So here I sit on Super Bowl Sunday, debating between buffalo or honey barbeque sauce for the wings that still sleep in the freezer and really not giving a rat's pa-tootey about the game, but looking forward to the commercials................
I am, however, dreaming ahead to Super Bowl XLVII because it returns to my beloved New Orleans and the Super Dome and come hell or high water (wait, forget that last part), if the Saints go marching into that one, so will I!! It's actually taken that long for me to recover from the LAST time I did the Super Bowl in New Orleans - twenty-two years ago, to be exact!
Going to the biggest football game of the year was nowhere on my radar back in 1990, so when a former co-worker walked into my office that morning, wildly waving four Super Bowl tickets in my face and about to faint, I absently smiled and congratulated her (yes, HER), waaaaay more concerned about the pile of annual report documents on my desk, screaming to get to the printer. Turns out, co-worker had more to offer, including the story of how those tickets came to be in her mail that morning.
Now, this woman was the most ardent San Francisco 49'ers fanatic on the planet earth. Tennessee born and bred, it made no sense, but THE famous pass that Joe Montana connected with Dwight Clark back in 1981 apparently ignited her fever, which had failed to find an upper limit even nine years later. She followed the team, literally, to Atlanta (back then, the closest NFL franchise to us) when they played the Falcons and apparently, she bumped into team owner, Eddie Debartolo, Jr. (still in his glory days and that unfortunate Club Fed "vacation" nowhere on HIS radar) at the hotel bar. And there, over drinks, she charmed him out of Super Bowl tickets, should the Montana/Rice powerhouse get the team that far. Still, she was way more excited about charming her way onto the floor where the team was housed and managing to snag hallway pictures with the MAN himself. That would be Joe Montana. That picture remained framed on her desk for as long as we ever worked together.
Of course, when the 49ers won the NFC Championship that year, she thought about that fateful conversation with Debartolo. Still, never expecting him to actually make good on his promise, she nearly passed on when four tickets arrived in her office mail that magic morning. And here she stood at my desk, asking if Hubby & I wanted to go...................
In what had to be the most hastily-thrown-together trip in history, I managed to talk my mother into keeping the boys for the weekend, Hubby got a work buddy to take the fourth ticket and we departed Hughey Hill after work on Friday, landing in The French Quarter just shy of midnight - just as the party was getting cranked up. And, thus began a 72-hour non-stop throw-down, the likes of which I'd never experienced before and really never have come close to weathering again. I doubt we collectively napped more than four hours in the next three days and the funny thing is, my memories of that weekend are crystal clear all these years later. Even then, it seemed like a constant surge of adrenaline more than compensated for the alcohol consumption, because we kept going round-the-clock as football frenzy reached a fever pitch.
I'll never forget sitting in that dome, close enough to the sideline to have an unobstructed view of Joe (Montana) and Jerry (Rice) going through a series of warm-up passes before kickoff. Turns out, it was a blow-out as San Fran routed the Denver Broncos (near the height of their Elway era) 55-10. But, while hubby and work buddy left in search of refreshments by half-time, our ticket benefactor and I remained til the final snap, steadfastly screaming our lungs out for our quarterback hero to kick some Bronco a- 'er, butt, afraid that if we budged from our spot, it might actually throw the game and cause our team's defeat. Oy! At one point, the guy in front of us turned around and drunkenly asked us where we'd been all those years ago when he'd been searching for a wife. We turned him back around and propped him against a railing, lest we miss another first-and-ten.
The exhilaration of that weekend adventure took a long, long time to subside and every time we drive across Lake Pontchartrain. Hubby and I still laugh at how we all actually drove back to our Picayune, Mississippi motel (the closest lodging we could find) for a two-hour nap in the midst of all the melee'!
As of today, NOLA BFF and Football-Comrade-In-Arms Mary reminds me there's exactly 37 weeks left until we can once again spend our weekends e-mailing, texting and Facebook messaging each other our armchair coaching/quarterbacking wisdom during College Football Saturdays and NFL Sundays (we start singing "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" every July in anticipation of the pre-season). That should give our home-boy Brees plenty of time to get his arm and his aim in shape.
And, that should give me just enough time to get my mojo cranked up enough to experience the Bowl that is Super in person one more time before I die!
Come to think of it, with his hometown ties to The Big Easy, Eli Manning's participation in today's game is reason enough to root for the Giants, but in my heart, I'll really be thinking
GEAUX SAINTS!
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