As the warm September day dawned, thousands in San Antonio reveled in the Papal visit, world leaders fumed over growing tension between Iraq and Iran and a small group of protesters organized for a march against the expansion of the Fort Worth Zoo.
But most went about their day as they normally would, unaware of the pending invasion.Years later, those most personally involved describe their reaction to the hordes of invaders in various ways - but all expressing their horror and revulsion.
"Slippery, mushy. Almost obscene," recalled David Rascoe.
"Wild, disgusting," Clint Hailey said.
"Crazy, weird, strange," Kent Tramel recalled.
The fact that TCU upset Brigham Young, 33-12, in 1987 at Amon Carter Stadium is inconsequential to the aforementioned participants or those who were among the intimate crowd of 26,000 the night that thousands (millions?) of field crickets flew with kamikaze fervor into carefully crafted blue coiffures, drowned themselves in icy soft drinks or coated the artificial turf with a brown puree - casualties of a mating dance that ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like teen-age parkers caught in a lover's lane inexplicably transformed into a freeway fraught with 18-wheelers.
The Cricket Game - as it has become known in the lore of TCU and BYU fans - lives on in memory if not in celebration Saturday night when the Cougars return to Amon Carter Stadium for the first time since that misdirected insect love-in.
The recent passage of a cold front should prevent a recurrence, a freak happening because of optimum conditions during the height of the brown field cricket mating season - all coinciding with the attraction of the Amon Carter Stadium lights.
But as yucky as the recollection is for TCU faithful, the decade-old event takes on added significance for followers of Mormon-affiliated BYU.
"Anyone who knows anything about Mormon history knows how we react to crickets," longtime BYU coach LaVell Edwards said.
Brigham Young brought his followers to the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847. In the spring of 1848, they planted a first crop of potatoes and wheat. But just as the wheat was coming to harvest head, a massive dark cloud of locust (now officially known as Mormon crickets) appeared on the horizon. They threatened not only the wheat crop, but the Mormons' very subsistence.
Summoned by a hastily called prayer meeting, a white cloud of hungry seagulls soon appeared from the west and gorged themselves on the long-legged, winged infestation - saving the wheat crop and the very existence of the Mormon settlement in Utah.
"I talked to (TCU athletic director) Frank Windegger and he said they were growing a big new crop of crickets down there," Edwards said this week. "But I told him we were prepared. This time we're bringing seagulls with us."