To “modern day” readers, this will seem a bit of a fantasy. To friends, this will seem like an illusion. To one couple, it’s another chapter that began in 1980.
Let’s get the illusion out of the way. The never-watch-sports male DG (that’s dual gimpy and grumpy), announced that not only was he watching Super Bowl XLIV today but he was doing so with beer and chips. Given his Pinot Noir proclivities, the latter is a bit of a right turn. But even more so is the fact that the female DG cannot remember the last time they’ve watched a football game together (she’s watched plenty solo).
That out of the way, let’s get to what will now seem like a “you’ve got to be kidding” fantasy. In January, 1989, the male DG traveled to Miami’s Joe Robbie Stadium to photograph Super Bowl XXIII for the San Francisco Examiner. He didn’t actually work for the Examiner, but that paper’s home team, the 49ers, was in the Super Bowl and that paper’s publisher, Will Hearst, had a vision of an eight-page color wrap around its otherwise black and white newspaper. While the male DG was never, by his own admission, a sports photographer, he’d learned how to do something that few other photographers in the country knew how to do at the time – digitize color negatives and then transmit them over a phone line. Egad, how old school does that sound now. But it was a really big deal then. So he photographed the 49ers victory and transmitted the color photos from a trailer adjacent to the stadium. It was, at the time, a really big deal, one that led to the DGs move to northern California (glory, hallelujah!)
So today, 21 years later, they huddled together in front of the TV, talking about his trip to Miami two decades ago (which was not the time he was struck by lightening – that was while covering the Pope), remembering their trip last year to New Orleans and how the city is still largely not there, a fact that’s resurfaced leading up to this year’s Super Bowl.
For many, today is just another Super Bowl game. For the citizens of New Orleans, the Saints victory is another new beginning. To one couple, it’s another stitch in the fabric of a marriage.
Gimpy & Grumpy 