Pilgrimage

First, an admission: I’ve lived in this city for more than 21 years without tailgating at an LSU game. Not once. (OK, you can pick up your jaw now, and no, I’m not really sure why not.)

Now, a confession: I’m a Longhorn fan, a certified graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.

The ’Horns come first in my heart, but after all this time in Baton Rouge, the Tigers rate pretty high. Some of my favorite sports-spectator moments are centered on LSU.

In 1996, while vacationing with friends back East, we tuned in to the College World Series and watched Warren Morris hit his walk-off homer. I looked around the room and realized that no one else shared our excitement.

At a party in a Garden District house in 2000 I was surrounded by LSU alums as we watched an unranked LSU hold off a No. 11 Tennessee to win in overtime. We stepped out on the front stoop to hear the roar from the crowd at Tiger Stadium … three miles away.

I even felt that pang of betrayal when I heard that Nick Saban signed on at Bama.

I’ve shared my friends’ pride as LSU won many of its national championships in a variety of sports over the last two decades. The most ?recent championship—the baseball team’s 2009 College World Series victory over Texas—not so much.

So, at the beginning of my 22nd football season in Baton Rouge, I realized I’d been missing something. I realized I must undertake a journey to the spectacle that is game day outside Death Valley. I couldn’t wait for a big rivalry like Florida or Auburn. I picked the home opener: Vanderbilt.

I knew that to complete the journey, I needed veteran tailgaters to guide me.

That quickly led me to Hab Karam and one of the most visible tailgating operations at LSU: The Party Box. This bunch parks their motor home in the most visible tailgating spot on campus, the corner of Stadium and Nicholson drives, right across the street from the center of the universe, Tiger Stadium.

As I crept across campus, I learned that almost everyone knows this group. You do, too: they’re the guys with the ceiling fan.

Karam and his friends began tailgating in the mid-1980s, not long after graduating. They’ve gone from actual tailgating—pre-gaming out of car trunks or off truck tailgates—to a 34-foot motor home with a flush toilet, HD television and a satellite dish.

A parking spot that once cost $250 a season now runs $6,000. These guys are serious about having a good time. Once, Karam says, their first motor home (a clapped-out 1976 Winnebago Brave) broke down in Natchitoches on the way to the Independence Bowl. They had it towed to Shreveport, partied in it for a couple of days before the game, then had it towed back to Baton Rouge.

This group has grown older and has families, so they don’t travel to away games as often. But they still take their pre-game hospitality seriously, Karam says. Judging from the cases of beer and soft drinks stacked in the motor home’s center aisle when Karam parked at 5 p.m. that Friday, he ain’t lying.

Karam and the Party Box provided a great starting point for my fledgling tailgating odyssey. They have such a great spot. I could easily have loafed around with them all day and watched throngs of fans stream by, many stopping to greet Karam as he flipped pork chops on a smoking grill, but there was much more to see on the other side of the stadium.

To savor the real bite of Tiger tailgating, I knew I had to mark myself as an outsider. So I went wearing a burnt-orange Texas football jersey. My wife thought I was insane—that I’d come home in pieces. It was the best decision I made that day. That, and bringing an umbrella.

Wandering the perimeter of the stadium, I quickly learned that LSU fans are not shy about sharing their knowledge of geography. Common comments: “Wrong campus, dude,” and “Get on I-10 and head west.” The crowds thickened as the day wore on, and I was treated to a steady and good-natured taunt, “Tiger bait!” No wonder the only folks I saw in Vandy jerseys travelled in packs. There’s safety in numbers.

Making my way to the Parade Grounds, I was stunned by the sheer number of parties. Tents of purple and gold and white were everywhere. Every other setup seemed to have a flat-screen TV (sometimes three) connected to a satellite dish and a generator. Then there were the kegs, the cases, the coolers, the mixers, the bottles, the entire wet bars.

And the food.

I expected hamburgers, hot dogs and maybe some chicken. How foolish I was. What I saw all around me were gas grills, charcoal grills, electric grills, fryers, boilers, jambalaya pots. All supported, equipped and transported by trailers, pickups and converted step vans. I saw a wagon turned into a DJ’s sound system and another wagon turned into a bar. I saw drinks mixed in a blender powered by a weed-whacker motor.

I had found heaven on earth. Why, oh why, had I waited so long?

The squishy mess of the Parade Grounds seemed to be fraternity and sorority territory. Manly sound systems blasting rap. Entire tents turned over to games of beer pong. Young women in nice dresses and sandals slogging ankle deep through the goo alongside young men in white dress shirts and gold-and-purple striped ties. Wiser young women wore rain jackets and colorful rain boots.

(Later I learned that the guys in ties are pledges who will head early to the stadium to save seats for their superiors.)

In this territory the “Tiger Bait” chants and “wrong campus” taunts come with a harder edge and blearier look. Still agog from the spectacle, I stumbled into the encampment of some friends behind the Middleton Library. The rain had chased them a few feet from their traditional spot to under the overhang of Foster Hall.

I recounted some of my amazement to my hostess. This was nothing, Melinda Deslatte said. The rain kept the turnout low, and “it’s just Vanderbilt,” she pointed out. Florida, I was told, would have the real crowds.

Mark another first, here by Foster Hall: Cajun Horseshoes. You stand on a low wooden box and try to toss oversized washers through one of three holes cut in an identical box six feet way. The washers are the same size as the holes. The farther away the hole, the higher the score.

I watched a match and accepted an invitation to play from Jacques Berry, the tailgate’s other host. How hard can this be? I watched Berry play. A flick of the wrist to put a stabilizing spin on the washer and a toss with enough arc. Ready.

How hard? I was thrashed 15-5. That’s how hard.

A neighboring tailgater erased the taste of shame with a plate of chicken medallions stuffed with shrimp and crabmeat and doused with a delicate gravy alongside a heap of shrimp pasta salad. Paul Templet began his tailgating tradition in 1993 when the first of two daughters began playing in the Golden Band from Tigerland. Over the years, they’d played host to the families of their daughters’ out-of-state band colleagues and even strangers like me.

“Strangers” isn’t the right word. There don’t seem to be many strangers in the LSU tailgating world. Maybe “Friends You Haven’t Met Yet” fits better.

Like the case of Bob Galantucci of Sea Girt, New Jersey. Galantucci is a 1960s LSU graduate with bachelor’s and law degrees. “I work so I can afford to come down here four or five times a year,” he said. Five or six years ago, Benny Adams saw Galantucci looking lonely and hungry and pulled him into his tailgate. Now, Galantucci and his family tailgate with Adams and his large group from the Raceland area. Saturday, Adams worked on a pot of shrimp spaghetti.

I met Galantucci the same way I met other folks that day. The Texas jersey was key. Sure, I got ragged a bit, but I also got pulled into tailgates. Not just pulled in but embraced like family and offered some of whatever they had: food, drink, friends.

I was walking along Fieldhouse Drive across from Hatcher Hall when George Mears ran up to me. Mears has an LSU BA and a UT MBA and had to know why I was wearing a Longhorn jersey at an LSU-Vanderbilt game. He pulled me under his group’s complex of tents. Mears would not take no for answer, and I found a Yellow Hammer in my hand. Pineapple and orange juices gave it the “yellow.” Rum and amaretto gave it the “hammer.”

I’d concentrated on pacing myself. I knew I had a long day, and considering my surroundings, I had great restraint. I waited until 10:48 a.m. to crack the first beer of the day. I joined Mears and his Shreveport bunch just after noon, and a Yellow Hammer seemed on pace—especially after indulging in some of their brisket and sausage.

This group hires a barbeque chef to drive down from Shreveport. Worth the investment, I thought. Tender, smoky brisket on crusty French bread was a new (and delightful) combination for me.

Mears looked around their traditional spot. “Hard to believe it’s been 16 years. I used to pull my daddy’s old Mercedes up that sidewalk, and we’d unload right here,” he said. Now, that spot had two TVs, satellite dishes, enough seats for a small theater, a bar with bartender and enough tents to cover it all.

I was chatting with some of Mears’ crew when someone in a burnt-orange polo shirt with a discreet white longhorn logo on the collar popped up in front of me. I looked up from the collar into the face of Matthew McConaughey, famed leading man and UT fan. He said he was in town just to catch an LSU game.

Why was I wearing that jersey, he wanted to know? We chatted about UT for a few minutes before a dozen young women materialized begging for pictures. McConaughey politely and repeatedly declined to pose, accepted a draft beer and moseyed on with his small LSU-clad entourage.

Nursing that Yellow Hammer, I headed back toward the Party Box for a pit stop and to absorb the scene under the ceiling fan. I can’t remember which game was on the big screen TV. I do remember the unending stream of people in purple and/or gold who mingled around the motor home, its coolers and the trays of catered food.

After a breather, a nosh, some beer and plenty of socializing, I headed back out into a much thicker crowd hoping to catch the Tiger Band’s entrance to the stadium. Turns out I was an hour late for that famed march down the hill and into the stadium.

Disappointed, I hiked up the ramp of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center and took in the scene below. Purple and gold everywhere, the glossy green of the live oaks, and looming above it all, Tiger Stadium, lights already blazing. A few fans populated the visible triangle of the West Upper Deck. A young boy, maybe 5 or 6, broke the reverie by gesturing toward me with a foam paw and growling, “Tiger bait, Tiger bait.”

I worked my way uphill—and upstream though the crowd flooding toward the stadium—and headed back to Mears’ tailgate and another Yellow Hammer. As folks poured into the stadium, I ended the day where I had begun, at the Party Box.

A few stragglers remained, including Karam, who did a last-minute check to make sure everyone who wanted tickets had them and that anyone who remained behind understood the process for changing the TV to the LSU game (Michigan was holding off a last-minute surge by Notre Dame).

I slouched in front of the TV basking in a warmth that comes only from being accepted as family … or from a couple of Yellow Hammers. I planned to watch the game with other tailgaters then experience the post-game scene. The rain changed my mind.

It started again just after kickoff and chased me toward my ride. I popped open my umbrella and trudged back across campus, past the now-empty tailgate sites, past the post-party flotsam, past the wise fans under awnings and tents watching the game in more comfort than their compadres inside.

It was worth the wait. I know I’ll be back. Rain or shine.