I worked with both Oliver and Lyn at Doe Library -- actually a book delivery service called Baker that was part of Doe. They were friends approaching the status of kin. They're the couple, referred to in a previous post, who my wife and I were with when we came across the guy mugged and moaning on the sidewalk in front of the Fort Washington Men's Shelter.
Looking back on my university years this Super Bowl weekend I realize that one of my finest achievements of that era was to suffer through every single game of the 49ers 1985 season. I did that with Oliver.
That season San Francisco was coming off a big Super Bowl win against Don Shula's Dolphins. Expectations were high for a repeat. On Sundays my wife and I would get into a Volkswagen Beetle (that we had purchased from another one of my Baker coworkers) and drive south down Telegraph to where Oliver and Lyn had a sweet little duplex cottage at the Berkeley-Oakland border. We'd usually bring beer and, if it was a game with a 10 AM kickoff, we'd stop off along the way at Dream Fluff Donuts. Oliver and Lyn were excellent hosts. Their home was always clean; their TV large; and they always prepared food.
The season opener was on the road in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome against a mediocre Vikings team. San Francisco lost and Oliver, keenly perceptive when identifying the dark cast of clouds, said something to the effect of, "Get ready. It's going to be this way the whole year."
I wasn't prepared to accept that. I thought the loss was a one-off. How many times are you going to fumble seven times in a single game? And sure enough the next two weeks the 49ers chalked up impressive wins against the Falcons and the Raiders. But then the turd again appeared in the punch bowl when New Orleans, a weak divisional opponent, came into Candlestick and beat the 49ers in the fourth quarter. David Wilson threw for more yards than Joe Montana and Wayne Wilson out-rushed Wendell Tyler. I don't recall much of this game, other than when I study the box score a mist of pain settles anew on my heart.
After beating Atlanta again, the 49ers hosted the ascendant "Super Bowl Shuffle" Bears on a perfect sunny day at Candlestick. Walter Payton ran the ball down our throats and the vaunted Bill Walsh offense was blanked in the second half by Buddy Ryan's 46 defense. Oliver and I were speechless. I remember stumbling out into the bright California autumn sun afterwards. Oliver and Lyn's cottage was tucked back off the street; they had a nice front yard with grass and flowering plants and small trees; it was a little Shangri La. And there I stood stunned, reeling in their little Shangri La; the world had turned upside down. Mike Ditka must have felt the same way because he was arrested after the game for drunk driving.
The 49ers were .500 at this point, but worse was to come the following week on the road at the Pontiac Silverdome. This was for me the nadir (excluding the the season-ending, soul-crunching Wild Card Round playoff loss to New York in an icy Giants Stadium). I sat on Oliver and Lyn's couch drunk by 10:30 AM, eating glazed donuts while my wife knit a sweater next to me. When Detroit scored first on a punt return Oliver and I bellowed in agony. And it would just get worse. Lions running back James Jones rushed 30 times for 116 yards; Eddie Murray kicked three field goals; and Joe Montana was ineffective, passing for less than a hundred yards. By the time the game was over at 1 o'clock I was wasted; the day ruined. Oliver once again was speechless. I went home and slept the rest of the afternoon away.
The season, close to the halfway point, would turn around for San Francisco. There was the one-point loss to Denver on Monday Night Football that was questionable due to a snowball tossed from the Mile High Stadium seats as holder Matt Cavanaugh and Ray Wersching attempted the game-winning field goal. Then there was another loss on Monday Night Football to the division arch-rival Los Angeles Rams led by Dieter Brock. But other than those two games the 49ers won the rest of year including an amazingly gritty victory against the despised Cowboys to close out the regular season. Roger Craig became the first player in NFL history to rush for 1,000 yards and receive 1,000 yards in a single season.
That tough win against Dallas cost San Francisco. Everyone was banged up for the playoff game against the Giants at the Meadowlands. Ronnie Lott basically played with one arm after getting a finger mangled in the ear hole of a Cowboys helmet. Roger Craig had two sore knees and could hardly walk let alone run, cut and take hits on frozen Astro Turf. Wendell Tyler returned early from knee surgery to provide a spark for San Francisco in the second half. It was a truly selfless, heroic effort, but it didn't stop the Parcells Giants from administering a brutal 17-3 thrashing.
I was devastated. Oliver and I didn't watch the game together. I was at my wife's mother's house in snowy Southern Oregon. I was in excruciating pain. I had completely transferred my identity to that team. So when they were hurt and humiliated so was I. No one around could understand what I was feeling. Oliver was 350 miles south. My wife was mildly sympathetic, but she really didn't have a clue as to the kind of pain I was in. I remember after the game I had to help lug a hide-a-bed sofa through the snow and it felt like I was performing Stations of the Cross. I was that low.
I was twenty-one. Little did I know that the 1985 San Francisco 49ers season, with its bright promise overshadowed by crushing disappointment, would serve as an accurate template for adult life ahead; in this experience of suffering I am forever bonded with my buddy Oliver.
The letter below, the fourth installment taken from a folder I retrieved from storage as I sizzled in agony during the Seahawks failed comeback attempt against the Falcons three weeks ago, is one of the few that I actually dated. The poetry reading of my friend Ben that I refer to was noteworthy in that I saw pre-Poetry Grand Slam Champion Paul Beatty read stuff that would end up in Big Bank Take Little Bank. He was awesome that night. The friend recuperating from a broken back in the hospital was a paralegal who was my supervisor at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. I introduced him to the literary pleasures of Charles Bukowski, to whom he wrote and received a reply.
11/05/89
I want to thank you Oliver and Lyn for sending those cards along. I've got 'em up on the refrigerator: the Jesus crucified and the Palenque tomb; the Giants getting their butts kicked by Dave Stewart and the drunk getting bruised up for a half an hour by your two Mexican buddies.
I saw Ben's poetry reading when he was here in New York a couple of weeks ago. It was at St. Mark's Church. It was nice and short. I took off immediately afterward. Ashley has me on this new thing where I can't drink in public; and since everybody was going out to drink after the show, I figured it'd be best if I didn't hang around.
You've got to wake up and sniff the coffee grinds sometime, Oliver. I mean come on, best case scenario the Giants couldn't've beat the A's; I mean jeez, Tony Phillips outhit and outplayed Robbie Thompson -- what does that say? I'll tell ya, it says that it was the A's year, plain and simple.
I just got back fron Brooklyn. I took the B line out to see a friend who's in the hospital at 55th and 2nd Ave. He broke his back falling down a flight stairs. He was drunk -- too drunk to walk down a flight of stairs. The hospital is in a neighborhood that looks a lot like East Oakland; so to make my scenic tour a touch more embracing I stopped off at a corner market and got myself a couple of 16 oz. Colt 45's. I perused the streets, sipped my beer, and found the hospital. I took the elevator up to the third floor, meandered down one hall and then up another, passed a few surly looking cops (apparently there because of some bank robber they had freshly shot), poked my head in the door of rm. 3326 and bam! -- there he was: looking doped up and miserable and like he hadn't had a shower in thirty days (his hair looked like a scarecrow's). I delivered him some parcels, chatted peaceably for fifty minutes (he really was doped up), said my goodbyes, and took off back into the East-Oakland-Brooklyn night. I got back on the subway at 52nd and 4th Ave. The Colt was doing me just right. When I walked on the train the first thing I noticed was how clean it was. -- It shone like lemons and polished porcelain and oily hair. Nobody was on the train except for me and maybe three other people. I started thinking about a plain and simple life. I started thinking about a big old house, after it'd been scrubbed and painted; not a new house, but an old house; -- an old house you'd sweat over and pour into, one that'd breathe back golden comfort and white light. Aw shit, where am I gonna find that outside of a beer can and a subway car?
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