Arrowhead Pride
It was November 11th, 2006, the day of another matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the hated Oakland Raiders; more specifically, it was Raider week at Arrowhead Stadium.
We planned on arriving two hours before kickoff, but my dad and older brother were running late. My dad was supposed to bring the food, and I was in charge of the beer. I held up my end of the bargain and had a twelve-pack of PBR and another of Bud Light chilling in the fridge until they showed up at my house to grab me a little after 11:00 AM.
By the time we fought through traffic and parked in the gravel wilds of the Truman Sports Complex, it was 10 minutes before kickoff. There was no time for food, but we still had the beer.
Now, here’s one thing you should know about my old man: in his prime, he could drink with the best of them.
And as a young man, for better or worse, I tried my best to be a chip off the old block. Especially on this day; my older brother didn’t drink, so we already had a “designated driver” covered.
There is a famous episode of the FX sitcom “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” where the gang takes a cross-country flight and tries to beat “the Boggs,” A.K.A. legendary baseball player Wade Boggs, who supposedly drank 70 beers on a single cross-country flight.
While what my father and I were considering wasn’t nearly as impressive, our eyes met in that moment, and we shared a motivation to see if we could actually do it.
Could we each successfully shotgun 12 beers on the walk from the back of the car lot to the stadium?
Before I go any further, one thing I need to point out is that, like many fathers and sons, my dad and I didn’t always have the smoothest relationship. As a little kid, he traveled for work almost constantly, only coming home on the weekends—but on the days he was home, my dad was larger than life.
It felt that way in the literal sense.
He was 6 feet 2 inches tall and over 300 pounds. An All-Conference and All-City wrestler for Lafayette High School in St. Joseph, who held the school record for pins when he graduated.
After school, he spent nearly fifty years working as an engineer in the Aeronautics field, and, most recently before his retirement, worked on the team developing NASA’s Orion Mission to Mars.
He coached my youth wrestling team and once took second in an amateur “Elvis impersonator” karaoke competition.
My parents’ relationship fell apart when I was in high school. And just like that, my hero was gone.
I blamed him.
I dreaded the two-hour visits we had on Saturdays, when he would pick us up and take us to Pizza Street.
Once moved out on my own, we would go months without talking.
And then one day, he called me...
