A trip to Bammy

We took a weekend trip to Alabama recently to visit old Negus family friend, Josh Payne, and to see the University of Alabama Crimson Tide football team. It was in Tuscaloosa, Al at a Bama game [coincidentally against Oklahoma] in September 2003, barely six weeks off the boat at Ellis Island, that Sam first fell in love with collegiate game of American football. The annual trip to visit Josh and the Tide in Dixie Land is a highlight of the calender. This year was a raging success. We had fun catching up with our friend, Bama won and are still unbeaten, and pulled pork sandwiches were eaten.

Sam with the statue of Wallace Wade, Bama's second national championship winning coach.

En route we stopped in Monroe, Louisiana for some delicious deep-fried only Cajun 'cuisine'. We do not know what a Pege is, but Ray has one in Monroe and it's a good time. If you go there wearing Bama gear on LSU-Bama weekend, or ever, you will get nasty looks. Your food may or may not be spat in, but you won't be able to taste it, so don't worry.

Laura with mountain of chubby goodness.

Fried shrimp, meet gravy. Yum!

The pejorative ethnic slur with which Louisianans are colloquially labelled in the south is "coonass," implying that they are all poor Cajun backwoodsmen who live off a diet of captured woodland critter. This is not always untrue. Fans of LSU football are also generally slighted for universally smelling of corn dog. This is not true, which is what makes it funny. Several Bama fans set up rope or box-based trap mechanisms baited with corn dog in order to capture unwitting coonasses. This one is actually labelled 'coonass trap' and for good measure has 'LSU' written on the dog in mustard. An unsuspecting LSU fan is about to take the bait... uh oh!

Josh, Laura and a Confederate flag in LSU colors. We also saw a U.S. flag in LSU colors being waved randomly in the middle of the street by a guy smiling at nothing. We made eye contact as we passed and he yelled: "I'm hammered" and nothing else. It was eight minutes past noon. That is basically game day in the South.


The obligatory visit to Gallettes - a shady, unmarked bar/club on the campus' main drag that had recently before our arrival had its floor cleaned by the popular hose method employed by the kinds of establishment at which one can expect to find ones shoes sticking to the floor.



As far as we could ascertain these boys genuinely believed they were Julio Jones and Greg McElroy.


Drown 'em, Tide.


The Million Dollar band 'bone section.


General aspect from the student section.

A man dressed as a Bear wearing hound's tooth pattern shorts hugging a man dressed as an Elephant. If you know about Bama this picture makes sense. If you don't, the explanation won't.