You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Notre Dame Usher.
They all have that look. They are older and clad in yellow, kind of like a lobster fisherman worn down by 4 decades of salt air and cheap rum. The Notre Dame ushers are all frowny faced fuss budgets who dislike moving up and down the stairs too rigorously. The Notre Dame ushers are white haired old guys who love Notre Dame like a sailor likes a Vietnamese Whore.
It’s October 19th 2013.
USC vs N.D. is the biggest story in Northern Indiana.
For the rest of the nation it’s too mediocre teams playing. But in this arena, to these fans, it might as well be the battle of the bulge.
The parking lot is a zoo.
It’s a tailgate for the ages.
Port a johns are lined 25 deep, sloshing to the top with a day full of death.
Footballs fill a churning grey sky that periodically sees a ray of sunshine.
I’m doing shots with men in kilts and high school boys who think a back up QB at USC from 2 decades ago is worth facebooking.
There is a Scotsman playing bag pipes. He loves AC/DC and Bon Scott as much as me. We talk bag pipes ( I say very little since I don’t play an instrument that begins and ends with a sheep’s stomach) and we talk rock and roll.
We both acknowledge the boys from Down Under are the only rock and roll Gods with the balls to use bag pipes in a classic rock song.
I don’t even know what that means but I get chills even writing it.
To get the best spot at the best tail gate at the hottest ticket in all of Indiana, you have to go early.
And early it is.
By 9:30 am, we are in position putting out handles of booze and tins of food.
The game is not scheduled to start for another 10 hours. Sure hope we can find our seats by kickoff.
The key to night games like this one is to pace yourself.
Do a shot. Have some water. Drink a beer. Make a sandwich. Talk about touchdown Jesus, go shopping, watch hockey scrimmages, whatever…
Tailgating Life is a balance between your liver over working itself and a nice steady buzz.
The parking lot is a festival of blue and green and touchdown Jesus’ and leprauchans and USC clad fans strolling through it all.
I have played corn hole and thrown footballs. I have watched club hockey teams scrimmage and I have talked to old friends I only see every other year at N.D.
By mid day, the table is full of brisket and sandwiches and cookies. There are handles of Crown and Captain and so many flavors of Vodka, it makes your head spin. It looks like a lunch truck crashed into a liquor store. It’s somehow the most beautiful I have ever seen.
As the day gets later, the mood changes, like the foreboding storm front approaching. It is angrier, more dangerous.
The air smells of Irish versus USC expectations and sniff of game time hatred.
My friend is a Trojan. She is loud and proud and representing.
She doesn’t just show her colors, she is her colors.
She is a flaming neon red head woman wearing Cardinal and Gold.
She is a glow in the dark Trojan in a sea of Blue and Gold.
She stands out in this crowd like a jelly fish at the aquarium lit up by neon lights.
This story is about her. It is a doozy, so go get yourself a sandwich at the tailgate and prepare to have your jaw hit the floor.
As she tells the tale, Red and her husband had just entered the inner bowl. She had just experienced that breath taking moment when you walk through the tunnel and the lights and grandeur of this historic grid iron moment assaults you.
That moment is memorable, unique, full of passion and excitement.
Walking from the bowels of concrete and dreary lighting into that brilliant array of football craziness is a dream. It is that chill that runs up the back of your spine when you know you and 80,000 other people are about to experience something unique.
So Red begins walking up the stairs to her seat.
As she describes it, she begins the ascent normally, when her foot clips the stair. She falls forward onto the hard cement.
As she pushes herself off the cold cement and prepares to continue the climb, her entire evening changes thanks to her metabolism, a bad alcohol plan, and the usher Nazi watching it all unfold.
To be honest with you. 80,000 other people made it to their seats. They too are wrecked, but somehow they made it up the stairs. They too made it to their seats. They somehow didn’t get thrown out.
The red head simply drank too much too fast too furiously.
She let the demon dogs of hell get into her liver and corrupt her moral compass and her 115 pound metabolism.
That’s easy to do when you drink for 10 hours.
I remember being a boy scout around 4 pm and saying to her; “do me a favor. Drink some water and slow down on the booze. It’s a marathon not a sprint”
“You’re right,” she says with a glow in her eyes.
Some how water turns into wine and champagne and vodka shots.
Suddenly the neon colored red head is a fire cracker on the fourth of July.
To be honest. She is a target. She is wearing cardinal and gold in a sea of blue and gold.
Fans walk by and say “Fuck the Trojans”
I imagine Ushers from a lobster boat have the same kind of demented mentality.
Had she fallen in a blue and green shamrock outfit, the usher might have helped her up, dusted her off with a smile, and walked her to her seat.
But she is the enemy in enemy territory.
It’s America outside the confines of Notre Dame Stadium.
In here?
It’s all Irish all the time.
Play like a champion, don’t fall like a drunk.
Not when you are wearing Cardinal and gold. Better use the banister Red.
So instead of helping her find her seat, the usher gets all up in her face.
She describes him as a yellow Gestapo agent Gorged on power, the supreme law in section 36.
She tells him she simply fell.
“I just fell,” she will say over and over again.
Somehow it has to be more.
when you just fall, they don’t immediately ask you to leave the stadium.
My friend says she tries to walk up the stairs, thinking her night is just beginning. Little does she know it is over; at least from a spectator experience.
The red headed USC fan won’t see a moment of action. She won’t even know what it is like to sit in her seat, to look at the sight lines, to experience a 10 minute god forsaken NBC TV Timeout.
Nope. But she now has a unique experience that few of us can tell.
Her night will consist of ushers and police and the stadium Jail deep in the bowels of this venerable edifice.
I wasn’t there, so I can only go by what I heard.
When she describes her interaction with law enforcement and security, it sounds like she has been victimized by circumstances, perhaps misunderstood.
“She simply tripped going up the stairs.”
“You have to leave,” The usher says.
“Why?” my friend, her hair on fire, full of furry screams.
She is animated and I’m sure her words are a bit slurred. They were at 4pm. It’s now closer to 7:30pm. You be the judge.
I’m sure the eyes of section 36 are piercing, burning down upon her.
I can only imagine a sea of Irish fans watching the Trojan fan fall. They point and ridicule and laugh.
Why not? It’s good entertainment.
Then the Gestapo in a yellow coat takes control.
“I just fell. I tripped on the stair,” she will say.
He doesn’t care. She is a Trojan and she must go.
“you have to leave.”
It is a short lived conversation.
The Trojan fan’s husband leads her out of the bowl and back into the tunnel.
From the bright lights into the darkness.
She admits to me the next day, she is pissed and now she is a bit mouthy and border line angry and protesting.
The couple says they have a plan.
They will simply walk around the arena, kill some time, and then utilize the tickets they have in their hands.
Time heals all wounds, right?
The usher will be gone. The game will be on.
Nobody will notice the flaming red head is back.
It’s a quixotic plan that will never see the light of day.
The usher is a trained sleuth. He is the inspector Clouseau of stairwell attendants.
You’d think he was hunting down the Lindbergh baby.
My friend says she and her husband begin walking.
The couple reports, amazingly, the usher follows behind. He is a detective of concrete, a sleuth of pedestrian walk ways.
He won’t let it go, he wont’ let them simply fade away into the grey dinge below the stadium.
Not on his watch. He is an Usher Nazi.
He leads them straight to South Bend’s finest.
The usher is loud and exerting pressure.
He states his case to eject the fiery Trojan into the night.
“I only slipped,” my friend will say, now angry and admittedly becoming more defiant.
How has this happened? What a disaster!
She has flown 2000 miles, traveled all the way from California to Indiana to see friends and root on her alma mater.
Oh and did I forget to mention, drink an insane amount of liquor in an even more insane amount of time?
My friend must have thought this was the indy 500 not a football game that will go late into the night.
Instead of rooting on the boys of old SC, she is going to stadium jail and root for her blood alcohol numbers to be low.
Her husband explains the moments leading up to it.
“She is a few people ahead of me. She is heading up the stairs. I snapped one shot of the field and then I see a commotion to my right. I didn’t see her fall I didn’t know it was her. Then I see this usher, this bozo, and then I see my wife and he’s bringing her to to me.”
She has to leave he says.
Has to leave?
Who the hell has to leave USC vs N.D.
The couple has spent a mint to get here, traveled through 3 time zones, woken up early to party with friends, and now some “Bozo” tells us to leave.
The husband tells his story. He is calm. His words are clear.
He continues with his tale. “So i’m pleading with him to let us just sit down. She just tripped.”
Just Get Out, the yellow clad power hungry douche responds.
“By this time, she is yelling, she is upset, she is saying i didn’t do anything wrong, I just fell.”
Knowing this is spinning out of control, He pleads with the usher. “i will take her and we will go out.”
He describes how they start walking around and how the guy suddenly makes them his special usher project.
“he is following us. He is physically walking behind us, watching us, making sure we are going to leave.”
It’s as if they are on a terrorist watch list instead of attending a Notre Dame football game.
He describes his wife burning and churning like an upset stomach.
“She begins throwing her hands up in the air, getting theatrical like a high school musical. She is protesting to the South Bend Police officer who has now joined the fray.”
“It’s up to the usher,” the cop says.
“But I tripped,” the wife says, anger seething from her every pore.
Then the plot twist in the story.
The cop says “well you can come to the police station and take a breath test.”
Hmmmmmm.
That’s when this S*** gets real. That’s when I would have taken that “get out of jail free card” and got the hell out of dodge.
But not this Trojan wife brimming with pride and booze. Her blazing red hair, incensed at the insanity, the superbity of it all.
She reportedly holds her hands up in the air, wrists together, in an act of symbolic defiance.
“just arrest me,” she hollers. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The husband continues telling me his side of this debacle. It sounds cleaner, safer, more sober. It is the next morning and he has a law degree and it all makes sense.
It’s kind of like a jig saw puzzle that is all put together.
Once it is done, it doesn’t look so hard.
But this story is complicated like a brick house blown up by a tornado.
“You can volunteer to take a breath-a-lyzer” the cop reiterates.
“I want to blow” she says.
I think she just did.
In my mind that is the ultimate “blow it”
Her drunken rationale is “what do I have to lose? What can they do to me?”
HMMMM?
What can they do to me?
how about take you to jail for drunk and disorderly.
“you want to voluntarily blow?” he asks again, probably not quite believing what his cop ears are hearing.
The answer is written all over her face.
“I wanna blow.”
The husband describes stadium jail as a room with a small desk and a sergeant working the room.
She blows into the device
It’s not good.
.08 is drunk in most states.
She blows more than twice that.
.177
Bam!
You do the math.
That is beyond hammered. That is entering the threshold of what color casket would you like?
She is so drunk according to the South Bend Police, they make the husband sign a waiver.
A waiver of responsibility.
It’s as if to say, “She’s your problem dude. We don’t want her mess on our hands.”
What if I don’t sign, he says.
Dumb question barrister.
She just blew a .177.
“If you don’t escort her out we will arrest her,” they say.
OH.
Well that makes it simple.
So the red heads husband hands over his license and signs his life away.
Meanwhile the wife is taunting the officers, holding her wrists together, demanding to be arrested.
The husband is wondering how a simple trip to a football game has degenerated into this?
“They have an exit door,” he says. “Once you open the door and step outside, you are out of the stadium.”
The woman is suddenly standing outside the stadium, in the cold in the dark. She hears the sounds of ND vs USC cascading down around her.
She begins to cry and calls our mutual friend where we are all staying in South Bend.
The friend will later say “She is wasted, she is crying. “I messed up. Can you pick me up?”
“I wouldn’t our host’s husband,” chuckles.
I laugh. It’s a long way back to Notre Dame stadium from shangri la.
But the friend is not her husband and she drives to the stadium. She enters a parking lot full of dreck and vomit and over flowing port-a-johns.
The friend picks up the angry, inebriated red head and her husband.
The story will be told over and over again the next day.
Each time it makes a little more sense, has a little more continuity. It is the jig saw puzzle now pieced together.
I wish we could talk to the Usher Nazi.
What did he see?
By Sunday morning the puzzle is pieced together. It’s a funny story that we will talk about forever.
But be sure. Saturday night, around 7:43 pm, this puzzle was a neutron red bomb that had been dumped into a meat grinder and blown out the emergency door of a jet.
.177 doesn’t lie.
Now that’s a tail gate to remember.
life’s crazy™