by Daniel Acosta
All Texans and even Aggies know when someone says that they graduated from “The University” it means the University of Texas. After going two years at Texas Western College from 1963 to 1965 for my pre-pharmacy courses, I boarded an airplane for the first time in my life. I was so naïve that I thought one had to pay for Cokes offered to the passengers, so I flew to Austin without getting a drink. I just had enough money for a taxi to get to the Whitis Co-Operative where boys ate and slept cheaply. All the guys pitched in to keep it clean and to cook meals.
That short block on Whitis was a mishmash of rundown boarding houses, but at the corner of Whitis and 27th there were three institutions which represented the rigid white and economic class structure at UT then and now: the all-white Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house with its imposing white columns in front of its portico; the Scottish Rite Dormitory for girls with its stately 100-year-old live oak trees; and the venerable All Saints Episcopal Chapel, now a recognized national historic building.
Every morning I’d cross the dividing line of 27th Street to reach the “good side” of campus, one block away from the “masses” of poor struggling students. I began my daily routine of going to classes and work, trying to make it at that bastion for entitled white students who knew that a UT degree was their ticket for a good life and career. I learned about the good life at UT vicariously by working at expensive private girls’ dorms as a kitchen worker and observing their mannerisms and behaviors as if I were an anthropologist.
The most well-known and possibly the most expensive of these private dorms was (and still is) the Hardin House. Parents paid big bucks to have their daughters fed and protected while they attended the mostly white University of Texas. Even some 60 years after I worked there, many rich parents still want the very best and safest place for their daughters as they live away from home for the first time in their lives. In an earlier brochure it stated very clearly Mrs. Hardin’s rules for “her girls”:
“This is my house with my rules; if you are to live here, you are to follow my rules”.
This is what these rich parents demand for their own daughters, and the Hardin House gladly complies.
Its website simply says the Hardin House “is where college women live, study, and thrive”, but looking more closely one sees what the parents want to see: most of the photos depict attractive white girls with long, flowing blonde hair, with an occasional brunette and a girl of color thrown in to break the monotony. The only photo with people of color are the seven members of the maintenance and housekeeping staff. The Hardin House is a stark reminder of what Texas was and still is today: a divided multicultural society of whites and people of color, of haves and have nots.
I was a poor Mexican boy who was raised in a city composed mainly of Chicanos and immigrants from Mexico. A major part of my education at UT was not just making good grades, it was the learning of the good life that these rich girls had from my observations of working at the Hardin House kitchen.
As a joke, my roommate, Jim, gave me a copy of GeorgeOrwell’s Down and Out in London and Paris with its classic description of what a kitchen “plongeur” did in the bowels of an expensive hotel restaurant in Paris. My kitchen job at the Hardin House did not compare to Orwell’s experiences, but there were several times I was down on my knees cleaning out the grease trap under the sink and removing clogged food from the disposal so it could start working again. Unlike the “plongeurs”, we Hardin House kitchen workers had a fancy dish washer to help us with washing the many dirty pots and pans and dishes. Mopping up the kitchen floors was somewhat enjoyable because we knew that a delicious meal would be waiting for us after our work was done.
I was hired by the head cook, a wonderful Black woman who deeply cared for her student workers and treated us with respect. I looked forward working each night to hear stories about her life. The other student kitchen workers were white guys from small Texas towns who, like me, needed the money to attend the great University of Texas, or as stated in the Texas Constitution–a World-Class University! I was the only Hispanic in the kitchen and my limited education about Texans was expanded by talking every day with them about their lives growing up in rural Texas.
The kitchen manager, a strict matronly white woman, often stood behind us servers, making sure that equal portions were correctly given to each girl. When all of the girls had been served and had finished their meals, the kitchen crew picked up remaining plates, cleaned the tables, swept up any food scraps under the chairs and tables, and mopped the floors. Then we feasted on our meals at a table in the back of the kitchen. One evening I tried to sneak out two desserts for Jim and me to eat later at our apartment, but I was caught by you-know-who. I was fired on the spot.
Lest I forget, let me tell you about one more episode I had at the Hardin House before I was fired. Mrs. Stella Hardin, as mentioned earlier, had strict rules for her girls. This last incident involved the breaking of one of her cardinal rules about no dating of kitchen student workers. One evening, I was able to catch the eye of a cute sophomore as she waited in the serving line to get her meal. One thing led to another, we exchanged names, and we made plans for a date. I think her roommates dared her to accept my date offer.
The date was no big thing. We went to a movie at the Varsity Theater on the main drag across the street from the Texas Union. It was the Audrey Hepburn movie, Wait Until Dark, about a blind woman and drug dealers. The only time we really touched was when she jumped out of her seat and grabbed me during the classic scene when the dealers had no lights to find Hepburn in the darkness of her apartment until they opened the refrigerator door. The room turned all bright, and the whole audience screamed.
We left the movie laughing and talking. She was waiting all evening to show me one last thing. When we arrived at the Hardin House, I walked around the car to open the door. She got out and unloosened the strap on the trench coat that she never took off during the movie and quickly flashed me that she was only wearing a shortie nightgown. She grabbed me and abruptly gave me a brief French kiss, daringly darting her tongue into my mouth for a nanosecond and then ran to the front door. I never saw her again because it was close to finals, and I was fired shortly thereafter. I guess she won the dare with her roommates to go out with a Mexican.
I went on and got another job at an expensive girls’ dorm. My observations of these girls, who were older than the Hardin girls, were that they were more snobbish and arrogant. I was somewhat intimidated and did not to talk to any of them, much less try to get a date.
Near the end of my last semester at UT, I was working as a drug clerk at one of Austin’s first discount pharmacies, Ward’s Cut-Rate Drugs, on Congress Avenue, a few blocks from the Capitol. It was a busy Saturday morning and out of the corner of my eye I saw Mrs. Hardin standing in line at another cash register. I hoped that she’d not see me, but she did and smiled at me. She pleasantly asked how I was doing. I was so surprised that she recognized me, only seeing her a couple of times in the kitchen. Sputtering, I said that I was to graduate with a degree in pharmacy and attend graduate school at the University of Kansas. She congratulated me and paid for her discounted toiletries and drugs. All I could say was thank you.
When I started out at as a Mexican student at the University of Texas in the 1960s, I did not know what to expect. The simple act of crossing 27th Street each day to attend classes and work at the Hardin House prepared me well for my future life as a professor, scientist and administrator in white America.
Dan Acosta is a first-generation Mexican American, whose mother and grandparents emigrated from Mexico. He is a former professor, research scientist, and administrator, who retired in 2019 at age 74. He writes about his experiences in white America, especially the role that discrimination and racism still plays in the U.S. His stories have appeared in The Acentos Review, Sky Island Journal, Somos en Escrito, The Rush, Toasted Cheese, Midway Journal, The Manifest Station, Literary Yard, Rise Up Review and Latin@Literatures
January House Literary Journal 
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