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A Browns Fan Dreaming: Holmgren Aloft

Marching Towards Cleveland: for Frodo!

Mike Holmgren floats above the sky. He sees taco carts, cans of Tecate, young men in Browns jerseys. He sees the ghost of Otto Graham and they shake hands in the borderlands. They make a promise to get gin and tonics, sidecars and gin fizzy’s, and they stare into the distance. They imagine a different future for the Browns. They are in an old bar in North Beach and the bartender is talking about a suicide pool. The radio clicks on to a college station and a girl with a thin voice is talking about the time she read “Big Sur” in high school and that’s when she decided to go to Berkeley. She now plays “California Zephyr.”  A pretty waitress listens and doodles pictures of cats wearing capes on her notepad. Holmgren hears the song and smiles. He remembers the summer he spent working at a YMCA camp in Ely, Minnesota and suddenly he knows that the only place he will be taking the Browns is to the Super Bowl. He finishes his drink, heads out into the fog and diagrams new plays in his mind as he hails a cab to SFO.

Jay Farrar & Ben Gibbard \”California Zephyr\”