The Press Box Scam.

We almost always  went into New Haven in the fall, Saturdays mostly, and that was almost exclusively to go the football games at Yale Bowl. Well, in truth, the football games were dessert from the legendary Tail Gating Party. It was like a gourmet buffet sitting out on the tailgates of Ford Country Squire wagons and the food was just incredible. Eggs Benedict, grilled ham and cheese, fried chicken and buns and rolls and cinnamon everything. And no telling who you'd run into. Governor of Ct., Lowell Wicker, Walter Pigeon... and it was just plain fun. The air was cool and crisp, everyone was happy and smiling and waving to each other, just flat out almost perfect Saturdays. Everyone would have some food, some hot cocoa and some Bloody Mary's and stroll across to watch the game. There are 8 Ivy League colleges and they played football against each other every year. All in the same order. Every single year. 2nd week, Harvard, week 3, Columbia. Yale bowl is huge, it can seat over 80,000, it's impressive to say the least. The highest portion of Yale Bowl other than the lights and scoreboard was the Press Box. It sat perched above the crowds and field on the 50 yard line and was pretty good sized. It had an aisle towards the back for members of the press to walk up and down without getting in front of anyone and potentially blocking some reporters view to a historic moment in Ivy League Sports History and a rail. Down a few steps towards the front there was a row of seats and desks and then right at the very front were the seats for the various incarnations of Scoop Newsworthy, Ace Reporter. At one end of the press box sat a table that had a huge pile of incredibly delicious sandwiches, and against the wall they had thermos dispensers of coffee and hot chocolate and chicken soup. And it wasn't 7-11 snacks, it was ridiculously good food and the hot cocoa was just... perfect. On any given Saturday there were perhaps on the high side of 50 people in the press box. It was an exclusive club as well, if you didn't have a Press Box Pass hanging around your neck with the number of the week and the name of the Ivy League team you were playing surrounded by a huge red circle you didn't get into the Press Box, No Way.

I usually went with the Goulds and Todd and I noticed a flaw in the system. The Press Box Passes looked the same every single year. The sequence of games  and the corresponding number of the week were the same. The Press Box Passes year after year looked exactly the same, the only variation being the date of the game, which was printed in probably at that time the smalled font available to nearby commercial printers and you literally had to look HARD at the pass to see the date. It was a Eureka Moment in our young lives and we immediately, at the end of every game, would ask anyone we saw who had a Press Box Pass if we could have it, and the game being over and members of the press leaving, they always said yes. Didn't do us any good at the time but the following fall, for two years, Todd Gould and I, adorned with what appeared to be authentic Press Credentials, sat hight above Yale Bowl, drinking hot chocolate and eating sandwiches and watched the games on those brisk, crisp fall mornings. What a view!

I used to go to Ticla when I was an agricultural relocation specialist, and not to badmouth Ticla it had it's good times and it had it's bad times where it looked like shit and items turned up missing. But when it was on the upswing it was cool and nice and mellow. I'd wake up, get up out of my hammock, grab my fishing rod and walk down and take a few casts while recycling the previous nights Coors Light. Without exception, I'd catch either a mangrove snapper, or something that looked like them, or a snook and once in a while the snook was big, 10 pounds or so. However big or as many as I caught, I'd take it up to the restaurant of Emalia, the woman we rented our Palapa from and tell her "Half of the fish for us, the other half is for you, sell them for lunch" and it worked out fantastic. We got free food, Emalia got free fresh filets and all was right in the world as far as meals went.

We were down there one time when Ticla was at it's nadir, dank and dirty, pissy people and whiny surfers from Cali. One afternoon a rental VW beetle shows up with some honeymooners. The groom had been to Ticla many times in the past when it was cool and chill and he wanted to take his new wife down for a few days to relax and surf before continuing south. The wife is not having it, and she's being sort of vocal about them not staying there at all. He complains and conjoles and she says he can go surfing but they have to leave right after that. Which considering was probably a good idea. He wanted to go across the Rio Ostulo, which was about calf-deep in the middle and go about a quater mile north to a break called The Bat Cave... it was in front of a 100 foot cliff and had a cave in it and bats actually lived there, it wasn't something to do with Batman. All good. She's sitting in the sun watching and working on her tan, he's out tearing it up and having a good time. As I turned back from the river I looked up the mountains and the sky was jet black, midnight black and lightning was tearing it UP. Within about 5 minutes the Rio Ostulo went from 8 inches deep to 3 feet deep and hauling ass, a real flash flood deal working and the storm parked, didn't move at all for at least an hour. We didn't get the really bad thunderstorm but the storm eventually moved over Ticla and started raining hard. But I digress. Bob and Judy were on the other side of the river and there was no way in the world they could cross back over to their car, no way in the world. He had his jams and a t-shirt and a vest, she had on basically a bikini and shirt, thin shirt, hot chick beach type shirt. And they were both soaked. They were sitting under a bush, his board over their heads and they were still there when I went to sleep. About 4 AM I woke up to take a piss and I went down to see what the river was doing. It was still raining but not hard at all, just a cold steady rain. I turned on the lights of the truck to see the river and there, off in the darkness and rain, I could see them still sitting there under his board and I almost wept in pity for the groom because I knew she hadn't been suffering in silence. And suffering they had been. See, the beach doesn't have anything to hold the heat even in the hottest days of summer and when the Sun goes down it gets pretty chilly. Actually it gets really chilly. They been sitting there, wet and freezing for about 12 hours so yeah.. poor him.

It wasn't until about 9AM before they could cross the river and she absolutely stomped across that sucker and up the street to their parked car. And guess what? During the night, knowing the people were stuck across the river the local incorrigibiles had helped themselves to just about everything in the car other than the butts in the ash tray. Everything. Which I thought was rather uncool so I walked up into town and up to the kids I knew had done it and told them in no uncertain terms to bring their passports, visas, wallets and cameras back to the car because the camera had all their wedding pictures on it and they couldn't use anything in their wallets anyway. Half an hour later some older woman brought the stuff back, including some clothes and said she'd 'found the stuff'. I think she was either the mother of or grandmother of one of the miscreants. I just felt so bad for the groom, she was like a pit bull on a squirrel, and I doubt they stay married more than an hour after returning to the US.