ROUSES_SeptOct2019_Magazine

All aboard the tailgate train by justin nystrom At five o’clock sharp, a mechanical reverberation rumbled under the passengers’ feet as the engineer eased forward the throttle on the locomotive’s great diesel turbines. Soon, with a gentle groan, a thousand tons of steel painted in the orange and brown livery of the Illinois Central inched slowly ahead, commencing a rhythmic metallic cadence that increased steadily as the Union Passenger Terminal receded and the early evening lights of New Orleans flickered on. Minutes later, the train paused for a moment to collect ticket holders waiting on the platform in the damp evening by the Fontainebleau Hotel, but was soon on its way towards Baton Rouge for an 8 pm kickoff against rival Ole Miss and a Halloween game that everyone aboard would talk about for decades to come. M uch has changed about the way we get to the game in the 60 years that have elapsed since that October night in 1959, when Billy Cannon made his famous Heisman-cementing touchdown run during LSU’s muddy 7-3 victory over Mississippi. Interstate 10 between New Orleans and Baton Rouge was still incomplete, leaving Airline Highway as the only viable thoroughfare for sitting helplessly in gameday traffic. For LSU fans living in the Crescent City, by far the most carefree and elegant solution was to board one of the “Football Specials” that served every home game. The scene on board evoked the smokier, dressier 1950s; a sequence of freeze frames burned in the historical imagination like those conjured by Matthew Weiner for the hit television drama Mad Men . An Illinois Central cocktail menu from 1956 underscores this impression with its old-school offerings. Neither tinctures, nor eyedroppers, nor handlebar-mustachioed men answering to the appellation “mixologist” seem to have been aboard. Instead, there was a total of three cocktails; the martini, Manhattan and old fashioned headed the list, joined by “mixed drinks” including the Collins mix triplets (vodka, rum and Tom), gin and tonic, bourbon three ways (bonded, straight or blended), Scotch and Canadian whisky — all served to the customer in miniature single-serve bottles we associate today with air travel, and all costing between 70 cents and a dollar. Fifteen cents more bought a highball filled with soda water and ice cubes. “Refreshments available,” noted an advertise- ment, “both to and from the game.” The drink menu contained other options that so often rest uneasily on one’s constitution when consumed in volume, particularly when paired with motion, that they give today’s reader pause. These included a 70-cent split of frighteningly domestic sauternes, as well as sugary brandies like Benedictine, plus crème de menthe. Perhaps this is why, prominently displayed just below lemonade and above “an assortment of fine cigars,” one found a selection of remedies including a 25-cent box of aspirin, single doses of Alka-Seltzer and, for more serious ailments, Bromo Seltzer. The latter enjoyed a partic- ularly strong reputation as a hangover cure, a status due in no small part to the presence of its namesake ingredient, sodium bromide

— part of the family of bromide tranquilizers the USDA banned in 1975 for their toxicity. (A reformulated Bromo Seltzer is still on the market today.) The real danger came most often in the form of overindulgence. As one rider of the period recalled, “In those days Early Times and Coke was the drink of choice. No wonder everyone got sick!” Football Special trains had been around since the invention of the game itself and even featured in LSU’s inaugural season in 1893. In what may have been the first Football Special to ever run in the state, a group called Cadets of the Ole War Skule took a reserved train to New Orleans for a contest against Tulane University at a time when football was a brand-new sensation in Louisiana. The teams played at the Crescent City Baseball Park, which stood across the New Basin Canal from Metairie Cemetery on what was then the verdant rim of the city’s human inhabitation. Tulane won 34-0, but the game was a bit different back then, with touchdowns worth only four points and field goals worth two. Indeed, a lot of what we take for granted about football remained in a formative phase for the next 25 years. The cadets rumbled home on the Illinois Central, resolved to perform better in the future. In 1914, a Southern Pacific Special pulled into Opelousas carrying a team from the St. Charles College, once a Jesuit school in Grand Coteau. The college’s brass band led the team to Comeau Park for the first-ever football game to be played in the town. The annual “Battle of the Rag” between Tulane and LSU stood as one of the longer-running traditions in college football until it ended in 2009. Special trains for this rivalry were popular both in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, with the destination alternating each year. An aerial photograph of LSU’s campus from 1931 shows a spur and platform due south of the stadium where today the Military Science Building stands. This platform had vanished by the 1950s, requiring fans to get off the train a little further away and walk across a field to Tiger Stadium. One passenger remembered the ride to the 1961 game as featuring the “usual booze and cards,” but the ride back seemed to take “much longer” after Tulane’s 62-0 drubbing.

LSU Cadets loading Mike the Tiger on the train, 1936; photo: LSU University Archives Photographs Collection

So many people rode the Football Special out of New Orleans for the Tulane-LSU game that it possibly even had implications for the 1965 mayoral race. At least that is how Jimmy Fitzmorris saw it. “People don’t realize the importance of the individual vote,” he noted. “On that particular day, Tulane was playing LSU in Baton Rouge, and there were 10 trains that were taking people to Baton Rouge. Ten trains. Figure...1,500, 2,000 people on these trains.” Fitzmorris, who considered the Uptown Tulane fans to be the core of his base,

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SEPTEMBER•OCTOBER 2019