A Sunday of ceremony, defeat and jambalaya, with the parish hall projector as referee.
METAIRIE, Louisiana – By noon the parish hall projector had developed a personality, and the personality was pessimistic. We had gathered for the monthly supper, forty chairs, one enormous pot of jambalaya and a screen the size of a bedsheet, and the volunteer in charge of the cable had said the words “it worked on Thursday,” which is how every disaster in this city begins.
Pre-Game: The Great Cable Inquiry
Let me set out the facts of the morning in the order in which they distressed me.
- The streetcar was eleven minutes late and then, mysteriously, two came at once, which my friend Marguerite calls “the city apologising with interest.”
- My umbrella opened inside the vehicle, so I have now made an impression on a stranger and a handrail.
- The projector showed the game in a shade of green I can only describe as pond.
- The choir director, Mrs. Lalonde, asked everyone to be kind to the equipment, which was the loveliest instruction I have ever heard given to a room full of men holding spoons.
The congregation takes its football seriously, and by that I mean with enormous love and no evidence. A retired schoolteacher called Mr. Arceneaux gave us the pregame forecast, which was a confident prediction that the afternoon would go well for the home side. He has made this prediction every week since I joined the choir. His success rate is a matter for the archivists.
Kickoff: Hope, Served Hot
I will say it plainly: it did not go well. The team’s own morning roundup records a 23-13 loss to Minnesota at the Superdome, leaving the Saints at 1-4 and three straight home games down. It also reports that the offence managed only 142 total yards, and that the quarterback, Tyler Shough, was sixteen of twenty-five for 96 yards with two interceptions.
I do not blame one man for a numbers problem that big. In our hall, the numbers problem was mostly that someone had put the sweet tea next to the hot sauce and several of us had developed theories about which was which. That was the kind of confusion the afternoon was built for.
The volunteers brought the second tray out during the third quarter, which is when the room discovered that jambalaya is the only thing in Louisiana capable of lowering a man’s blood pressure and raising his hopes simultaneously. Mr. Arceneaux said, with his mouth full, “They are gathering themselves.” Nobody had the heart to ask what from.
Halftime: The Ring
The real reason the room went quiet came at the break. Drew Brees became the ninth member of the Saints Ring of Honor, and according to the same report he accepted it wearing his Hall of Fame gold jacket. He told fans, “I will always love the Who Dat Nation.” A recorded message added, “I love you, New Orleans.”
There is a certain kind of silence that falls in a parish hall when a whole room of people who were being rude about the cable stops and thinks about something good. I saw two grown men look at their shoes. One of them held a plastic fork like a candle. I thought, as a history student, that this is what a civic memory looks like: not a monument, but forty people and a large pot.
Mrs. Lalonde, quietly, during the ceremony: “Nobody breathe on the projector.”
Full Time: Logistics and Consolation
After the final whistle the mood in the hall turned practical, as it does here. The team’s roundup headed into the next week says the Saints look to turn things around, which is the sort of sentence a city can lean on like a doorframe.
We then did what we always do: planned the parade route. Our little community walking group has been asked to organise the stewarding for a procession in the new year, and the great question is where to put the portable toilets so that nobody has to choose between dignity and a good view. Marguerite brought a map with three colours of highlighter. Tobias brought a different map and an opinion. I brought a muffin, which turned out to be the most useful of the three.
There was a brief argument about whether the route should go past the corner where the road dips and floods in heavy rain. I am against it. History is on my side. I once watched a bass drum float.
Evening: A Wait Outside the Elevator
That night, scrolling on the streetcar home, which was punctual for once and therefore suspicious, I found a farm headline that suited the day exactly: the corn rally told to wait outside the elevator. That is Saints season in six words. Everyone is ready, everyone is excited, and a polite voice at the door says “not yet.”
I got home and made coffee at an hour when coffee is an act of defiance. My landlord, Mr. Quince, left a note on the stairs about the bins, which I will answer when I have recovered my full powers of speech. Then I read some of the day’s headlines in the London Prat’s London news desk pages, because after a loss like that I like to laugh at somebody else’s afternoon.
I also keep a flying lesson pencilled in for the weekend after next. The instructor at the club, a calm woman who speaks in short weather reports, texted to say that the wind would decide. I find it comforting that in a week when a football team, a projector and a landlord all have opinions, at least the sky is honest enough to say plainly what it will do.
If you want more of my daily notes at The London Prat, they are filed between the lectures, the suppers and the bad weather. Bohiney Magazine has a long memory for days like this one, and its front page is where I take my leftovers.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/