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When
Men and Mountains Meet
A
Super Bowl Diary in Five Parts
by Ron Jacobs
(Read
"Part II"
- Part
III - Part IV)
Part One
In 1942 our family
sailed from Honolulu to San Francisco to ride out World War II.
Instead of living in Waikiki, near Kapiolani Park, we found
ourselves in a brick apartment building across the street from
Golden Gate Park. When I was six my dad took me into the park’s
giant forest to Kezar Stadium to witness the annual East-West
Shrine Game.
Featuring college football’s best graduating players, the game
has been played every year since 1925. The event raises money
and awareness for the 22 Shriners Hospitals, which
provide orthopedic and burn care
to children across the country at no cost.
I was a healthy
kid. But the seeds of my lifelong addiction to football had been
sown. And that turned out to be very sick.
“Kezar, What a place! Being right next to Golden
Gate Park
had a lot to do with the feeling of seeing a game
there.
Of course, you had to be ready to dodge the seagulls
as
soon as the third quarter came around.”
O.J. Simpson, 1984 |
By the
mid-1950’s, back home in Hawaii, I was indeed getting paid to
watch four Honolulu Interscholastic League football games each
week. Perched high atop Honolulu Stadium, in the rickety
broadcast booth, I twirled knobs and compared song leaders.
KGU’s Gene ”Beano” Good called the action. I adjusted the volume
on four microphones placed around the “Termite Palace.”
Ten years later, starting work in Hollywood, I discovered that
my fringe benefits included six tickets to every Los Angeles
Rams home game. For a decade my second home was Tunnel 10, Row
72, Seat 115, in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. While
sitting there I went through two cities, three jobs, four
houses, eight Cadillac Coupe Deville’s, six cats, one Olde
English Sheepdog (named “Rigby”), two wives, four coaches and
what seemed like 600 quarterbacks.
My pro football
fanaticism was still under control in 1976 when I met up with
the original “All-World” tight end" christened so by Howard
Cossell during his first Monday Night Football game: Russ
Francis #81 of the New England Patriots. Until then my loyalty
had been with the Los Angeles Rams. Their tight ends were people
like Billy Truax #87 and Bob Klein #80…familiar figures leaping
and huffing inside my Bushnell Safari Master wide-angle
binoculars. They were people I’d never met and had no particular
desire to meet.
“It’s the ideal sport for the modern man to follow.”
Bill Walsh, San Francisco 49ers, 1983 |
In July 1976 I
returned home to Hawaii and became “whodaguyronjacobs?” I was
the morning man and supervised KKUA-AM’s programming. Francis
had been an All-Star quarterback at Kailua High School. Teammate
Mosi Tatupu was a record-breaking running back at Punahou
School. The Pats were the NFL team with the strongest ties to
the 50th State.
After a few in-season Foxborough-to-Honolulu phone interviews Russ
and I became good friends. The kind of buddies who share similar
interests and harbor few secrets.
In the off season
we’d fly to Maui for long weekends of Bullock’s Pukalani
Moonburgers, fireside discussions about Molokai and Machiavelli,
Charlie Parker and Gabby Pahinui, politics and Pegasus. We’d
grind lavish amounts of lemon chicken in Kapahulu, jog around
Diamond Head and attend Willie Nelson concerts.
One
Mokuleia summer was spent rapping about life and truth and
loyalty. And Francis’ obsession with Blue Skies & Black Death.
Very little football talk. Rarely was mentioned the pinnacle,
the ultimate goal: The Super Bowl.
“In July, Russ Francis shocked the football world by
announcing
his retirement. He was, after all, only 28 years old
and in the
prime of a career that brought him a
six-figure-a-year salary and
national recognition.”
Victor Lipman, Honolulu Magazine, September 1981 |
Suddenly in 1982 it
became possible. The Big Trade on draft day meant life after the
New England Patriots for Russ. He would finish his career as, of
all things, a San Francisco 49er. (Any pro football fan beyond
the age of two knows that this team is the mortal nemesis of my
beloved, albeit often bumbling, L.A. Rams.)
One consequence: My
daughter grew up calling the enemy, that Cardinal Red and
Metallic Gold team,
“The Stinkerballs.” (The only appellation describing the Frisco
team without gruesome, obscene, filthy adjectives.) Who is Daddy
going to cheer for: Russell or the Rambos? The question haunted
me relentlessly, without mercy. l fantasized about the perfect
game: Russ scores five touchdowns but the Rams win it 36-35.
This all became
academic in 1984. The Niners put together more victories than
any team in NFL history, beating the Rams twice. Frisco’s only
loss was by three flukey points. They shut out the Chicago Bears
to win the NFC Championship. Yes, dreams do come true in Blue
Hawaii: #81 was going to the Big Dance.
“When you think about it, we’ve done about all there
is
to do, except win a Super Bowl.”
Dan Jenkins, Semi Tough, 1972 |
After the Bear
victory Russell invited me to attend Super Bowl XIX, the San
Francisco 49ers versus the Miami Dolphins, set for January 20,
1985 at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, California. I’d stay at Russ’s house south of The
City, go to the epic game, party up and return home. An
incredible weekend––if San Francisco wins. A tiny inner voice
kept asking, “What will the Rams think?” Do I need their
permission to do this? Well, I just won’t tell them. They’ll
never know.
Countdown-to-kickoff checklist: Don’t forget the trusty Bushnell
Safari Masters, through which I’d seen Ken Norton break Muhammad
Ali’s jaw, Carl Lewis anchor a record-breaking 4x100 meter relay
team and Mike Ditka #89 forearm smash a naive young spectator
running loose on the field at a Rams-Bear game. (This may be
routine in Chicago but for it to happen in the Los Angeles
Memorial Coliseum was nothing less than awesome. Rams fans hate
the Bears almost as much as they despise the 49ers. From that
moment on I became convinced of Ditka’s meanness.)
Next item: Take
enough fresh ti leaves to wrap the Golden Gate Bridge into a
mega-laulau. We’ll bring this authentic Hawaiian good luck
symbol for Russ and his teammates. (To this day there remains a
brittle, brown ti leaf knotted around the strap of my Bushnell
Safari Masters.)
Bring:
Polypropylene underwear. January in the Bay Area means inhumanly
cold conditions. I am not anxious to be the first fan to freeze
to death at a Super Bowl game,
Rejected item: Aerosol boating horn advertised “Can be heard
three miles over water.” I took some of these babies to San
Diego in 1967 when the Rams played the Chargers in their newly
opened stadium. Good thing the Rams creamed them 50-7. Most
Charger fans left early. We barely got out of there alive. No
sense blasting everyone within a three-mile radius of Super Bowl
XIX. We wouldn’t want the Rams penalized for illegal use of
cans.
Last minute item:
Bill Kwon’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin stories about the Hawaii boys
playing in this Super Bowl. I must show the clips to Russ.
Specifically the one about a kid from Laie, now a Miami
defensive back, who felt that Francis wasn’t all he was cracked
up to be. I’d always heard that pro football players papered
their lockers with negative quotes by the opposition, all the
better to trigger blood curdling frenzies. How would the 6-6
ft., 255 lb. Francis react to this bad mouthing, which, among
other things, compared him to a dog?
Friday night, January 18, 1985. Kickoff in 40 hours.
Time to board the
red-eye from Honolulu to San Francisco. Russell also invited
other buddies to the game, people with little in common other
than their mutual friendship with Russ. They were surfers and
divers, bikers and car people. They were photographers and
Vietnam veterans, crazed skydivers and kamikaze pilots. They
were Coors-quaffers and people who call Russ “Zabe.”
Many of these
descriptions fit the innocent-looking gentleman waving at me as
he settles in at the rear of the airplane. His coat and tie look
as if they were taken from a fallen Mormon missionary. He’s
beckoning. He is Russ’s self-proclaimed
best-friend-in-the-whole-wide-world. He is The Claw.
I once saw this
very man, this Claw, dump two gallons of delicious homemade
chicken long rice on #81’s head, thus winning the annual North
Shore April Food Fight. This same guy once challenged all the
patrons in a Makawao bar to a battle royal, not with him, but
with Russ.
As we taxi away,
The Claw unrolls a canvas sign. Opened up it’s bigger than a
door. It is heavy duty. It even has grommets. This thing
features a full- length portrait of #81 and displays deprecating
remarks about the Miami Dolphin team, describing them as
mahimahi. The Claw intends to wave the bawdy banner at Super
Bowl TV cameras, unfurling it with aloha to Haleiwa, Hawaii and
the world at large.
Claw also plans to
chug large quantities of beer and consume undisclosed substances
before, during and after the game. Hey dude, we’re flying to
California to watch our buddy win his Super Bowl ring!
“There’s only one sport in this U.S. of A.,
one thing that gives you a day to mark your life by:
football and the Super Bowl.”
Ernie “Bud” Kielbasa, San Francisco Examiner,
January 20, 1985 |
At five o’clock
Saturday morning we arrive and rendezvous with more miscreants:
Captain George, G.W. and Ron Hall. Driving away from the San
Francisco Airport we’re a discordant septet, wailing unprintable
insults dedicated to the doom and destruction of the Dolphins.
I’m wearing my high-tech polypropylene long underwear and
therefore ready for anything.
We speed south in a
Buick sedan decorated with red, white and blue “Official
Vehicle, Super Bowl XIX” signs. Every storefront and billboard
seems festooned with 49er totems. There are signs imploring
specific players to perform specific miracles. Joe Montana #16
is portrayed in every diabolic means imaginable.
Kickoff in 33 hours.
We arrive at Russ’s
house in San Carlos. A small crowd is on hand, comprising some
people I know, some I don’t. A television set glows silently but
the sound is quickly cranked up whenever a Super Bowl story
comes on, which is often.
An Asian man,
oblivious, sleeps in a living room chair. Later I learn he’s an
aeronautical engineer.
Russ’s dad,
“Gentleman” Ed Francis, arrives with some of the clan: Big
Brother Billy with his wife, Lisa, and their sister Pixie. Russ
doesn’t seem quite as huge amongst his family. Discovering I’ll
be sitting near Ed and Billy at the game, I think about buying
some air horns. Who’s gonna mess with us?
Lunchtime.
Everyone’s here except #81. The NFC Champs are holding last
minute meetings. They’ll stay at their hotel tonight but Russ is
coming home for dinner with us, The Furry Freak Fan Club.
This is not a
misnomer. G.W., for instance, is both very furry and very
freaky. Freaky? G.W. once gave Russell his Vietnam-induced
artificial eye, hung on a key chain. To this day a true
conversation stopper. Ron Hall is even furrier, resembling a
Haight-Ashbury Flower Power throwback. Maybe not as freaky as
G.W.––probably no one is–– but heavily hirsute, for sure.
Ron Hall looks like
he’s been at every Grateful Dead concert since 1967. He and G.W.
just rode in from Killeen, Texas on radically modified Harley-
Davidson motorcycles.
The Claw and I
drape the premises with the authentic Hawaiian ti leaves. Ron
Hall announces he’s going in to town to buy Super Bowl
souvenirs. Why pay rip-off prices at the stadium tomorrow?
Besides, the stuff is a hassle to carry around at the game.
Makes sense to me.
(To be continued ...)
Next Sunday January
6, 2006: Part Two
Featuring Buicks, Brother Billy and Bloody Marys
Exclusively on RonJacobsOnline.com and via RDN Central at
RadioDailyNews.com.
Hauoli Makahiki Hou!
Copyright 1987 - 2006 Ron Jacobs
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