If anyone knows what it’s like to be a loyal fan of the Purple, it’s the readers of SKÖLIOSIS — your weekly reminder that being a Vikings fan is bad for your health.

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

- Robert Frost

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I don’t live in Minnesota anymore. In fact, I haven’t lived in Minnesota for over 15 years. Maybe in part because I felt like the Vikings couldn’t hurt me as bad from 2000 miles away. But it doesn’t quite work that way, because when you live further from Minnesota, they become possibly more important to you. A connection to home, to your family. To all the things you left behind. When I did live in Minnesota, I rarely actually attended Viking games. Preferring to watch them in the comfort of my own home where no one could judge a grown man for crying. Probably making that same face your dog makes when its pooping and doesn’t want anyone to look at it while it does its business. Similarly, I don’t really like people watching me watch the Vikings. It’s something generally many of us prefer to do in private. Maybe it’s because we just know being a Viking fan is bad for our health. Watching them has become akin to the dad sneaking behind the garage for a cigarette. “Honey, you’re not watching the Vikings down there in the basement are ya?” “Nope, nope, just looking for the weather station to see if maybe we can do a picnic later Hon.”

I did on occasion go to see them in person though of course. Mostly before I knew of the health risks involved. Several times getting to see the Purple in the Metrodome (you know, right before the roof literally collapsed). I have also seen them at thee ole Met believe it or not, in subzero weather and a t-shirt wrapped around my head by a dad that didn’t believe in regular proper winter stocking caps it seems. That game was so cold the people around us were donating extra blankets and hot chocolate trying to revive me as my lips turned purple from the freezing temps, not because my blood was yet Viking Purple.

What I hadn’t done yet, was see them live and in living color purple at the highly revered US Bank Stadium. So, when a “work” friend aka ”Californian” friend aka ”friend” friend of mine said he and his fellow tribe of 49er fan buddies were going to make the trek North to Minnesota for a game, I decided to seize the opportunity for a family home visit and chance to consummate my first U.S. Bank Stadium visit. As an added benefit I could show these “Outsiders” from California what a good ole fashion Minnesota experience looks like. And what better week to do that than a late October Autumn weekend, arguably the ideal time to be in Minnesota. Plus, who knows I thought, maybe it would do me some good to hang out with some “winners” for once. To see how the other half lives. A Purple Man in a Sea of Red. To see what basking in the golden rays of a team with a healthy championship history looks like.

Socs vs. Greasers

So I did just that. I packed my bags and flew back to Minny, going deep undercover, 21 Jump Street style, and lived amongst the Socs (short for Socials, the nickname for the preppy jocks in SE Hintons the Outsiders) for a weekend. Or maybe the Socs lived amongst us Purple Greasers? I don’t know, I suppose it was a little of both. I just know us Viking fans are the Greasers, because we don’t “come from much”. We have no jewelry, no gold trophies to show for our years of fan ship. We live on the wrong side of the tracks in our hand-me-down tattered Tommy Kramer jersey clothes while the Niner fans walk around in their Niner letter jackets with 5 championship patches on their arms, fist bumping each other with a “Bang Bang”, like a secret handshake amongst the sporting elites. So yeah. They are the Socs.

Plus they just killed Dallas 2 weeks ago, if that isn’t proof enough.

Point being, we don’t know what winning feels like. Real winning. All we know is suffering. Disappointment. 61 Years of disappointment and counting to be exact.

Feeling Minnesota

And that is when it hit me. In order for my California friends to really have an “authentic” Minnesota experience. They would have to experience heartbreak. The unique highs and lows that only Minnesota can really provide. The unique suffering only we seem to constantly endure. It even occurred to me that maybe we LIKE our suffering. We need it to feel truly Minnesotan. Hence why most of us stay in a place that is 30 below freezing for 6 months of the year and filled with mosquitos the other half. Maybe we even have a little Facititous disorder, aka Muchausen syndrome by proxy, like one of those crazy mom’s that purposely keep their kids perpetually sick by subtly poisoning them just so they can wallow in everyone’s pity or bask in their pride to handle such terrible ongoing adversity. And I thought, maybe the way out of this curse is to trick someone else into bearing it.

There was a great little horror movie in 2014 called It Follows, about this girl that finds there is a creepy supernatural entity following her after a sexual encounter she has with another teen. She discovers it’s like the STD equivalent of a haunting, a ghost that will try to kill her unless she sleeps with someone else and passes it to them. I thought, maybe our Minnesota curse is like that. It is nearly Halloween afterall. So I hatched a plan, and lured a few unsuspecting 49er fans, ones that clearly looked easy and vulnerable to Minnesota… and no, I didn’t SLEEP with them, but instead, my plan was to show them an epically great quintessential Minnesota weekend. Followed by a soul crushing defeat.

Minnesota Foreplay

We had Beer Cheese soup with popcorn and Walleye Sandwiches at the Lyon’s Pub. We grabbed Lime Bikes and looped around the Mississippi River and the Stone Arch Bridge. We saw the Bob Dylan and Prince Murals and biked down around the lakes. The tree’s seemed to welcome the Niner Fans, transforming into Red and Gold like Niner Cheerleader pom poms lining our lakes, waving in the breeze making our CA friends feel even more welcome. We bought drinks with members of the local Minnesota Legend Martin Zeller band at the Northwoods feeling Creekside Supper Club and spun their drink wheel to get whatever cocktail fate prescribed for us to chase down our buttery eggy basket of fresh Popovers. They even have a Patrick Swayze photo wall in the Creekside Men’s room to remind us we were on Greaser turf. We ripped open cardboard crack pull-tabs at the bar and watched as our local Gophers snagged defeat and the Floyd of Rosedale trophy from our IOWA neighbors, and perhaps ominously enough George Kittles alma mater. We topped it all off with drinks around the bonfire. It was perfectly Minnesota. The hook was set.

Gametime

When Monday came, (after a Sunday recovery day for some of us), we made our way to the stadium. As you walk towards it, it sort of lurks behind other buildings, like a monster hiding behind trees, this massive black monolith occasionally peaking around other buildings as you approach. It has this threatening presence, I’m sure already compared by others to something in the Star Wars Empire fleet or a Bond villains yacht, or maybe just an Elon Musk corporate building somewhere. But despite the hyper modern feel, the inside still dripped of nostalgia. Tributes on the scoreboard to Viking Legends of yore, Bud Grant on a vintage TV, celebrating veteran war heroes you just want to play cribbage at a VFW with and hero hunting dogs.

It felt very Minnesota, and when Dave Winfield started blasting the guttural Lord of the Rings sounding blast from the Gjallarhorn, and the crowd started doing the Rudy Slow Clap SKOL chant, with dustings of mysterious snow falling from the rafters, it admittedly re-awakened something inside of me. These dormant memories, like someone is just pulling dusty old memories out of boxes in your head, memories with people that are no longer with us, watching the game with your grandpa, or father-in-law, your dad at the first game at the Met, these memories that are AMAZING. That are not about disappointment or suffering. And you just feel Pride. This is who we are. This is what we are. And then your team defies expectations and slays a giant. Cam Bynum is doing the worm after a game-ending interception to seal the game. Kirk Cousins is getting bling draped around his neck during his post-game interview by JJ. And you’re just proud to be a Minnesotan.

Post Game

After the game, my dejected CA friends and I walked the long walk down to Gluek’s, the oldest bar in Minneapolis for a postgame. We drank more, them drowing their sorrows. Me wallowing in a victory. As a true Minnesotan, I felt a little bad and almost wished I could take their pain from them, figuring we Minnesotans are maybe better equipped to handle it. We have a high tolerance for it. But either way we were bonded I’d say. Bonded by a weekend in Minnesota. Bonded by some shared experience in suffering.

SE Hinton said in the Outsiders..

Greasers will still be Greasers, and Socs will still be Socs. Sometimes I think it’s the ones in the middle that are really the lucky stiffs.

Nah. I’ll take being a Greaser any day.

Stay (Purple &) Gold PonyBoy.