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You know summer's over when the
frat boys return to the White Owl
By Tyler Riggs
September 21, 2006 | Some say the first signs of college
starting are empty bins of pens and loose-leaf paper
at Wal-Mart.
They're lying. The first signs of school aren't found
at any big-box store, nor at the grocery store where
demand for bread and milk is as high as American sentiment
for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, nor at a bank where
most 20-something's checking accounts are as empty as
the gas tanks of the cars they can't afford to fill.
To find the first true sign of school starting in
the fall, you need not look further than a college town
tavern. The sign comes when the stale Marlboro Red-scented
air of the bar becomes stale Tommy Hilfiger cologne
mixed with Camel Lights air, and the summer crowd of
sunbird women wearing pastel pants with their husbands
wearing corduroys and golf visors is replaced by hordes
of young men, most with hats on backward and hooded
sweatshirts bearing the logo of their frat house or
favorite sports team.
Even though Utah State University classes started
on a Monday, it was a Tuesday night at the bar -- the
night cheap burgers and beer are offered to hungry students
-- that it became clear school was in session. Nearly
200 people, mostly young with cocky looks on their face
like they'd just struck the jackpot on a slot machine
in Wendover, strutted around, apparently celebrating
the fact that it was the last chance to celebrate before
school would keep them from celebrating anymore.
The somber look on the face of Brady Johns, a bouncer
at The White Owl in downtown Logan, said it all that
Tuesday night: A bearded man with long hair, looking
more like a Viking than a soldier in the war on public
intoxication, Johns usually is smiling, listening to
Slayer on his iPod, happily reeting customers and checking
identifications while sitting at the table nearest The
White Owl's front door.
On this night, however, Johns wasn't at his normal
table. He had to sit at a smaller table a few feet away,
because a group of what he called "frat boys" asked
to use his table to accommodate an ever-growing contingent
of women dressed in ways that would make producers of
those "Girls Gone Wild" tapes blush.
If the bar had a sign posted above its door listing
the maximum occupancy, it might have been exceeded that
night. Although during the summer the "regular" bar
crowd could do a commendable job of filling the bar
to capacity, but when they -- the group of people who
frequented the bar 12 months of the year, not just when
it was convenient with their school schedule -- filled
the bar, it didn't seem as annoying.
I stood next to Johns that night and watched Gary
Jones, a Vietnam veteran with an amputated leg, as he
came into the standing room only palace of neon lights
and "INXSentric" music. On most nights, Jones would
gingerly climb up the stairs at the back of the bar
to The White Owl's deck, balancing his pride with his
safety, trying not to fall down the stairs. With the
bar already bursting at the seams and it being impossible
for someone with two good legs to make it through the
crowd without feeling like a victim of a molestation
crime, Jones frowned.
Although all logic told me that night that for the
next four months, the students -- of which I admittedly
am one -- would be learning about things like calculus
and philosophy of billiards, the biggest lesson I'll
learn this semester was taught that night: No matter
what the calendar says, and no matter how many three-for-a-buck
sales Wal-Mart offers on mechanical pencils, nothing
will ever signal the death of summer and start of school
like the return of the frat crowd to the bar. And although
for the next eight months their presence will frustrate
me and other barflies, it will all correct itself in
May when the frat boys leave, and I know that school
is over and it's the one true sign of summer beginning.
NW
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