My mother's "winter tea" would not win any culinary awards with its Lipton, lemon, sugar and concord grape wine recipe, but it warmed from the inside out and was the staple for sub-freezing Bills games.
As the thermometer settled below 32F degrees yesterday I planned to reprise the recipe. I prepared to make a Thermos and concord grape wine buying run (until this circumstance these things would not be considered staples in our household).
Charlie suggested I check the Bills' website for the legality of thermos toting. C'mon, I thought, if ever there was a lunchpail town it is Buffalo. Taking away our thermoses would be like saying we couldn't have horseradish with our kielbasa.
But there it was, the thermos ban clearly spelled out "for patron safety" - what with all of the accounts of terroristic thermos bombs in recent years.
It certainly couldn't have been for alcohol-control, as the bare-chested, bonfire-burning, beer guzzling, alcohol Olympians had been at it for several hours in the parking lot when we arrived at the stadium, threading the car through the haphazard lanes created, dodging drunks and crushing bottles and cans with our tires in search of a parking space.
The argument couldn't have been to limit in-stadium alcohol use, considering the guys in the row in front of us spilled enough concession-stand beer to put a small fraternity under the table.
Deductively, this leaves us with the thermos ban mandating the sale of $3 watery hot chocolate and bitter coffee.
While it is true the three $48 tickets were a gift in our case, and my brother paid the $15 parking... the sunk cost of seeing a 4-10 team with no defense or discernable coaching seemed already high enough... did they really have to extract $9 a round for hot chocolate too?
After nearly a quarter century in the sunny south, I was tired of people asking me if my blood thinned out. No, thank you, it is the same hearty immigrant plasma I with which I was born in Buffalo. They don't require transfusions at the Mason-Dixon line, I'd think to myself while uttering a more innocuous response.
I thought I had enough layers last night to prosper sans thermos. The plan was working adequately until the people next to me left in disgust during the second quarter leaving me attached to a personal arctic wind tunnel.
Soon I found myself wondering if my blood had indeed thinned, then if I even had blood or any vital fluid other than an aggressively running nose. I recall my jaw being sore from chattering teeth and not much else until I found myself wrapped up in blankets in the ladies room with my daughter Jennine calling my name. For the rest of the way home it seemed I could hold on to a thought or clues about my suroundings only briefly. Charlie called it hypothermia, but THAT couldn't have happened to a native Buffalonian.
This morning I have a wicked headache, every muscle aches and I'm paler than the new snow.
It's a damn good thing I didn't have a thermos though. I'd have likely used it to coldcock the idiot who made the rule.





Copyright 2005 Judi Griggs