Where's The Cooler?

Los Angeles Raiders v New England Patriots, October 9, 1994

Foxboro Stadium Section 23 Row 12

A bus trip from a bar in Peabody. Plenty of beer on the bus for the trip down. Plenty of beer for the tailgate. And a special plenty of beer cooler the size of a small fishing vessel reserved for the after game tailgate party.

Drew Bledsoe versus Jeff Hostetler. Nothing in the 1st. A 24 yard FG by the Patriots Matt Bahr (Penn State) put the Pats up in the 2nd quarter. Shortly after Bahr's FG, the Raiders Terry McDaniel picked off a Drew Bledsoe pass and ran for a 14 yard touchdown.

Still in the 2nd, Bledsoe connected with Kevin Turner for a 7 yard TD pass. Bledsoe also dumped a 3 yard TD pass to Leroy Thompson to put the Pats up 17-7.

But the 1st half wasn't over yet. The Raiders responded with a Hostetler 27 yard TD pass to Harvey Williams just before the half ended.

Hostetler ran one in during the 3rd period putting the Raiders up for good 21-17.

In a losing cause the Patriots Drew Bledsoe was 23 for 55, 321 yards passed and 2 TDs.

Even thought the home team lost there was a boat sized cooler of chilled beers waiting for us at the bus. With 40 guys milling around the bus the fishing cooler of beer was brought off the bus and we all dove in. A while later someone asked where the cooler was. It was no where to be found. It was stolen. The thing was the size of a coffin. In the middle of 40 guys, someone (or two) walked off with a cooler the size of a coffin. And no one saw it happen. Genius.

So we are beer-less for 2 hours (bus planned on waiting 2 hours after game's end so we wouldn't have to sit in traffic.) plus the trip back to Peabody. Others began scrambling getting money together to buy single beers off other tailgaters. It was proving to be a slow and expensive process. So I walked onto an RV with Ontario tags, pleaded my case to our neighbor's to the North and the guys broke out a full 12 pack of Molson XXX and gave it to me. It didn't even cost me any of that Monopoly looking Canadian dollars. Can't beat that.

Be nice to a Canadian the next time you are in a bar. They are always looking out for us.