When I left the Times-Picayune in November, a friend of mine – relatively new to town, said: Dude, you’re crazy. Wait until the Super Bowl, at least.
He reasoned I would be sent by the paper to Miami if the Saints made it to the Big Game. And that was just the point: I didn’t want to be in Miami last night. I wanted to be here.
It speaks volumes that it was harder to get a hotel room in New Orleans this weekend than it was in Miami or Ft. Lauderdale. I don’t think that’s what happened in Indianapolis this weekend; in fact, I doubt that’s ever happened in a city that sent a team halfway across the country to play a football game; that inbound flights were more more crowded than out.
You know, what happened Saturday night – the election of a new mayor - is surely of more import, in the long run, to this town, than hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy. But that’s a story more about the future, and a conversation for another time, not today.
Sunday night was about the past, and erasing four decades of football misery, a run of seasons at times so bad that, this week, you hardly ever heard that media say “Saints fans” with out first affixing the term “long-suffering” in front of it.
Me and my kids walked over to Bourbon Street last night; I wanted to forge in their memory, this night to remember. And my friend was with us; the one who told me to hang on at the newspaper until the Super Bowl was over.
But... for what? To be Elsewhere when it all came tumbling down - the futility, the heartbreak... the long suffering? The past?
Last night, out on the streets, out on the town, out of our minds, my friend turned to me and said: I get it now. I understand.
There’s no place like home.
