Sometimes You Have to Cross When It Says Don't Walk by Lesley Visser

Author:Lesley Visser [Visser Lesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944648893
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.

CHAPTER 12

I shouldn’t admit it, but I loved having Thanksgiving on the Madden Cruiser. I know my mother and my aunts and my cousins missed me, and I pretended to be blue, but it was great being in either Dallas or Detroit when John had his six-legged turkey and the players would come by after the game for a spread that included green bean casserole, hearty stuffing, cornbread, sautéed carrots, plus my favorite sweet potatoes with brown sugar, marshmallows, cinnamon, and nutmeg. John’s two drivers, Dave Hahn and Willie Yarbrough, would hide the pan of sweet potatoes until I got there, in case I had to do a postgame report and the players had wolfed it down.

Traveling in sports for forty years has not only shown me the way America lives; it’s taught my taste buds a thing or two. I was a child of simple food: grilled cheese, peanut butter and jelly, Fenway Franks, bologna, and Velveeta. But going to all these great cities showed me just how good food can be. To this day, I still don’t cook, but I appreciate regional differences.

I had my first po’boy in New Orleans when I went to an NCAA Regional in Baton Rouge in 1976. I have to say, I didn’t really get the po’boy—I can’t stand oysters—but the games were fantastic: Indiana, Marquette (Al McGuire was late for the tip-off), Western Michigan, and Alabama. Bob Knight, of course, won the National Championship that year with one of his greatest teams, and I remember thinking, Wow, Pete Maravich played here in Baton Rouge. I did like eating a muffaletta, which I think was made of pork and olives.

Some twenty-seven years later, CBS sent me to Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, not far from Baton Rouge, to spend the day with Jake Delhomme, quarterback of the Carolina Panthers, shortly before they lost to Tom Brady and the Patriots in the great Super Bowl XXXVIII. It’s a pretty part of the country, two hours west of New Orleans, deep in Cajun country. Half the street signs are in French. Jake was 100 percent Cajun, the proud son of Jerry and Marcia Delhomme (French for “of the man”) and husband of Keri Melancon, whom he met in seventh grade. There are only seven thousand people in Breaux Bridge, and half of them had “Geaux Jake!” signs planted in their front lawns, like he was running for office. The day I went there, his mother had spent all morning making the famous Cajun delicacy boudin, which is a French euphemism for “disgusting pork liver and heart meat.” I told Jake there was no way I could eat that sausage and he said, “My mother spent half the night and all morning making it for you and you will eat it.” Ugh. I did, biting into the pork sausage casings while twenty grandchildren were watching, and I pretended to be thankful. What happened to grilled cheese sandwiches?

I took John Madden to the famed Anchor Bar in Buffalo for the first time.

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