West Alabama Ice House

The end-of-the-first-week-of-teaching celebrations began (for me) with the Jackson Middle School social, in which 60-odd freshly anointed teachers, along with our trusty school staff, descended on a Mexican restaurant for tacos and $2 Margaritas. Sally, my wonderful CMA, bought all us young math teachers a round.

From there, I headed over to Dave and Buster's for the New Mexico/South Dakota corps social. I think the idea was to try to integrate the two reservation corps, but for the most part we were all antisocial and just stuck to our own states. I think I was too influential when we first arrived at Institute and I joked that I didn't want to meet anyone new, since we didn't really have the time to get to know them. But it's nice that our SoDak corps sticks together. Dave and Buster's, by the way, is another strange Texas drinking establishment in which a bar is combined with a Chuck E. Cheese style arcade and game room, so that drinkers and small children mingle freely.

Matt Kull, our program director, once again came through with the finest spot of the night. Most of the SoDak folk left D&B's to head over to the West Alabama Ice House. This was pretty much an outdoor only place, a collection of picnic tables with a giant fan to keep some of the heat away. The only indoor part, besides the bar itself, was basically a garage with a pool table. There were also outhouses and grills from which free hot dogs were being offered. Apparently country bands sometimes play on a small stage, too. At one point, I was talking with Wes, another South Dakota corps member, about the Lips; he's a fan, and went to Oklamhoma University, where they started out from. And then 10 or 20 minutes later, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots started playing over the stereo--not a song I would have expected to hear at a bar like the Ice House. It reminded me of the Goats and of riding around in a 15-passenger van at the University of Wisconson-Eau Claire, singing loudly. Strange the places a song can take you.