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FEATURE

and urging the crowd to join in the general celebration of, well …me. And there was one more thing, one more element, one more little detail about that night that took it to the next level. That would be the World Cup. • • •   A little background about that: Way back when, Sweden was a football contender on the European sporting scene. If not exactly a worldwide powerhouse, certainly a top echelon player back in the 1940s and ‘50s, culminating with a Gold medal at the Summer Olympics in London in 1948.

sometimes where, suddenly you have a new best friend in the world, simply because you talked with each other and got buzzed and good things happened and suddenly: Bromance abound. It was like that. And Lilla Draget, the restaurant/bar where we were that night, is one of those tchotchke and memento places, where they hang stuff like license plates, pennants, sports jerseys and other memorabilia on their wall. And I was wearing the coolest shoes that night — after all, I was with the band; I had to look sharp — some really cool retro silver and black saddle shoes that a friend had given me as a Christmas

gift the year before. In fact, these shoes were so retro, so out there — that I had never even worn them before back here in New Orleans.They were that loud. Well, needless to say, the shoes attracted a lot of attention.

Then the Swedish national team went into a deep slide through the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. In fact, during one stretch from 1978 to 1990, they didn’t even qualify for the World Cup. But they finally broke out of their international losing streak and managed to qualify for the 1990 World Cup in Italy, only to flame out in three straight losses. And so they limped into the 1994 World Cup, hosted in the U.S., with very little confidence, credibility or charisma. And then, Sweden went on a tear.They tied

“Don't tell Santa but we ate reindeer meatballs when we visited Sweden. Venison is as popular there as it is here on the Gulf Coast.” —Tim Acosta, Rouses Marketing Director

And here’s what happened that night: I fell in love with Sweden.The bartender fell in love with my shoes. Sweden marked its greatest international sporting triumph in history.And before I left the bar, I traded my shoes for a Swedish flag that hung behind the bar (in its place they hung my shoes — just like Rock-N-Bowl in New Orleans displays the bowling shoes that Tom Cruise once rented). The last thing I remember is running down a boardwalk that led to the North Sea as dawn’s early light crept up over the town. Me and Queen Bee and the Zydeco Amigos. We never broke stride and never even paused to take off any clothes and we plunged into the dark, icy waters of the North Sea off the Swedish coast and we bobbed up and down in the water and looked at each other and we laughed and laughed and laughed so hard that I have never known laughter or forgetting again like that in my life. And that was my first 12 hours in Sweden. I stayed three weeks and you know what’s funny? I don’t remember a damn thing that happened after that night.

Cameroon and then defeated Russia, then tied Brazil, then defeated Saudi Arabia, then defeated Romania and found themselves facing Brazil again — this time in the championship round, the proverbial Final Four. They lost that game, as they well should have, to one of the great teams of all time, and Brazil notched its record-holding 4 th World Cup title. But Sweden was the Cinderella story of the summer.They scored the most goals of any team in the tournament that year. And so they wound up matched against Bulgaria for third place, the Bronze Medal, no small beer in a country as small and unprepossessing as Sweden, a country whose football reputation had all but evaporated over the prior quarter century. The date of that match? July 16, 1994, the day I arrived in Sweden. And as they had done throughout the tournament, they went on a scoring binge, beating Bulgaria 4-0 — and plunging the nation into unbridled, unfettered, unrelenting celebration. So the little bar and restaurant where we were at that night, Lilla Draget, with its nuclear crawfish and toxic cocktails and Tex-Mex zydeco band, erupted into a celebration the likes of which I had never seen before and have never seen since, crazier than the night the Saints won the Super Bowl. After the match, Queen Bee and the Zydeco Amigos kicked up the jams again and not a chair or table was left standing when the music was done. Sitting at the bar, I copped a set of soup spoons from a waitress and played rackety-rackety time with the band, like a washboard player — but out of tune and out of time. But I didn’t give a damn. I was the Belle of the Ball, the guest of the band, and the only guy from America in the joint. The bartender, he and I bonded, did that weird thing guys can do

North Sea Oil WHAT YOU WILL NEED

¼ ounce Triple Sec ½ ounce Single Malt Scotch Whisky

¾ ounce Cocchi Americano 1½ ounces Solstandet Aquavit HOW TO PREP In a chilled mixing glass, combine ingredients with ice and stir well. Strain into a chilled rocks glass with large ice cubes. ​

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