Even before my Dixieland Delight publisher, HarperCollins, got the "SEC Rules Pac-10 Drools" banner up and circling over the skies of Berkeley, Calif., I knew trouble was brewing. That's because as soon as I touched down on California soil, oddities abounded. Beginning with Erik Ainge's broken pinkie on his throwing hand.
My phone blew up with texts and messages about the Ainge pinkie the moment I turned it on after landing. Never in my life have so many people cared so much about a single finger. At least not since seventh grade. Judging by the reaction in Tennessee, you would have thought Ainge was in mortal peril. Which, in a way, he was.
After all, football season was here, and he might not play. The only scarier thought in the state of Tennessee is raising the age of consent. Then, after checking into my hotel, I got an e-mail informing me that Mrs. Tennessee was bitten by a rattlesnake in Arizona. Yep, a rattlesnake.
Stranger still, they have a pageant for married women. Who competes in this thing? Isn't this like an entire pageant where married women are basically fantasizing that they aren't actually married?
Regardless, do you remember how the weather turns ominous in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar right before Caesar is killed? Probably you don't, and I might even be misremembering this. But if you did remember, you'd know how I felt about three days before kickoff. Especially since HarperCollins was flying the banner over Berkeley on my behalf.
With these two foreboding details already greeting me in California, I then learn that California's Memorial Stadium actually sits on an earthquake fault line. According to Wikipedia, "A 1998 seismic safety study at the Berkeley campus gave the stadium a 'poor' rating (meaning that the building represents an 'appreciable life hazard' in an earthquake)." I don't know about you, but I'm terrified of earthquakes and "appreciable life hazard" is one of those coldly condescending phrases like "irregular outbreaks" that send chills down my spine.
Plus, and this is the complete truth, no Southerner goes anywhere that the ground can move without a great deal of trepidation. Notwithstanding all of this, I still took notes on California to bring the DDT experience to the West Coast and kick off the 2007 football season. Here goes:
1. I fly into California on a plane that is so tiny I can't even stand up inside of it. Things are even worse for my seatmate. I turn over a glass of wine while trying to turn the pages of a newspaper, and it spills all over an elderly Indian man. I thought only old people did things like this. I have that awkward moment where I take my napkin and think about dabbing it on his thigh and then reconsider. To make amends I give him a copy of my book. He turns it over in his hands, reads the back cover and then says, "I prefer the cricket."
2. The baggage claim at San Francisco airport is swarming with UT fans, all dressed in orange from head to toe. On Thursday. I love this. It doesn't matter where UT fans go, we bring multiple orange outfits. These people are arriving for the game Saturday and will be clad head-to-toe in orange for four days in a row. When I was a kid and we went on the road for a game, my dad always encouraged me to wear orange so, "people will know where you are from." This sort of thing is incredibly important to Southern people. I still have no idea why.
3. San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the country because you never have any idea what you're going to see from one moment to the next. This is my third visit. The first two times, I wore orange everywhere I went so people would know where I was from. While I'm sitting in Union Square, a purple-haired woman walks by in a business suit carrying a briefcase.
4. Even San Francisco food comes with surprises. At the Ferry building food court, each plastic cup of ordinary appearance has this written on it, "This cup is made from corn, environmentally sustainable, and 100 percent compostable." I ask my friend Cliff whether this means you can also eat the cup. "Probably," he says.
5. My friend Chris spends Friday touring San Francisco. When we meet up he tells me, "Alcatraz was covered in orange." For just a fraction of a second, I think this means that several of our players have been arrested and are being held on a rock in the Pacific Ocean. Sorry, just a little jumpy about arrests. Later that day we drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and it is also, predictably, covered in Vols fans wearing orange as they tour the bridge.
6. The roughest thing about college football season on the West Coast? The taunting text messages I start receiving at 6 a.m. from people in earlier time zones. My phone is just far enough from the bed that I don't want to get up and turn it completely off. Worst of all, many of the messages are about Tim Tebow. Then at 7:45 a.m., my law school friend Torry, a Berkeley grad, calls to talk trash. Torry spent three years defending Pac-10 football with every fiber of his being. "We're going to beat you," he says, "and then I'm going to remind you how much more fun stuff there is to do in California than just football." I tell him about my banner and how it's going to intimidate him so much, he's not going to want to enter the stadium.
