Football and the Fight Song

Today I enjoyed the privilege of exploring the Floyd J. "Peck" Huntley Collection. Peck was a player at Oregon Agricultural College (I believe that is the third official name of OSU) in 1909, 1910, and 1914. Included in his collection where two specific items I practically drooled over.

The first was a 1914 copy of Harold A. Wilkins' "Hail to Old O.A.C.: A Rooter's Song," the precursor to today's modern OSU Fight Song. What made me very excited was the existence of a second verse of which I had no prior knowledge. Here are the lyrics:

Here we come with a toast and song for the college up on the hill,
We love its shady slopes and trees, Its mem’ries cheer and thrill;
But fondest thoughts when the years have run, Will be of teams and vict’ries won, Each man a loyal son, Hail to old O.A.C.

Chorus:
O.A.C., our hats are off to you, Beavers, Beavers, fighters thru and thru,
We’ll cheer for ev’ry man, We’ll root for ev’ry stand, that’s made for old O.A.C.
Watch our team go tearing down the field, Men of iron, their strength will never yield.
Hail! Hail! Hail! Hail! Hail to old O.A.C. 

We’ll rout hard for the baseball star who can knock out a long home run,
And cheer the man who kicks the goal, That means the game is won;
But mem’ries best in our Hall of Fame, Are for the man who’s always game, Win, lose, fights just the same, All for old O.A.C. 

Repeat Chorus

The modern Fight Song only uses the Chorus with a drum and chant interlude, and the modern "Hail to OSU" includes the interlude and omits the second verse. One thing I thought especially interesting is that the modern lyrics of "O.S.U. our hats are off to you" flows much better than O.A.C.-- it is refreshing to see a name-change actually improve the song.


The other thing I saw in the collection is probably much more interesting to almost everyone besides me: a ball used in the 1914 contest between O.A.C. and Idaho, played in Portland, OR.

Compare those laces to these!

Pretty cool, huh? 

Beginning anew: Tales of an Archivist

After abandoning my dusty and untrodden blog for many months, I am pulling it out of oblivion yet again, this time with a new theme: Tales of an Archivist. Ok, so I'm not actually a "real" archivist-- I am a "Archival Student Assistant"-- but I don't care, I like the catchy title, and I work it the Archives. Basically, I am just blogging about random things I find interesting while doing research at work.

So first, a few things about this change:

• It will only last until the Summer of 2012. Unfortunately, that is when I will have to move on as my employment in the Oregon State University Archives can't come with me to Portland when we move from Corvallis. 
• As I come across interesting factoids and tidbits in my work, I will be commenting on them here. Sometimes my geeky awe of my discoveries is too lengthy for Facebook, but where words can become too many, an url in my status fixes all problems!
• Information will generally be OSU related, since it will have to do with my work, however if you don't really care much about OSU, keep reading if you are a fan of sports, music, history, or random odd factoids and anecdotes!
• I will try to include pictures when possible! My own, I can include at-will, however once I have permission to do so, I will also include some official Archives photos as well.