hotty toddy #JacksMissAdventure

our actual seats

My friend Doug and I have heard a lot of stories about the best college football gameday atmosphere happening at Ole Miss. So when the schedule came out and we saw that Mizzou would have road game there this year, and maybe not again for another 12 years, Doug and I knew we had to go. And to help sow Jack's future Tiger fandom, we figured we should probably take him with us.

Jack and I began the 65 hour, 1858 mile journey at around 6am Friday morning, driving to the rough streets of Glover Park to pick up Doug. Three hours later Jack was visiting his first truck stop in his life, as his dad (sporting Mizzou zubaz pants) and Doug choked down food from a breakfast buffet and the worst cup of coffee ever consumed. With a couple of exceptions, bad food was a constant on the trip.

Next stop was Knoxville, which was also about the time Jack needed to spend some time out of the car. Not only was the Downtown Grill and Brewery the top rated place to eat in Knoxville on beeradvocate, but it also shares initials with Mizzou's stud receiver Dorial Green Beckham. It was as though we were meant to eat there.  After giving Jack a couple hours to stretch out, we got back in the car for a few fairly uneventful hours.

Then we hit Alabama. Jack did not like Alabama. He started to cry within seconds of entering its borders. Who would have thought that 10+ hours in a car is tough on a three month old? At some point we stopped and ate a Huddle House. Not sure where in the state we were, but it could be charitably described as the armpit of the state. While my chicken fried steak sandwich and nutter butter shake were good (the coffee was not - it was the second worst cup I have had, only barely beating out the truck stop earlier in the day), seeing Jack so upset and knowing that we weren't even a third of the way into our weekend adventure that I was now strongly doubting was very troubling.

After dinner he started crying again as soon as we got into the car, which upset me even more, but at least he was quiet. We arrived in Tupelo, our destination for the evening around 11pm or midnight central time, more than 17 hours after we left Capitol Hill. Fortunately for Doug and me, Jack was in a great mood once he got out of the car seat. He sat on his boppy pillow on the bed smiling, cooing, and laughing while we unpacked and decompressed. Doug particularly enjoyed watching me go through Jack's bedtime routine, which consists of a bath, milk, book, and massage before swaddling and putting him to sleep. Even though he slept well, I was terrified that the rest of the trip would be a disaster.

That worry was all for naught. Jack was a superstar the rest of the way. We woke up the next morning, unsuccessfully searched for Tupelo honey for Lelaine, chose to skip the Elvis sites and instead look at pictures of them that my dad had sent, and set off on the hour drive to Ole Miss.

Mizzou well represented in the Grove

Oxford is an interesting place. It is really small, with only around 20,000 people. The downtown square is nice with a lot of shops and restaurants. It looked particularly good filled with people sporting black and gold clothing. There were a couple of places to Ole Miss alums told us to go to but the lines were too long, so we settled for a little BBQ place that had no line. As we suspected, there was a reason it didn't have a line - the food was about as good as something you would find spinning on a roller at a 7-11 counter. But we didn't care that much, because up next was a trip to the Grove, the whole reason we found ourselves in Mississippi.

Before the trip I thought the Ole Miss saying that "we may not win the game, but we always win the party" was a bit ridiculous. I was wrong. The Grove is amazing. They win every party.

Jack and Col Reb

Instead of a traditional tailgate, the night before every home game people set up tents in a ten acre grove of trees on campus. There are no cars and they don't allow open flames, so most people arrive with food already made. Instead of focusing their resources on smokers and grills, they decorate their tents, including hanging actual chandeliers, putting up multiple big screen TVs with satellite dishes to watch other SEC games (we saw one tent with at least four TVs), and serving food on china instead of paper plates. There are hundreds of tents, all in the middle of campus. Most of them have banners that list where the group is from, and you constantly hear people yell "Are you ready? Hell yeah, damn right. Hotty toddy, gosh almighty. Who the hell are we, hey? Flim flam, bim bam. Ole Miss by damn." We heard this about 100 times, and a shorter version of only "hotty toddy" about another 357 times.

Jack proved to be one of, if not the, most popular people in the Grove. People were very impressed that he was there, and at least 20 people asked to take a picture with him. Others asked if they could take him home. From older Ole Miss alums dressed up as though they were going to a fancy party to sorority girls to a Vietnam veteran who told us Jack was cuter than all of his grandchildren, a lot of people fawned over him.

Mizzou was well represented. We even ran into an old football coach from my high school. Despite the confederate flags, Ole Miss fans were very nice, almost too nice, offering free food (who gives out ribs to anyone who happens to walk by and say hello?), wishing our team luck in the game, and profusely apologizing for the weather.

The weather was an issue. Although it was in the 50s during the day, a cold front moved in late afternoon and it was in the low 40s and high 30s during the game. Jack wore thermal underwear, a long sleeve onesie, sweatpants, socks, booties, gloves, and hat, and had on a teddy bear/ewok fleece thing I bought him that covers his entire body other than his face.

We were like kids on Christmas morning when we walked into the stadium. Mizzou was in the top 10 and we were about to play a top 25 team on the road, needing to win out to get to the conference championship. That, combined with the joy of spending a few hours in the Grove, put us on cloud nine. Mizzou scored a touchdown on our opening possession, which sent our section into pandemonium, and also acted as a good test for the noise blocking earmuffs Jack was wearing. He stayed asleep, so all was well....other than the wind.

there are a lot of confederate flags in Mississippi

Towards the end of the first quarter I decided to leave our seats, up high and near and open area in the end zone, because the wind was pretty bad. I took Jack into the concourse where there was no wind. He seemed fine for about 45 minutes, but I didn't see a changing table in the men's room and I couldn't bring myself to change the little guy in the open concourse. With about five minutes to go in the half, I went back to our seats and told Doug that Jack and I were going to have to leave and that we would watch the game inside the student union and would meet him there after the game. I was disappointed to leave, particularly since we only were at our seats for about 20 minutes, but I didn't want Jack exposed to the wind.

After spending some time in the student union warming up, eating, and changing him (long story short, Jack left his mark in the student union by pooping on the floor - luckily I had a lot of wet wipes), we went back out to the Grove, hanging out in tents with heating lamps and watching the game on TVs.

our "seats" after sneaking back into the stadium

After hitting a few tents and being pretty warm, I decided we would quickly swing by the stadium to take a picture. Jack was in the baby bjorn facing me and completely zipped up in my jacket and asleep. When we got close to the stadium I noticed that the ticket taker at one of the entrances had left. SEC rules state that you cannot leave a stadium and reenter (which used to be allowed at Mizzou and we would often do to grab a beer from the tailgate at halftime), but they cannot enforce what they don't see, so Jack and I snuck back into the game. Driving more than 17 hours, tailgating, and then sneaking your infant son into a game when it is in the 30s is probably going to earn me father of the year.

We found a spot right off the corner of an end zone on field level with a wall that blocked the wind. We watched a few plays and after the Tigers D successfully made a goal line stand, we walked back up to our Mizzou section to see the game end. Doug was pretty surprised to see us, and while it was still cold, it was great to celebrate the last few plays and a huge road win (with Jack still in my jacket, asleep, warm, and shielded from the wind) with thousands of Mizzou faithful.

victory!

That night we decided to drive as far as we could, which ended up being about three hours to Birminham, AL. We woke up Sunday and headed out. Other than the high of the previous day, it was a pretty uneventful but very long drive, which is about as good as we could have expected. Jack was pretty fussy the last few hours, but held off on any screaming so long as a massaged his legs and played lullabies.