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When
Men and Mountains Meet
A
Super Bowl Diary in Five Parts
by Ron Jacobs
Part Two
(Read
"Part
1")
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“Now all impatient
grapple round the Ball
And Heaps on Heaps in wild Disorder fall.”
Matthew Concanen, from A Match at Football,
1721 |
Saturday. January 19, 1985.
10:30 a.m., somewhere in Frisco. Colder than a Haleakala
sunrise.
Away we go in another Official
Super Bowl XIX Buick, Ron Hall and me. He drives to a shopping
center in San Carlos and parks right in front of –- are you
ready for this? –– a Longs Drug Store. Disoriented, I wander in.
Well, it looks and sounds and smells like Ala Moana or any Longs
in Hawaii. Obviously not since it’s crammed full of Super Bowl
XIX paraphernalia and lots of 49er stuff. I am here to buy
scarlet and gold hats and mugs and trinkets and Air Montana
T-shirts. Oh, please forgive me, thou greatest Ram of them
all, Merlin Olsen #74. “This stuff will cost three times as
much at the game tomorrow,” says Ron Hall as we walk back to the
Buick. The operation being my idea, I agree.
We’ve barely buckled in when a
man in a police uniform runs up to the car. He’s been stalking
us, obviously. He thrusts his head in Ron Hall’s window. An
official plastic I.D. is clipped to the stranger’s breast
pocket. I can’t see if he’s armed and, if so, who he’s aimed
at. To him, Ron Hall must look like a major league substance
abuser and I’m a freaked-out co-conspirator. “You’re under
suspicion!” barks the man.
Will we spend Super Sunday in
a California jail? Will Ron Hall stomp on the gas and try for a
getaway? Or is the vehicle surrounded? How long have we been
under surveillance?
“Do you hear me? You’re under
suspicion!” growls the Gestapo. My life fast-forwards like a
Fellini film. Why did I ever meet up with Russ Francis? To live
and die in San Carlos.
Ron Hall, turning white,
manages a hoarse whisper: “Under sus-sus-suspicion f-f-for
what?” Experiencing terminal dry mouth, I hold my b-b-breath.
The interloper prods Ron Hall in the chest and barks, “You’re
under suspicion of –- of ––
cheering louder than
hell for the 49ers tomorrow!” He tosses Ron Hall a cap
and a bumper sticker and a button. They say “Super Niners” and
are scarlet and gold, of course. We’re both speechless. This is
beyond substance abuse.
I blurt out, “Hey, I’m gonna
yell tomorrow too. Can I have a hat?” The stranger, now smiling
and grinning like Allen Funt on “Candid Camera,” replies, “OK,
but wouldn’t you guys like to make a donation to the Boys Club?
This is their fund raiser.” We turn over our money without
counting it. No way the Super Bowl itself will be this exciting.
Slowly, Ron Hall pulls out of the parking lot. Twenty-seven
hours and counting.
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“Drop kick me,
Jesus, through the goal posts of life,
End over end, neither left nor to right.”
Bobby Bare, 1976 |
Returning to the house, we
arrive just as Russ pulls up in an “Official Super Bowl”
four-wheel vehicle. He spots the ti leaves decorating the
front door. Says nothing. Big #81 is being cool. He knows
everyone in the house is crazy, each in his own special way.
Like me, a Los Angeles Rams fan of 20 years, here to cheer for -
yuch - the San Francisco Forty-Niners.
Russ shows me the room I’ll be
staying in, his. I unpack, handing him the Honolulu
Star-Bulletin report on the 6-foot, 198-pound Miami Dolphin
defensive back from Laie. Russell reads it intently, silently.
Then he reads it again. Pau, he turns his head slowly
from side to side with a, “Can you believe this?” look. Starting
out of the room, Francis stops to ask, “What’s this guy’s
number?” “Uh, that would be number 40,” I reply. Saying nothing,
the 6’6”, 242-pound tight end joins his guests.
G.W., The Claw and Ron Hall
are heading for The City after dinner. I pass, not wanting any
more thrilling surprises like our visit to Longs. Russ is ready
to return to the Amfac Hotel in Burlingame, the same one the
team stays at before regular season home games. It’s not that
much farther to Stanford Stadium than to Candlestick Park. (With
their “home team advantage,” the 49ers are listed as slight
favorites in Las Vegas.)
I grab Russ just before he
leaves. Drag him back into his room and deliver my best Knute
Rockne imitation, hollering, “Win that bleeping Super Bowl ring,
bra!” Dozens more gourmet expletives spray the room. How can
this guy be so cool? I wonder. While I’m almost jumping out
of my polypropylenes, #81 sits there in his jeans, Outrigger
Canoe Club T-shirt and size 12 1/2 Pumas. Might as well be the
night before a Kailua-Castle game.
The next time I see Russ
Francis it’ll be along with 85,000 other fanatics gathered in
Stanford Stadium. Plus half the known universe watching on TV.
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“The
money’s nice when you win a Super Bowl,
but it’ll soon be gone... but the Super Bowl ring is
forever.
That’s what you’re really playing for.”
Joe Theismann, Washington Redskins, 1983 |
Football superstars receive
obscene amounts of free athletic gear from manufacturers. I feel
like I’m spending the night in a small sporting goods store. In
the shoe section. Mostly Pumas. I can’t resist peeking inside
a carton that exudes the macho smell of new leather. I discover
six Wilson official NFL footballs, each one signed by the entire
49er squad. Real human signatures too, none of those
computer-generated autographs.
More Twilight Zone: Someone
has lettered “1984 World Champions” on each football. At dinner
Gentleman Ed Francis mentioned that the San Francisco team was
very confident, but this is preposterous. I finally doze
off, counting tiny sheep wearing teeny Adidas and Pumas.
“If
his inmost heart could have been laid open, there
would
have been discovered that dream of undying fame,
which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a
thousand realities.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanshawe, 1821 |
Ten hours till kickoff, 5:00
a.m. Too excited to sleep, I tiptoe past the crew crashed in the
living room and fetch the Sunday Examiner. The San
Francisco papers treat Super Bowl XIX as if it were World War
III. The classified pages are full of ads offering to buy or
sell 50-yard-line tickets for upwards of $1200 a pair. A Corte
Madera man is looking to trade a Hobie catamaran for two good
seats.
Last night Russ gave me my
game ticket, along with a complimentary breakfast invitation and
a bus pass. I pocket these, making sure I have the ti
leaves and the Safari Masters. Glaring at my Seiko, I try to
advance the timepiece by sheer willpower. That fails, just as it
did in Halawa Jail. I thumb through the paper again. The words
are scrambled like my stomach.
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Blowout! Super Bowl Slot Machine. $895 Special
(limit 2 per customer!)
Buy an NFL Watchman… you’ll also get the Sony
Stadium Super Survival Kit!
“Great!”
-
That’s what Joe Montana said the first time he wore
Macy’s jeans.
It’s a Super Score when you buy Boar’s Head
Delicatessen Products! |
Ten o’clock and
we’re rolling! San Carlos is a blur of pro-49er propaganda, a
surrealistic scarlet and gold landscape. The Claw and Bigtime
holler at 49er Faithful in flanking cars, vans, buses: “Go #81,
partner! Kill you Niners, Killlllll !!!”
A little boy in a Joe Montana
#16 jersey, who looks no older than ten, trudges down the street
with his fishing pole. He drags along a scruffy, stuffed
dolphin. Our car erupts with anti-Miami innuendoes, boisterously
backing the kid. “Mahimahi road kill!”
The filthy aspersions cease as
we pull up to Salvatore’s, an aromatic Italian restaurant. The
sounds of a labor rally cum anti-war riot rumble out of the
place, which appears to be next to a bus terminal.
Inside, I exchange my
invitation for scrip. This is not the Punahou Carnival.
Everything is free. Food and booze. It’s Beer & Pupu
Heaven. The berserk crowd is rabidly pro-49er. Above the roar
hear The Claw bellowing, “Big #81, Russ Francis, go bra!!!”
“You
make score and we make noise, e’a, e’a!”
1950’s Kamehameha School fight song |
I’m too nervous to eat so I
sip a Bloody Mary made with scarlet tomato juice and golden
lemon slice. Then, needing some uncontaminated air, I dodge The
Claw, who pirouettes through the mob waving his Mahimahi
banner. I nearly crash into G.W. at the front entrance. Trying
to keep my distance, I remember those wet kisses slobbered on
top my bald head one lost weekend on the North Shore.
G.W. is on some kind of
ecstatic roll or Mushroom Trance, more manic and more maniac
than anything I’ve ever seen. His one good eye spins faster than
a 1985 Toyota MR-2 red-lining in first gear. “Let’s go check out
those buses,” he gargles, while bowing to a passing blue-haired
lady. “Hey hey, Super Bowl! #81, mama! Go Niners!”
We come upon nineteen matching
buses parked in perfect rows. New? They look like they arrived
from West Germany yesterday. They are shiny metal, like the
spinners on young Ben Cayetano’s 1950 Ford. Each empty Mercedes
bus digitally displays “Super Bowl XIX” as its destination. Half
dozen or so San Francisco Police patrol cars are parked at the
front of the lot. The bus and limo drivers, patrol and chopper
cops, hang out at the rear of the restaurant, drinking coffee.
Well, something in coffee mugs.
I field-test my 49er ski cap
from Longs, which along with my erstwhile Mainland
polypropylenes keep me warm as a summer’s day in Kona. G.W. and
I march up and down aisles of empty buses. Finally we locate
one, with a driver aboard. The bus is #18. The skipper’s name is
Norm. Folding money changes hands like a drug deal in the
shadowy alleys off Kuhio Avenue or Hollywood Boulevard. G.W.
knows what I learned during my days at Roosevelt High School:
“If you wanna slide, you gotta grease.”
The front of the bus is now
reserved for our raucous gang, The Friends of Francis.
I ask Norm how his hand mike
works. “You can use it for the outside or inside p.a. speakers,
or both. Just wait until we’re outta here before turning it on,
OK?” G.W. and I exchange fiendish glances. We then proceed to
teach Norm the meaning and usage of the traditional shaka
sign. The G-rated one.
Inside Salvatore’s they
announce last call. It’s just four hours to kickoff.
Nineteen buses start their
engines. We’ve commandeered the first dozen rows of seats. Bus
#18 is now creatively tasseled with ti leaves. The other
vehicles are nearly full. A cluster of civilians hesitantly
climbs aboard. Spotting us, they head directly for the back of
the bus. The Claw, sitting right behind Norm, madly flails the
air with ti leaves and half screams, half sings, “Go
Niners #1, Kill Miami, Russ Bra!!! Compared to this, the Turkey
Day Doubleheader in old Honolulu Stadium was a Hawaiian
lullaby.
The police cars and
motorcycles rev their engines and flash their lights. They pull
out in front of the throbbing buses. The Claw checks out the
p.a. system. Everyone grins like big Wheel of Fortune winners.
Billy Francis hugs Lisa. A smiling Gentleman Ed Francis flashes
thumbs up. G.W., Ron Hall, Bigtime and The Claw glow like an
overamped pharmaceutical endorsement. Captain George snaps
pictures of it all.
The Super Bowl Special is on
the road! Sirens scream as Norm eases #18 into the caravan. The
Claw violently voices vituperation on the outboard speakers. I
feel a roiling urge to laugh and cry and wail and hit
something. Is this the way to go to the Super Bowl or what?
(To be continued...)
Next Sunday January 15, 2006: Part Three
Featuring Maniacs, Miami and Montana
Exclusively on RonJacobsOnline.com and via RDN Central at
RadioDailyNews.com.
Hauoli Makahiki Hou!
Copyright 1987 - 2006 Ron Jacobs
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