of Hill Hall (later distended to G. E. Moore-Hill), the residence for most of the athletes. The red candle tradition was employed. First misused in 1941 to "hex" the Texas Aggies, candles burned brightly in store windows on the Drag, in offices business district, and in homes over Austin. Local businesses set up it difficult to keep red candles in stock.
Above: To campaign for the Straits Yell Drawing card spot, Harley distributed cards that fellow students pinned on their shirts.
At the center of all this activity was Harley Clark, who'd been electoral Head Holler Leader in a campus-wide election the previous April. In the 1950s, the position was highly prized. The Head Call Leader was responsible for the health and well-organism of the Texas Texas longhorn disembodied spirit, and Harley took the assignment seriously.
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A government activity major, Harley and his trademark flattop was an gentle material body to spot connected the Xl Acres. He seemed to be tangled in everything: gymnastics team, Texas Union committees, freshman predilection, Friar Society, Texas Cowboys, and the Tejas Club, his rest home dishonorable, where he roomed with his close friend (and proximo Austin mayor) Direct Cooksey. Harley would eventually be nonappointive student body president – the first to serve while enrolled in grad school day – and earn three UT degrees, a Barium and MA in government, as well as a law stage.
Elected Head Yell Leader at the end of his soph year, Harley spent partly of the summer of '55 backpacking through Europe with fellow UT student Hasten Carroll. Occasionally, the two would write or phone their whereabouts to family and friends in Austin, and Willie Morris, then editor of The Unit of time Texan, would report on their adventures in the newspaper. "The Eiffel Tower," said Harley, "is taller that UT's and has the added magnet of being quite free of English professors." On with pickings in the sights of the Auld Country, Harley was also hatching plans for the upcoming shine term. The stadium, He thought, was far too lull during football games, and He wanted to come something to boost the dB steady.
Above: Ten-inch plastic megaphones were distributed at the TX vs. Baylor game. Fans used them for the rest of the season.
On their way back to Austin, Harley and Speed first stopped in New York, and, not as yet recovered from jet lag and without making some appointments, spent two days pestering all advertizing company they could find on Madison Avenue. They were looking for a company to sponsor ten-inch plastic megaphones to be distributed at a football game. If the fans had their ain megaphones, Harley reasoned, the stadium would sure enough be a little louder. Just ahead they had to push on to Austin, Old Gold Cigarettes (It was the 1950s, remember.) agreed to provide 10,000 orangish and white personal megaphones with the company logo printed on the first. The order didn't arrive until the Baylor game in early November, but they were a big hit with the students and were used for the rest of the temper.
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The official Texas vs. TCU football rally was set for Friday evening, November 11, 1955 in Gregory Gym. A torchlight parade of several yar students, led by a Dixieland Band on a flat-seam truck, determine out from the northwest corner of campus, marched south on Guadalupe, so east on 21st Street to the gym. There was provocative medicine by the Texas longhorn Ring (with its newly acquired "world's largest bass drum," dubbed Heavy Bertha), yells aside the cheerleaders, and gamey talks by James Dean of Students River Arn Nowotny, Head Charabanc Male erecticle dysfunction Price and Squad Captains Herbaceous plant Gray, Greyback Tatum, and Menan Schriewer. Then, at the end of program, Harley decided to introduce something new.
A couple of years to begin with, while in the Texas Union, Harley was talking with classmate Henry "H.K." Pitts, who suggested that the hand sign with the index and little fingers lengthened, looked a bit same a longhorn, and might be entertaining to do at rallies and football games. The Texas Aggies had their "Gig 'em" thumbs-up sign, inspired while playing the TCU Horned Frogs. With the TCU halting coming informed Saturday, why arse't TX fans have their own deal signal?
In a higher place: The Moment. The "Hook 'em Horns" hand sign is shown first in Gregory Gym. At the turn down left wing, someone is trying out the new signal for themselves. The head at the lour right belongs to Longhorn Band Director Vince DiNino.
Harley liked the idea, and decided to show it at the Gregory Gym rally. He demonstrated the sign to the crowd and promptly asserted, "This is the functionary paw sign of the University of Texas, to atomic number 4 used whenever and wherever Longhorns gather." The students and cheerleaders time-tested IT out, and Harley led a simple yell, "Overcharge 'em Horns!" with hands raised. (In this case, a custom had two creators. Think of H.K. as the research and development part, with Harley in charge of selling and sales.)
Straight off after the rally, Harley was confronted past a tempestuous Dean Nowotny. "How could you say the hand house was official?" the dean wanted to know. "Has this been approved by the University administration?" Harley admitted that the idea hadn't been approved first, but the cat was already out of the bag – or the longhorn was already sluttish in the pasture.
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Sometimes, when relation the story, Harley said that Dean Nowotny also demanded, "Do you know what this means in Sicily?!!" Or Italy. Or European Union. I asked Harley if it were true, did Nowotny really say that, and Harley admitted that it was the only embellishment helium added, for the most part just to get a laugh from his audience. For accuracy's sake, spell Nowotny was unhappy that Harley hadn't first improved the approximation of an "official" hand subscribe with the administration, the quotation to Sicily, didn't actually happen.
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The next sidereal day at the football, the student part practiced what they had well-read the Night before, and the alumni were quick to follow. By the end of the game, the stadium was full of "Hook 'em Horns" reach signs. And while TCU won the Day (47-20) the University of Texas had a new custom it would cherish for decades to come.
Fifty years afterward, November 11, 2005, was once more the Friday before a internal UT football game game. The 1955 cheerleaders returned to the campus for a reunion and special rag in Gregory Gym, where they reenacted the bulge out of a tradition half a century before. In accolade of the anniversary, the UT Pillar was illuminated orange with a "50" in the Windows.
Nov 12, 2005: During halftime of the Texas vs. Kansas football secret plan, the Texas longhorn Circle performed a salute to the 50th anniversary of the Draw 'em Horns reach sign.
Bare Chested Fans at Texas Baylor Game in Dec. 2013
Source: https://jimnicar.com/ut-traditions/hook-em-horns-hand-sign/
