NO NEW TEXANS!

Just got through watching a pretty exciting game between Los Santos de Nuevo Orleans y Los Tejanos de Houston in the Superdome. Los Santos won 40 to 33. It’s a little weird watching a game with Spanish narration, but not as strange as watching a game over in France. There they used to have a game of the week on the television on Mondays. Americans found it nearly impossible to watch it. Theoretically, a football game is 60 minutes long. Theoretically. But we all know it takes at least 90 minutes what with all the time outs and clock stoppages for incomplete passes, runners stepping out of bounds, etc. But not on French television. There, after an incomplete pass the picture is right back with the quarterback under center and time outs are axed for the audience, too, so an American football game on television in France takes exactly 60 minutes to broadcast. But in spite of the Spanish narration here even someone who doesn’t speak the language can understand “yardas,” “completo,” “incompleto” and “TOUCHDOWN!!!” So practically anyone can catch the drift of the game.

The whole world became acquainted with the Superdome when Hurricane Katrina screamed in from the Gulf of Mexico and literally destroyed the City of New Orleans.  Some 26,000 fled to the “Dome” as a “refuge of last resort” for citizens who couldn’t leave the city” for whatever reason. Seating capacity for the Superdome in football configuration is 76,468 but in 1981 more than 87,500 attended a Rolling Stones concert in the “Dome.”

While the world might know what the Superdome is if you’re not from New Orleans or at least have lived there, you really don’t know why it’s as big as it is. There’s a quirky reason for it.

Sports visionary Dave Dixon dreamed up the idea when he was trying to convince the NFL to give The Big Sleazy a team and he looked westward towards Houston that had built the Astrodome which opened to the public in 1965. It was billed as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” The following year Dixon and Louisiana Governor John McKeithen, who desperately wanted a huge project that would revitalize downtown New Orleans, Toured the Astrodome. Houstonians laughed at the men’s dream saying that Louisiana was so corrupt that such a project could never be successfully completed. Then and there McKeithen said that was bull shit and “I’m going to build a dome so big you can put this one inside of mine.” And when the Superdome was completed in August 1975 you could have put the Astrodome inside it, hence the name “Superdome.”

Maybe some day I’ll tell y’awl (N’Awlins expression) about my first visit to the dome which was to see the second Muhammad Ali-Leon Spinks fight but right now we’re talking about the Saints playing football there. When I see a game on television being played there I know that actual perspective. It’s right where I used to watch the home games when I lived in New Orleans.

Back in 1981 I went to work as captain of this yacht:

As you can see it was owned by a company called New Orleans Tours (years later they added a large paddlewheeler gambling boat on the Mississippi). New Orleans Tours also had about a dozen buses for touring the area and they also had the contract to bring all of the visiting football teams who were going to play the Saints from the airport to their hotels and then to the Superdome on game day.

The drivers of those buses were given free entry into the Dome for the game but they had to watch standing up in the “wheelchair” section which was just to the right of where the television cameras and press boxes are located at mid-field and about 20 seat rows up from the field itself.

Well, it took the rest of us who worked for New Orleans Tours exactly one game to figure this out. We’d don our New Orleans Tours shirts with the company name embroidered over the right breast pocket and mine had “Captain Richard” over the left pocket. On game day I, along with others with the N.O.T shirts, would purchase the cheapest ticket available. It was probably somewhere in the end zone and so high that you couldn’t even stand behind the seat you were assigned but that’s just a guess because I never tried to find the seat. Instead we’d immediately go to the wheelchair section. The “rent a cop” who was stationed there to keep unauthorized people out knew that the New Orleans Tour drivers were allowed in that section, so we’d quietly pocket our cheapo tickets go to the “rent a cop” and point at the “New Orleans Tours” on our shirts and say we were with the company and implying though not actually saying we were drivers and gain admission to the restricted area. Then, to really seal the deal, we’d go to one of the people who were in a wheelchair, introduce ourselves and tell them if there was anything at all they wanted during the game to just let us know…drinks, nachos, whatever. That we we could claim were we not only with the tour company but we were personal friends with one of the handicapped.

So, that’s where I watched the games for several years. With a $15 ticket in my pocket I’d stand in the middle of the $50 seats and one of the nice things was that when things got really exciting nobody ever stood up in front of you to block your view.

There is a small group of gringos here around David who meet weekly to practice speaking our Spanish. I enjoy going because we’re all a bit hesitant in our use of the language so we aren’t overwhelmed with the rapidity with which the Panamanians speak. There are times when I hear them on their cell phones and I think to myself “there’s no way the person on the other end can understand what’s being said it’s going so fast.” Then I think, too, that it has something to do with the cost of making a cell phone call. It’s well known that people here will often call a number and hang up as soon as it starts to ring on the other end. That way their phone number shows up on the other person’s phone and they aren’t charged for a call and they expect the other person to call back on their dime. Therefore, when they are actually talking on on the phone they do it as fast as they can so they can hang up without spending too much on the call.

Anyway, the group starts at 10:30. I can’t really take the ten o’clock bus. It takes about 45 minutes to get down to the “lavamatico” (laundromat) where I need to get off and then there’s a bit of a walk to the meeting place. Taking the ten o’clock would mean showing up at least a half hour late. So, I have to catch the nine o’clock bus which means I’ve got to hang out somewhere for about three quarters of an hour before the meeting starts.

Yesterday I went to the little “fonda” across from where the bus stops. A “fonda” is a kind of restaurant. I figured I’d have a cup of coffee and read my Kindle for a while.

I’ve written about how good the coffee is here in Panama. Much of it is grown within arms reach of where I live. I enjoy Finca Ruiz Italian roast and every now and then I go to their store in Boquete to get some of the other beans they offer but which aren’t available in the super markets. They’re also about double in price to what you can buy at El Rey or Super Barú but every once in a while I like to treat myself to a special cup. I buy the whole bean coffee and grind each batch fresh though I do have about four pots- worth pre-ground and sitting in the fridge in case I wake up and the electricity is off and I can’t use the grinder. The stove is gas.

So, I order my coffee, knowing it’s not going to be freshly ground beans or Italian, French or Espresso roast, but can you imagine my horror, here in the heart of coffee-land, when the lady behind the counter tossed a heaping tablespoon full of INSTANT coffee into a Styrofoam cup and added hot water? What a sacrilege! Why didn’t the coffee police swoop down on this little fonda and instantly haul this woman away to some dank, dark dungeon and punish her severely? Surely this had to be some serious breach of the penal code, no?

Obviously I won’t be going there again. There is, however, a few blocks away, another little fonda that I’m going to get to some day and I want to get a picture of the place. The name of it is ¿Dónde está José? Where’s Joe? Gotta love it.

When I was a kid this was the saddest day of every year. No, not September 6th. Some times the saddest day could come as early as the 2nd of September. It didn’t really matter. It was the dreaded Day After Labor Day. (For those who don’t live in the States, Labor Day there is the first Monday in September, so, like Mardi Gras and Easter, it’s a movable feast.) Summer was officially over and it had nothing to do with solstices. The Day After Labor Day was the day we literally packed up our tent, left Nickerson State Park in Brewster, Massachusettes, on Cape Cod and headed back “home” and  school. Since I went to five different schools in my first seven years there was a special dread of leaving the park.

As the last day of school approached each day seemed to be a week long filled with the anticipation of returning to the park and the summer seemed as though it would last forever. Labor Day was so far away. On that last day of school my mom and dad would be waiting outside. My mom would be driving the Ford station wagon, a woodie, and my dad would be in the old Chevy panel truck with Philbrick’s Catering in big gold letters on the side and the family coat of arms on the driver’s side door. Hitched up behind the truck was the trailer my mom and dad would stay in. My brothers and I would live in a tent. And perched proudly on top of the truck would be the 8′ pram my dad had built in the basement with a shiny coat of white paint each year waiting to join the small flotilla made up of our boat and those of the Brenners and Cullums.

In those days, the late 40s and early 50s, you could reserve your spot each year and stay the whole summer. You can’t do that now: no reservations and two weeks max. While each Fall was a new school and fighting for a place in the pecking order, summer was always the same in Area Five. Just above our camp site were the Bolducs with their daughters Suzanne and Julie and then the Larabees with their son Don and across from them the Taylors and their son Tony who was only one hour older than me.  Down the slope a ways were the Brenners and their daughter Susan and the Cullums with their son Fran and daughter Jan who had had polio and was confined to a wheel chair. Up from them were the Morrises and their daughters Sara Ann and Jeniffer (oh did I ever have a crush on Jeniffer, completely unrequited). My uncle Bill and aunt Stephanie with their daughters Helen and Lois pitched their tent across from the Morrises. I always knew where I fit in in the summer.

Back then it took about three hours to drive from Watertown, just outside of Boston and where, I found out a half century later, both the Philbricks and the Eatons had settled in the 1630s, to Nickerson. As we drew closer to Bourne and the Cape Cod Canal you knew you’d left the city far behind and the wonderful scent of the pine woods would start filtering in through the car windows.

Our tent was literally just steps away from Flax Pond.

There was great fishing in that pond. There was bass, pickerel, perch and catfish, but we called them hornpout, and were they great coated with cornmeal and fried up for breakfast with blueberry muffins with the blueberries picked off of bushes just a few feet away from the camp site.

Eventually, and inevitably, the day would arrive when there were only two weeks left of summer. The last two weeks of school dragged on for an eternity, but those last two weeks of summer flew by in the blink of an eye and then it was all done.

The day after Labor Day was always the saddest day of the year.