Lets Have a Lil fun in the "Saints Way Back Machine"

From Day One, the main attraction, driving the Saints to get so deep into people’s core, has always been centered on “Celebration”. Remember, in the city that “care forgot”, our tradition allows us to celebrate death (jazz funerals) the same as life – with thanks, hope and pride!! Losses and wins have never been the sole component that binds the Saints to us and vice versa!!

New Orleans became “Big Time” with the awarding of an NFL franchise and it meant an ongoing celebration “New Orleans” style — which is always heartfelt, over the top and difficult for outsiders to truly understand.

If the Saints lost, the city had a Jazz funeral if they won the city had a Jazz party — with thanks and celebration all the time. Point is it was the journey, the hope, the despair, the emotion, the memories, the plays on the field, the moments before the game, during and after — but most of all it is about “celebrating” all things Saints!

The team’s original owner, John Mecom, was a rich-kid brat from Texas that only knew how to do 1 thing well —party. He was miserable as an owner, but he sure was a great believer in making the whole Saints event “entertainment” and a full-fledged party. What place better to “have a party” than New Orleans – thats a big reason why New Orleans remains a favorite of those “in the know” for Super Bowls.

As part of the Saints mission of Celebration, the team used to put on the most amazing pre-game and halftime hows. Think Mardi Gras – floats, the Southern band, flambeaux carriers, girls dancing, acrobats flying into Tulane stadium on parachutes, jet-packs and hot-air ballons (for a regular season game), second-line, best musicians worldwide, beer vendors with mini-kegs on their backs cause no one wanted to leave their seats during halftime, and on and on!!

One Sunday, (cant quite remember the year but believe it was early 70’s) the halftime show was a large-scale reenactment of the Battle of New Orleans (War of 1812). We’re talking hundreds of fully uniformed soldiers (both Andrew Jackson’s army and British), the marching band playing the Hymm of the Battle of 1812, 4 or five cannons in each of the 2 end zones blasting away (sorry no cannon balls) – just over the top stimulation and activity (think Saints return to the Dome vs Falcons).

About halfway thru the show, we all suddenly see this long ramming shaft spear looking thing(@ 10 ft long used to pack the cannon gunpowder down the cannon tube) literally launch from the South End End Zone about 75 yards down the field (think a Javelin with a big bowling ball on the end).

What had happened is the soldiers in the South End Zone were suppose to dump a bucket of water down the cannon tube after each shot to cool the cannon down before packing the next package of gunpowder. Unfortunately, on this one cannon the guys loading it got so into the moment they forgot to cool the cannon down, so when the poor guy jams the next pack of gunpowder down, it inadvertently cause the cannon to fire and yes the guy doing the packing was pretty much standing right in front of the cannon opening — he was critically hurt, (lost his right hand and more — was launched to about the 10 yard line and I guess the best way to explain the surreal aspect of it all was about 3 days later, the Tulane football team was practicing and one of the players found a part of the guys finger under the team bench. Unfortunately, this put a screeching halt to the off the charts halftime shows!!

Its all these kinds of events (both on the field and off) that sit at the core of why the Saints are so special to the city and to its fans. For the fans that have not been around for 25-40 years, thought you might want to get a flavor of what it is that happened in those early years of the franchise that have led us all to knowing — no matter how much we want to swear them off, divorce is not an option — they are in our core!!!