Enlighten Me

Rodney Crouther (00:07):
Hey, welcome to a mini episode of Enlighten Me. I'm your host Rodney Crouther.

Eddie Sanchez (00:11):
And I'm Eddie Sanchez.

Rodney Crouther (00:12):
Hey, Eddie. This is a short, just fun episode. So we're not doing our usual hourlong talk. So each of us went and found just something interesting to talk about before we roll into the holidays here and take a little break. What did you dig up for us?

Eddie Sanchez (00:28):
So this is a very random topic that has nothing to do with December, but it's kind of interesting, a random figure in San Marcos history. I guess it's Texas State adjacent history. Have you ever heard of Glurpo?

Rodney Crouther (00:42):
Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, I have heard of Glurpo, but I don't think a lot of people know that story.

Eddie Sanchez (00:47):
I do not think a lot of people have heard of Glurpo and how horribly fascinating he was, how scary he was, but—

Rodney Crouther (00:54):
I think like, well, I'll let you tell it. I'll let you tell it.

Eddie Sanchez (00:59):
So let me backtrack a little bit. There used to be somewhat of an amusement park here in San Marcos back in the ’50s.

Rodney Crouther (01:06):
Right back at Spring Lake.

Eddie Sanchez (01:08):
Yeah, exactly. Over at Aquarena Springs I think might've been the name of it. Yeah. But yes, Spring Lake, where Meadows Center is at now, and I believe that they started off actually with the Aqua—

Rodney Crouther (01:19):
Oh, the mermaids? Yeah, the Aquamaids.

Eddie Sanchez (01:21):
Aquamaids. That was what I was looking for. So they started off with the Aquamaids, which were, that's how come San Marcos has this mermaid-related history, it started off with some of the aquamaids and they would perform underwater and I guess they had routines and what have you.

Rodney Crouther (01:36):
Yeah, it was like a whole show production.

Eddie Sanchez (01:38):
It was. So there was the Aquamaids, there was a swimming piglet named Ralph. Right. I heard that there was actually multiple Ralphs, I guess?

Rodney Crouther (01:47):
Well over the years—

Eddie Sanchez (01:48):
Yeah, once he got a little bigger, he couldn't swim as well, so they would switch 'em out.

Rodney Crouther (01:51):
That's what I hear about the most when I hear people talk about the old Aquarena Springs. It's a swimming pig, but that's not the whole story,

Eddie Sanchez (01:56):
Right? No. And then there's one final creature that was added to that array of interesting entertainment, and this is Glurpo the, I believe he was the world's first underwater clown. I don't know how true that is, but that's just something that I read first.

Rodney Crouther (02:11):
I think that's how they sold it.

Eddie Sanchez (02:12):
Glurpo was a pipe-smoking clown. There really is not a ton of history about when he arrived at San Marcos or where they pulled it from. I think the owner of the amusement park at the time, he might've pulled that idea from Florida. I think he saw it somewhere out east and he thought, Hey, that'd be a great attraction just to add to what he had already going on. And so he brought in Glurpo because of the fact that he couldn't wear makeup underwater. He had to wear a mask. We are going to be adding a link to an article where you'll be able to see pictures of Glurpo and you'll see what I mean when I say he's a little creepy. For the time he wasn't, you know, the ’50s—

Rodney Crouther (02:54):
Before Stephen King came along, I think people liked clowns and they were fun.

Eddie Sanchez (02:59):
Exactly. I think that might've been the biggest issue that Stephen King made everybody afraid of clowns. But yeah, apparently children love Glurpo. One of his big tricks was to take underwater pictures of children. I'm not too sure exactly how that all panned out, but I think there was a mirror involved or something of that nature. So he was interacting with children a ton and it seems as if they loved him. Another interesting trick that I heard was he would blow smoke. I guess they would pretend like they were smoking cigarettes underwater and they had—

Rodney Crouther (03:28):
Maybe had some kind of powder thing.

Eddie Sanchez (03:31):
They had a little contraption where he could blow out of this tubing and it would come out as smoke to the audience, and people thought that he was smoking underwater, but it was just the powder and some contraptions that the owner had set up for that purpose, just to make an interesting little trick for the audience. One of the jobs of Glurpo was to actually help the Aquamaids with their routines so he would hold the breathing tubes that they needed because conducting these minute-and-a-half long routines, and of course they're running out of breath, so it was his responsibility to hand him the little tube where they would be able to pull air from and it's actually a really important role.

Rodney Crouther (04:11):
So Glurpo actually had an important job.

Eddie Sanchez (04:13):
Glurpo did have a very important job and he actually, he was actually doing good for his co-workers and whatnot.

Rodney Crouther (04:20):
I'm wondering when we get the new film studio here in San Marcos, if this is going to become the basis for a new horror movie.

Eddie Sanchez (04:30):
It's a clown with water, I think would be a really, really good, interesting take on it. Apparently he became actually pretty famous. He came out in Popular Mechanics in 1952, which is an article, which is a magazine. They wrote an article about him where he was featured on the cover, and then he actually flew out to Hollywood that same year in 1952 and he performed on the television program. You asked for it.

Rodney Crouther (04:55):
Wow. Glurpo had a moment of fame. Yeah, I did not know that. I thought I knew a little bit of Glurpo trivia, but.

Eddie Sanchez (05:02):
So eventually Glurpo, I think he had a couple of updates throughout the years and eventually they changed Glurpo into a, he was like a Polynesian king and he moved away from wearing clown makeup and a clown outfit to Polynesian-themed wear. So he was wearing, I believe he had a little grass skirt and he had a headband on. I actually saw a picture of him. He was a muscular guy, assuming it wasn't the same original Glurpo. But yeah, Glurpo ended up becoming Polynesian and then he just faded into obscurity. But that was my random topic of today, just because a lot of people don't know about Glurpo and that was something that I learned about here in the office and because I'm interested in horror and stuff of that nature, I thought that was a pretty good fit.

Rodney Crouther (05:58):
I was not expecting some of that. And like I said, I thought I knew a few things about Glurpo because I know we've used him to scare student workers when they come around Halloween. But yeah, thanks a lot, man.

Eddie Sanchez (06:12):
Yeah, San Marcos' history, it's always good to learn.

Rodney Crouther (06:14):
Anytime's a good time for some crazy local history for sure.

Eddie Sanchez (06:17):
One thing that I wanted to mention also was that there were Glupettes, so it wasn't just—

Rodney Crouther (06:22):
Glurpo had a crew.

Eddie Sanchez (06:23):
Glurpo had a crew indeed.

Rodney Crouther (06:26):
Or cheerleaders or something.

Eddie Sanchez (06:28):
So I brought Glurpo to the table. What is your topic?

Rodney Crouther (06:35):
I am a sports fan, so I decided to go in a little bit, this is not a sports podcast, but this is Texas State's about to play in their first ever bowl game.

Eddie Sanchez (06:45):
Which is awesome and amazing.

Rodney Crouther (06:47):
And I don't think it's a secret, not to shade any previous teams or anything, but it's — Texas State football, it's been in the desert for most of the last decade. So yeah, this is a big deal, and I think a lot of even college football fans joke about it now. There used to be just like six or 12 bowl games and now there's like a zillion, officially 41, but it feels like more bowl games.

Eddie Sanchez (07:13):
Oh that's quite a few bowl games. I didn't realize that.

Rodney Crouther (07:14):
There's still a lot of bowl games. So I decided, let's take a look at a little bit of our history getting to a bowl game and the SERVPRO First Responders bowl that will be matched up against Rice on December 26th in Dallas.

Eddie Sanchez (07:32):
What are the outlets saying? What are the media outlets saying about our chances of winning?

Rodney Crouther (07:37):
It's pretty mixed, so I think it's kind of a coin-flip game. Rice is six and six, and we're seven and five. The first place I looked up was picking Rice to beat us, but just by three and a half points, and I've seen actually a few more places picking us to win. They've been to a bowl game, or four or five before, we've never been. So I think we definitely have more to prove, but it feels like it's been forever since we had those eight or nine hard seasons in a row. But we've only been in the FBS, the football bowl subdivision since 2012. So what we used to call Division 1 A, we've only been on this level for a little over a decade.

Eddie Sanchez (08:23):
So it hasn't been a super long time that we've had the opportunity to even get into a bowl.

Rodney Crouther (08:28):
Exactly. We've only been bowl eligible once before in 2014, and then we were also seven and five but did not get a bowl bid. So just getting to that number six, it is not a magic pad, it's not the golden ticket. There's still a selection process and I think our fans helped out a lot this year. People were in the stands and I know, I know the TV partners want to schedule bowl games where there's going to be some interest in people following, so that was definitely a big deal. But the ServPro First Responders bowl is also not a very old bowl and kind of like Texas State, it's been through a few name changes. It started out in 2011 as the Ticket City Bowl. After a couple years, they became the Heart of Dallas Bowl, and in 2018 ServPro came in as the naming sponsor and they changed it to the First Responders bowl and made it part of the culture of the bowl that it would give back to first responders, to police and fire personnel, and first responders do get in free if you go to the bowl website, if you're a police, sheriff's, paramedic, firefighter, you can click on a link there on the bowl website and register for free tickets.

(09:40):
That's great.

Eddie Sanchez (09:41):
Where are they holding the bowl at?

Rodney Crouther (09:42):
When it started the first few years, it was at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. They're at Fair Park, right where the Texas State Fair is. Oh wow. Yeah, and then when ServPro came onboard in 2018, I think they had it one more time at the Cotton Bowl and then it moved to the Gerald Ford Stadium at SMU's campus in Dallas. And should note here, especially considering some other Texas State news, that is not named after the 38th President Gerald Ford. It's named after an SMU alum and banker who basically paid for them to build this stadium. Gerald Ford, no relation to the former president. That's another football footnote though. President Gerald Ford, born in Nebraska, raised in Michigan, played for the Michigan Wolverines, won two national titles in the early ’30s.

Eddie Sanchez (10:34):
That's some pretty in-depth analysis right there.

Rodney Crouther (10:36):
The kind of things you go into these wormholes with sports, man, and famous people, you find out some things.

Eddie Sanchez (10:43):
You know how big the stadium is?

Rodney Crouther (10:44):
Capacity sold out would be about 32,000 people in the stands.

Eddie Sanchez (10:48):
Wow, that's good size.

Rodney Crouther (10:49):
A pretty good venue. There are 10 conferences in college football at the FBS level that are like bowl eligible conferences with 133 schools. So even with 41 games, it's not like everybody gets to a bowl. And it's a big year for the Sun Belt, our conference, in general too, I think we have 12 teams in the Sun Belt that made bowl games this year, which is more than any other conference. Even the mighty SEC or the ACC, I think ACC's number two with 11 teams. So only a couple of teams in the Sun Belt fell below that six-win line this year. So our conference —

Eddie Sanchez (11:26):
Pretty competitive, wow.

Rodney Crouther (11:27):
Exactly. We're not like a school that's getting in cause we're in a weak conference. Our conference got really competitive this year, so I'm looking forward to it. We actually already had plans to be out of town, so I'm not going to be able to go to the game and that's really, it's the only thing I'm regretting about making plans to be out of town.

Eddie Sanchez (11:45):
Can I get a quick one-minute Rodney analysis of how we're looking?

Rodney Crouther (11:50):
I think we're looking good. I think we're looking really good. Ismail Mahdi, our all-purpose running back, that kid led, I think if you've seen any Bobcat news or even college football news, he led the nation in all-purpose yards. So that's from his kick returns, receptions and rushing. He was in the only player over 2,000 yards this year in all-purpose yards. So it's not again, just like in our conference or at our school, we've got legit national talent on the field right now.

Eddie Sanchez (12:23):
Wow, I did not know that.

Rodney Crouther (12:25):
So no, I think our odds are pretty good. Our offense is one of the most explosive in the country. Our defense. OK, let's face it. They give up a lot of points, but they also are in top 10 in tackles for loss. So that defensive unit has some talent and makes some big plays. So if they're clicking, I think we could run away with this. Rice puts up a lot of points too. So it could be a shootout, it should be entertaining either way.

Eddie Sanchez (12:51):
Rodney, thank you for sharing all that amazing information with us. I was not aware of so much of that. I try to keep up with my sports, but you're definitely much more in tune with these things than I am.

Rodney Crouther (13:00):
It's a lot of sports to keep up with these days.

Eddie Sanchez (13:04):
Do you have any Christmas plans?

Rodney Crouther (13:06):
Just going to be taking a little trip with the family.

Eddie Sanchez (13:09):
That's nice.

Rodney Crouther (13:09):
Yeah, but it's good. Nothing too extravagant.

Eddie Sanchez (13:13):
That's sometimes the best Christmases, when it's calm.

Rodney Crouther (13:16):
And what about you guys?

Eddie Sanchez (13:17):
I think that I'll probably be spending time with my family too. I think my parents and my brothers are coming up, so it'll be fun just to get a chance to hang out with everybody and just hang out really. Maybe get some rest and hopefully get some rest.

Rodney Crouther (13:30):
Hopefully get some rest. Yeah, we got a lot of stuff going on in Texas State, so I know we're going to be coming back in the new year. Super busy.

Eddie Sanchez (13:35):
Yeah, we have a pretty interesting episode gearing up for January, so I'm excited for that.

Rodney Crouther (13:41):
Well thanks for listening to our special mini-episode of Enlighten Me. We are wishing all of you happy winter holidays too, and hope you have a very, very happy New Year.

(13:54):
This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State Podcast Network represent the views of the host and guests not of Texas State University.