One of the Blinn College Stories. If you want to understand what turned fifty strangers in an old brick dorm into something like a family, start with the thing they all walked across campus for every Thursday night. The catfish is real. So was the freshman fifteen.
If someone asks me what I remember most about the food at Blinn College in the fall of 1988, the answer comes immediately.
Catfish Thursdays.
Every Thursday there was a little buzz around Memorial Hall. People would start talking about it earlier in the day. What are we having tonight? What time are we going? Who's going over?
It wasn't just dinner. It was an event.
Memorial Hall was a small dorm, and over time we became our own little family. Fifty or so people living in that old brick building in the middle of Brenham, Texas, far from wherever we'd come from. California, Houston, small towns all over East Texas. We were all figuring out this strange college life together.
And on Thursday nights, the whole dorm family would walk over to the cafeteria together.
A group of college kids crossing campus, probably making too much noise, talking about whatever was happening that week — classes, girls, sports, parties, whatever. It was one of those simple moments that didn't seem important at the time, but looking back, it was one of the things that made Memorial Hall feel like home.
Then we'd get inside the cafeteria and line up.
The reason for all the excitement?
Catfish.
Now, being from California, catfish was not exactly part of my culinary upbringing. When I heard catfish,
my mental picture was not some beloved Southern tradition. I imagined something you'd pull out of a muddy river or the California Delta — something that probably had an old tire, a shopping cart, or maybe a license plate somewhere inside it.
This was Texas, though. Different rules.
Here was this breaded, fried fish sitting on my plate. Alongside it were things that were also very new to me: fried mushrooms, some kind of succotash with corn and lima beans, maybe some okra mixed in there, and then the great Texas dessert equalizer — Blue Bell ice cream.
Of course, everything was washed down with whatever came out of those seemingly endless soda machines. Maybe a Mountain Dew. Maybe a Dr Pepper.
And honestly?
That first bite changed everything.
It was actually amazing. Crispy outside, tender inside, and completely different from the strange creature I had invented in my California imagination. I finally understood why everyone was so excited.
Fried catfish is a genuine pillar of Southern and Texas cooking, not a cafeteria invention — cornmeal-breaded, deep-fried, and historically tied to the catfish farms of the Deep South, especially the Mississippi Delta. Texas leans into it hard: all-you-can-eat catfish night is a fixture at small-town restaurants and church halls across the state, usually landing on a Friday or, in a college cafeteria, a Thursday.
The muddy-river reputation is mostly a Northern and Western thing — wild-caught bottom-feeders really can taste like the water they came from. Farm-raised catfish, which is what you're almost always eating fried in the South, is a mild, clean, firm white fish. Which is exactly why that first bite blindsided a kid who'd been bracing for the California Delta.
This was one of those little cultural adjustments that happened all the time during my two years in Texas. I'd arrived from the Sierra foothills thinking I knew how the world worked. Then suddenly I was in Brenham eating catfish, drinking Dr Pepper, learning Texas traditions, and realizing that maybe my old assumptions weren't always correct.
And yes, the freshman fifteen was absolutely real.
We all gained weight. How could we not?
You had a meal card. You had fried food. You had Blue Bell. You had unlimited soda. You were eighteen years old and living away from home for the first time. The math was not complicated.
The cafeteria I remember — fried fish, a wall of soda machines, Blue Bell, and not a lot of negotiation — is gone. Blinn's Brenham dining hall got a renovation running past a million dollars a while back, and today it's a buffet-style operation with a full salad bar, a baked-potato bar, a sandwich bar, two rotating entrées, pizza, and a whole spread of vegetables, plus a “To Go Food Truck” for students on the move. The Bryan campus even has a Starbucks bar.
The meal plans have grown up too. On-campus students today choose between plans running from around twelve hundred to nearly two thousand dollars a semester, measured in weekly swipes that don't roll over. In 1988 I had a card, a tray, and a rotation I could have recited in my sleep. Somewhere in there was a simplicity I didn't appreciate at the time.
Whether they still do catfish on Thursdays, I honestly can't say. I hope they do. Some traditions are worth keeping, even the fried ones.
Thursday nights were also special because everyone knew Friday was coming. Blinn was a commuter-heavy school, and a lot of students would head home for the weekend. Thursday was when people went out.
After Catfish Thursday, the night could go in any direction.
Maybe someone was studying in the library. Maybe there was a party somewhere out in the Texas thickets. Maybe someone had a keg and a backyard. Maybe you were just hanging around Memorial Hall, doors open, music playing, everyone talking.
But it always started the same way.
A walk across campus with the Memorial Hall crew. A plate of catfish. A Dr Pepper.
And another reminder that I was definitely not in California anymore.