History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
The aphorism is often attributed to Mark Twain, though there’s no evidence he really said it. That’s OK. Sure sounds like the guy who was editor of the Buffalo Express 150 years ago.
Steve McCarville knows all about history: He’s a former president of the Buffalo History Museum, which has been around since before Twain’s time here. And McCarville recognized history repeating itself – or at least rhyming – in Cheektowaga the other night.
That’s when all those crazed Buffalo Bills fans gathered at the airport to see their heroes arrive home from Denver, where they had beaten the Broncos to win their first division title since 1995.
As it happens, McCarville was at the airport in 1980 when the Bills got back from a trip west in a strikingly similar circumstance. They returned from San Francisco, where they had beaten the 49ers to win their first division title since 1966. That game was played on Dec. 21, and by the time the Bills landed at the airport, the calendar had turned to Dec. 22 – 40 years ago today.
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The headline in the Courier-Express said: “8,000 Melt the Cold With a Roaring Welcome for Bills.” The lead paragraph introduced McCarville and said he was 5 years old the last time the Bills had won a division title, young enough that he didn’t remember it.
“For me, it was similar to what I’m hearing from the younger people now,” he says. “This one is the first AFC East championship in a lot of people’s lifetimes.”
When the Bills won on Saturday, McCarville’s brother-in-law asked, on Facebook, who was going to the airport. McCarville said he was up for it, as he had been 40 years before. He asked his brother-in-law to text him the plan. But he got no reply, and then fell asleep – as befits a Bills fan who is 59 years old.
Ah, but in 1980 he was 19 – and ready to party in the cold and dark with thousands of like-minded Bills backers. He and a best friend arrived with a 12-pack of Schmidt’s in tow.
“There was no problem with that in those days,” he says. “I remember thinking it was like a rock concert.”
These days McCarville is president of McCarville Insurance Agency in Orchard Park. He’s also a former member of the Erie County Legislature and a former Orchard Park Town Board member and village trustee.
The 8,000 fans in 1980 represented one-tenth of the capacity of what was then Rich Stadium. The Courier reported: “The mob swayed to rock music, swilled beer, chanted slogans, stood on cars for a better view, stamped, shouted, danced, and held up dozens of hastily constructed homemade signs.”
One of those signs said: “My Girl Says She’ll Go All the Way If the Bills Do.” Alas, we can report that the Bills did not go all the way, losing a playoff heartbreaker to the Chargers in San Diego. (As for the romantic fortunes of the sign maker, those are lost to the mists of yesteryear.)
As the temperature fell to the mid-teens, revelers partied until the team landed, at last, at 3:30 a.m. Some fans wore gorilla masks or space suits, and at least three came as Santa Claus. One crew of merrymakers kindled a makeshift bonfire out of cardboard beer boxes, only to have the police shoo them away and put out the fire.
Then came the moment they had all been waiting for: A dozen or so Bills made their way to a bandshell that had been assembled, complete with sound system, for the occasion. Coach Chuck Knox spoke, as did guard Reggie McKenzie and quarterback Joe Ferguson. Running back Curtis Brown and cornerback Charley Romes slapped hands with fans closest to the stage. Some fans were getting crushed from behind, so the police pulled them onstage. Other fans rushed the stage and got escorted away.
The rally lasted 15 minutes. And then it was all over; fans left behind a sea of beer bottles and cans. Reported the Courier: “The loyalists reluctantly got into their cars, turned up the heaters, honked their horns and created the kind of traffic jam one rarely sees on Genesee Street at 4 in the morning.”
McCarville thought about that wild scene of yore when he read accounts of this weekend’s airport assembly on the website of The Buffalo News, with photos and video from News photographer extraordinaire Jim McCoy.
“Seeing that energy again this weekend was just great,” McCarville says. “There was so much pent-up energy, not only with how long it had been for the Bills, but also with the pandemic. It looked like people just needed to get out.”
The photos and video suggested that many of the carousers wore masks, but they were clearly crowded together, raising questions about the potential for its having been a super-spreader event. No one had to worry about such things in 1980.
Otherwise, the sequence of events on those two nights remain much the same: Bills score touchdowns. Their plane touches down. And the airport crowd goes wild.
History – no mystery – rhyming across the years.
