Murphy: Jacksonville is about the journey

Brian Murphy writes about his annual Viking road trip, this time to see Vikings-Jags

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By Brian Murphy

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Waking up 80 minutes after your alarm didn’t go off and 50 minutes before your flight takes off is no way to start a guys weekend, but there I was at 6:06 a.m. Saturday, cursing like Joe Pesci at my phone and processing the nightmarish logistics for healing a brutal self-inflicted travel wound.

Before I could shatter it against the wall, the notification from Delta appeared like manna from heaven, a 45-minute delay to swap aircrafts and accommodate the crush of Vikings fans heading to the state where America goes to give up.

Imagine a pit boss handing a C-note to an empty-pocketed degenerate before he sits at a card table. So much house money, so soon, you knew it was going to be that kind of weekend. If only the drink tickets I was promised would show up.

My platinum medallion sugar daddy insisted he had texted me a pair before he departed the previous day, but I couldn’t find them anywhere, and he was already 12 hours into his three-day rumble. No sunrise cocktails for me in the middle-seat purgatory of 33E, but the boozy vibes were contagious when the first Skol chant erupted at 7:45 a.m. and we taxied from the tarmac.

I am incredibly fortunate to have stumbled into a unique circle of rabid Vikings fans and (mostly) St. Paulites who travel to one road game a season like it’s Mardi Gras. Responsible partying with enough access to lawyers and bail money to occasionally step out onto the ledge, though no arraignments or wire transfers are on record yet.

A very cool mashup of successful professionals, military veterans, high school buddies and recent retirees. All north of 50 with deep social roots in the Capital City. Each at various stages of domestic tranquility/chaos. Everyone eager to check out for a weekend of alpha male peacocking, dubious decision-making and hemorrhaging into the NFL’s bottomless blood funnel.

The timing couldn’t have better, with dystopia choking the air and the surprisingly surging Vikings set to play a junior varsity team in Jerkwater, USA.

A founding father of the annual trip maintains they are 18-0 despite only 15 years of travel that includes a confirmed 2018 loss to the Patriots in Foxborough which doesn’t count, he insists, because they all dropped anchor at a tailgate party and never actually entered the stadium.

And here I thought there would be no math. Not that any was needed throughout a 12-7 Minnesota victory that felt like doing your taxes by hand. More on that wretchedness later.

Fandom forged in failure

The dads without wives crew has welcomed me with open arms and containers into a carnival atmosphere of jaw-aching laughs sharpened by decades of camaraderie and shared life experiences that nourish the spirit and stack memories as we all shadow box undefeated Father Time.

Fourteen scarred souls who put a human face on the fatalism which is bone-deep among followers of a perennially contending, perpetually disheartening franchise that keeps shoving that boulder uphill and dragging everyone in Minnesota and beyond across broken glass to get there.

When I suggested that we stop at Don Shula’s Steakhouse for a drink at the JAX airport, the idea was strangled in the bathtub. 

A 58-year-old told me his late mother hated Shula with a passion and recounted in vivid detail how she balled uncontrollably on the couch in their St. Paul living room when the Dolphins vanquished the Vikings in Super Bowl VIII.

He was 8. 

I suppose you can never unsee something like that. So we bellied up at Chili’s to empty our wallets at a more agnostic chain.

The group may not be 18-0, but I am undefeated after four trips, including two clunkers that should be euthanized from memory. Consecutive victories over the Chargers, Commanders, Raiders and Jaguars, punctuated by Sunday’s victorious flop and last year’s 3-0 colonoscopy in Vegas.

Each city offers a buffet of tourist traps, but this crew is uniquely qualified to find the seediest dives in town, where the pours are heavy, the drinks are cheap and the locals are friendlier than the beer-muscled douchebags overcrowding the usual meat markets.

Jacksonville Beach has both in spades. 

Despite big games galore, the barkeep at Sneakers gave no side eye when asked to put Gophers-Rutgers on one of the big screens. True to form, P.J. Fleck’s merry band of underachievers played down to their opponent and their phony expectations, justifying changing channels midstream.

If you’re going to day drink in a beach town, holes like the Surf Bar are ideal for 80-degree escapism in November. You can hear the sand crunching on the creaky wooden floor. The stale-liquor stench mixes with the salty sea air like a spring break fever dream.

Cracking wise with the 22-year-old female college student serving drinks gave us wide latitude to narrow the generational gap in mating rituals. We scribbled out on a cocktail napkin how back in the medieval ’80s one would pass a handwritten, cursive note to a classmate they were smitten with, including the requisite boxes to check after asking whether they would “go with me”: Yes, No, Maybe.

We were about to describe calling a girl you liked on a rotary phone only to hang up in a panic after she answered when the coed held up a finger to check her cellphone. Now that was a shared experience.

Digital dating is like fishing with dynamite. So says long-married GenXers like me who never had game when we were single and wouldn’t have the bandwidth for it today if we suddenly had to report as an eligible receiver.

Besides, every dude here is hitched and so over-leveraged that straying would not only be morally disgraceful but financially catastrophic. Verbal footsie is as spicy as it gets.

Beach towns also offer year-round music festivals that justify their free admission. Joan Jett, 66, is still pumping dimes in that same old jukebox with her Blackhearts. And Cee-Lo Green is still making audiences wait until the encore to go crazy.

Prudence started flashing red about midnight, reminding the saner heads among us this has always been a marathon, not a sprint, with the heaviest miles to cover after the bus arrives at 9 a.m. Sunday. Too many wings to marinate, too many coolers to pack, too many vitamins to mainline.

Where the snowbirds invade 

The only thing stickier than the humidity in Jacksonville is the resignation that you’re in Jacksonville, the NFL’s smallest and most underwhelming market. Homicides are surging and hustling hovered like the mostly gray skies, which spit out 15 minutes of light rain every hour it seemed.

It was named after seventh U.S. President Andrew Jackson, a cutthroat Army general notorious for mercilessly purging Native Americans from their southern land. Jacksonville and St. Augustine, its sister city on the northeast Florida coast, were ground zero for pirates and vice as the Spanish and British spent 200 years warring over the seaside port before Spain sold off both to the United States to retire a $5 million debt.

Jacksonville thrived as a lawless party town during Prohibition when bullets settled scores in the sprawl of its juke joints, booze halls and hash dens. One-eyed bar owner Henry “Skimp” Tillman was charged with attempted murder six times for shooting customers and beat every rap before the trigger-happy hothead was convicted of first-degree murder in 1951 and sentenced to death in the electric chair.

EverBank Stadium, built on the downtown grounds of the old Gator Bowl, is a double-decked erector set standing along the St. Johns River and in the shadows of the county jail, headquarters for Maxwell House coffee and the USS Orleck Naval Museum.

It took over an hour for our resilient driver, Mr. B, to find correct parking after being chased out of one lot owned by insurance-giant Geico and another adjacent to a construction dump and swamp. Helps to have a retired Army colonel in your posse to direct a bunch of keyboard warriors when you twice have to set up and break down tailgating tents and grills before munching on a single chicken wing.

I didn’t envy the guy who bought the 14 tickets and had to transfer them to the owners who were scrambling to sign in to various apps with Thai chili sauce soaking their fingers. 

Ticketmaster must revel being the devil. It takes a Chinese hacker, Latin dictionary and the patience of Job to validate, accept or transfer rightfully purchased passes that are guarded like bearer bonds. At least those are still paper.

The Jaguars (2-8) have neither the street cred nor colorful legacy of its seedy hometown. At least their fans are circumspect, graciously welcoming snowbirds south and ceding their home-field advantage every Sunday like a mausoleum waiting for a death.

Vikings fans poured through the gates hours before kickoff, double-fisted purple marauders salivating for a conquering that never came. 

Mac Jones is not an NFL quarterback. He just plays one on the lowest-rated game of the week. The Jags are day trippers who seem to play half of their games in London and occasionally wreck someone’s postseason party. Their collective collapse over the last calendar year has coach Doug Pederson’s seat sizzling.

The Vikings did the bare minimum to improve their record to 7-2* and scurry out of town to prepare for two more saps on their travel schedule – Tennessee and Chicago. I’ll save the Sam Darnold handwringing for his next three-interception performance, but don’t waste your energy scorching the earth to drive him to the bench.

This is Darnold’s team to hammer out a playoff berth or nail it to the wall of an eight-win season everyone pretty much had all along. Besides, this team will only go as far as its superb defense can carry it, although the patsies dry up once we get into December, which could leave the unit gasping with fatigue.

Jones and Darnold’s ineptitude made Sunday’s yawner ideal for people watching and television-timeout anthropology. Like why the hell is the stadium battle cry “Duuuuvaaahl!”

Apparently, it is in honor of Duval County, where Jacksonville is the county seat. When I asked a woman in a Jags jersey why, she looked at me as if I had asked how old she was.

“Because we love our county,” she said matter-of-factly.

Makes sense. I snuggle with Ramsey every night while the county whispers sweet nothings about night plowing routes and how to digitally pay my tax bill. Still waiting for the Vikings to whip U.S. Bank Stadium into a third-down frenzy with primal screams for Father Hennepin to force a punt.

The Vikings are scheduled to return to Jacksonville in 2032. You’ve been warned.

The Long Goodbye

Postgame at Sneakers, we managed to get a bar-back to figure out how to find the Wild-Blackhawks Chicago broadcast while the rest of humanity watched the Lions-Texans gloriously entertaining train wreck. But this was terrain already covered. We needed a true hole-in-the-wall to put the exclamation point on gameday. 

Turns out, Ginger’s Place was the closest one to our rented house. Family owned and operated since 1976 and it doesn’t look anything has changed except for the Wi-Fi.

Smoking is not only allowed it’s encouraged with a cigarette vending machine and stack of matches next to every ash tray. Three beers and a cocktail came to $14. They like their poison straight up.

The neighborhood regulars and servers who just punched out mixed with the tourists and football gamblers. There was a Bears fan in a faded Brian Urlacher jersey cursing his team’s implosion and a couple of Michigan natives and navy recruits hanging on Mike Tirico’s every word as the Lions roared back and took down Houston with a last-second field goal.

By then, our 14-person roster had been whittled to three, including a 59-year-old investment banker who was on the verge of Ubering home three times before finding his fourth wind with a pack of Marlboro Lights.

Not only did he stay for last call, he woke up at 7 a.m. to run 5 miles. I know because he was my bunkmate and I only stirred after he showered and dressed. Baller.

Here’s the thing about renting a house instead of booking hotels for mashups like these. The magic happens in the margins.

The biggest laughs come guzzling coffee during the morning debriefings on the back patio as the salamanders scurry, the tropical birds chirp and you steal one more weekend of summer. Recounting all the one-liners and filling in the blanks with gallows humor and thinly veiled threats to never leave.

The key to a Monday departure is pushing it out as long as possible. A 7 a.m. return flight is for suckers. Especially with a refrigerator of elusive Yuengling to empty and a seafood lunch to have surreptitiously slipped into someone’s expense account.

All that was left was a final airport run and scheming to turn five Delta Sky Club passes into eight for the non-elite among us. The freeloaders got behind the curtain at JAX, but one look at the morgue of business travelers wired to their laptops with thousand-yard stares reminded me of Rodney Dangerfield walking into the dance-of-the-dead country club party in “Caddyshack.”

They could have their fill of comped regret in the Sky Club. We let Chili’s gouge us again before boarding.

Sandwiched once more in the middle seat between two diehards tuned to the Rams-Dolphins game, I scrolled through the cliched offerings of in-flight movies until stumbling upon “Blood Simple,” Joel and Ethan Cohen’s first film, a lost classic I hadn’t watched in years.

Talk about dystopia and the twisted nature of humans. So good. What a debut.

Not sure what was more depressing. Accepting after touching down that this annual celebration of fellowship and forgetting about a world gone mad was over too soon.

Or seeing the bar codes for those free drink tickets finally populate.