Everyone has memories of the Super Bowl —
Maybe you won the pool one year, or maybe you had the best wings of your life, or maybe you just got so drunk one Super Bowl that you gave up drinking forever after that.
I’ll never forget Super Bowl Sunday, 2016, but it has nothing to do with football. I was unloading groceries that morning– flour, sugar, everything to make the chocolate chip cookies I‘d promised to bring to the Super Bowl party at McManus when my nephew, John called. “Something’s wrong with Dad,” he said. He sounded very strange. “What is it? I asked, “What’s happened?” My brother Michael was a 52-year old high school teacher and football coach. “I don’t know,” he said shakily, “they’ve taken Dad to the hospital, he can’t really talk.” Michael shared custody of his two boys with his ex-wife, and Sunday was the day the boys came to stay at his house. John had found his father disoriented and unable to speak. “I called Uncle Kevin,” John went on, “he’s on his way to the hospital.”
My heart pounding, I called my brother Kevin. “They think Michael had a stroke,” Kevin said, “but he can’t speak and they don’t know how bad it is yet. You better come up.”
I live in New York City, 200 miles away. Parking is a nightmare, so I kept my car at my Aunt Sheila’s out on Long Island. I took the subway to Penn Station and got the LIRR to Roslyn. My heart was trip hammering away in my chest and my brain felt like it was short-circuiting. It was that feeling you get where you’re outside of yourself, mechanically going through the motions — checking the train schedule, buying your ticket, finding the right platform, boarding the train and then staring out the window at the trees barreling past, trying not to scream or cry. My life had been going along on one track, but now it had suddenly jumped the track, and I had no idea where we were all heading.
There had been a bad snowstorm the night before, and when I got to my Aunt’s house, the car was buried and the battery was dead. I frantically dug it out and my cousin gave me a jump. As I drove along the LIE, I heard loud clunking and scraping sounds; I thought it must be chunks of snow and ice coming loose from the undercarriage of the car. (Also, I drove a 1993 Honda Accord, so weird noises were nothing to alert the press about.) As I approached the Lincoln Tunnel, I heard a siren behind me, and pulled over to let it go by. Ahead of me, 2 policemen jumped out and ran in front of my car, gesturing wildly with their arms. I rolled down the window, and they yelled ”What’s wrong with you? Your bumper is hanging off your car! It’s dragging on the ground! How do you NOT know that??!!” Crying, I said, “I think my brother had a stroke and I have to get upstate!“ The officers looked at each other and shook their heads. One said to the other — “She can’t go through the tunnel like that.” Panicking, I said, “But you have to let me through — I have to get to Albany!!” One of the officers stared at me for a moment, then knelt down, and with both hands ripped the bumper off my car, threw it in the backseat, and slammed the door. “Ok — just go!” he said, brushing off his pants, “Get it fixed as soon as you can!” Then he held up the traffic so I could merge into the tunnel.
Back in Manhattan, I parked on 17th Street, then ran into my apartment. I made arrangements with my friend, Darren to look after my dog, Sparky, threw some clothes in a bag, and headed back out to my car.
It wouldn’t start. Of course it wouldn’t. I banged on the dashboard, burst into tears again, got out of the car, put up the hood, and called my neighbor Ed. He ran out of his apartment with a little power pack/jump starter. We hooked up the cables and turned up the power. Nothing. We tried again and again. The engine wouldn’t even turn over. My mind racing, I started frantically checking bus schedules to figure out another way to get upstate, and from there, how to get from the bus station to the hospital. But the adrenalin was coursing through me, and the numbers and words on my phone were blurring so that I couldn’t focus.
Just then Mel, one of my alternate side-parking pals, rounded the corner and laughingly said, “Oh, now, what’s going on here!? He was all too familiar with my car contretemps. Blubbering, I explained as best I could. He stood silently and listened, and then walked quickly to his old Volvo parked across the street, popped the hood, took out his battery, put it in my car, and slammed the hood. “Now go — and drive safely, Eileen.”
It took a village to get me upstate that day. Over the last five years, villages have sprung up unexpectedly every single time we needed help, and we’re all still here and doing ok. Happy Super Bowl Sunday!