In case you missed the news, there was an actual earthquake registered in Baton Rouge Saturday before last, but don’t worry. You didn’t miss some rare natural occurrence. But, I assure you it happened. I was there and felt the ground shake.
To more accurately set the scene, I have lived, and/or worked, in Louisiana for almost exactly four years next month. But, in all that time - and despite being a huge college football fan from the South - I somehow managed to make it to age 39 without ever having set foot in Baton Rouge. Which means I obviously had never visited Tiger Stadium. That all changed two Saturdays ago when a friend of mine from Alabama and I made the drive for the Garth Brooks concert on the LSU campus.
Now, as I said, I’d never been to Louisiana’s capital and I was pretty sure as soon as I stepped foot inside the city limits the locals would smell the Tuscaloosa on me. But, my friend Telecia had been a number of times and, also being a big Bama fan, assured me it would be fine. Now, I had seen Garth once before in concert, albeit 26 years ago and in a MUCH smaller venue in Biloxi. But, having spent plenty of time in college stadiums the size of LSU’s, I thought I knew what to expect. Y’all. I was wrong.
Not only was Baton Rouge a gorgeous town full of super-welcoming people that poked fun at mean in a good-hearted way for being an “outsider” on “enemy turf,” but the food was great, the hotel was incredibly accommodating and even our Uber driver was one of the coolest people I’ve met in a while. Now, it’s not that I expected the place to be miserable, but typically a weekend trip for an event drawing more than 100,000 people will come with some bumps in the road. But, everything went off without a hitch.
And then, as we exited our ride on the LSU campus, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the scope of Tiger Stadium. Still. I thought I knew what I was in for.
Now, for those of you who are not Garth Brooks fans (I recommend running out to find his music and remedying that situation immediately) he has a very popular song named, “Calling Baton Rouge”. So, as you can imagine, the hometown crowd was anxious to hear it and the rest of us were excited to simply watch the reaction. And Baton Rouge did not disappoint. In fact, in anticipation of the moment when the opening guitar chords were played, an LSU professor had the foresight to set up a seismograph in his office and, sure enough, the crowd’s reaction registered as a small earthquake. The place literally shook.
What’s impressive about that is that, while I’m sure that happens during football season on a regular basis, both in Baton Rouge and other stadiums its size around the country, can you imagine it happening for one guy and all because he has a song with your city’s name in it? Now, THAT is hometown pride!
It was also pretty impressive, and incredibly tiring, that it took us four hours to make it ten miles back to our hotel afterward, but after seeing how much you guys love your capital city, I was too in love with Baton Rouge myself to care. And I can’t wait to go back.
Blake Bell is the editor and publisher of the Madison Journal. He can be reached at bbell@madisonjournal.com.
