Is that true? Are there really fans getting hyped up on blow before games there? Is that an issue?

I've not been to a Patriots game in many years. However, I do remember the days when Boston sporting events were a drunken brawl much of the time. In the hilarious way people are, some fans (the older ones) are nostalgic for those times. 

I recall attending a Patriots game in the early 1980s, a friend and I had tickets and were around 14 years old I think. The fans were drinking like it was a summer night in London...meaning like they could not go home until the place was bone dry. When we were in our seats some guys asked us if we were alone. One of them actually said "This is not a place you should be alone at your age!" 

Sure enough somewhere halfway through the game a brawl broke out near us. Beer was flying though the air in all directions and the fight just kept expanding to involve more and more people. In short time we were standing in the middle of a riot. Blood, booze, bodily fluids of every type were raining down everywhere. Bodies tumbled down over seats, people were screaming, teeth were being knocked out, new ways to cuss were being invented on the spot. I was pretty certain some of the cracking sounds I was hearing were breaking bones. My friend, who was a small kid, was terrified. We could not really run or look to escape because it was pandemonium in every direction. If you tried to move you would likely get trampled or punched or who knows what. One of the guys that spoke to us saw my friend looking terrified and nearly in tears so he attempted to grab him and pick him up to move him toward a concourse entry way so we could get out of the stands. He managed to get hold of him and lift him off the ground while yelling at me to follow him. 

He made it about a step and a half before someone smashed him in the face sending him tumbling over rows of seats, where I got to hand it to the guy, he attempted to keep my friend Dave shielded from the fall, at great expense to himself. When he came to rest about 3 rows down he let Dave go and he scrambled to his feet looking for a direction to run. I climbed over the rows of chairs down toward them yelling to my friend. When I reached him I looked down at the guy that had picked him up and he was lying there on the concrete floor between rows of seating blood running down his face, wincing in obvious pain, holding his ribs. 

"I think I broke some ribs." he said as he labored to breath and like we were in some war movie he said from the floor "Go, head for the concourse exit." and in that moment a hole in the bodies opened in front of us and I shoved Dave forward and we ran, leaving the poor bastard there on the floor, people stomping him and drenching him in fluids...to die for all we knew. 

The whole time I kept thinking help would be coming. Cops or security or both. But there was none. Nobody came. Dave and I were knocked down several times but kept going. Occaionally someone would turn to throw a punch at us, realize we were kids, and turn away usually to have someone punch them in the face. 

We made it out into the concourse, out of the melee in the stands. Found a spot and hunkered down there. Guys would spill out into the concourse bleeding and dazed, heading for the men's room, some still fighting. We waited thankfully uninjured just soaked in beer and soda. After a while I went back up to look into the stands, the fighting was still going on. Smaller pockets of it but still raging. Nobody came to help. No police, no security. 

This was a 1970s-1980s Patriots game. The team was bad, the weather cold, so the fans got drunk and fought. If you  were stupid enough to be wearing the opponent's jersey you were assured of a proper ass kicking. 

Now, if you go to a Patriots game and fart it is on camera and security is on you and you get banned from the stadium. So, you could not be safer. In the "good ol' days" you would enter the game dry and ready to watch some football. You would leave soaked, stinking of stale beer, bloodied, and likely in need of dental work or an emergency room visit to set your broken limb. 

As we sat in the concourse, waiting to see if or when the brawling would end I said to Dave, we should thank the guy that tried to save us. He looked bewildered. 

"What guy?" he asked.

"The one that picked you up." I said.

"A guy picked me up?" 

"Yes, not for long. He got hit and the two of you fell about two rows down through the stands. It was crazy."

"I don't remember that." he said. I realized he was in shock. He did recall suddenly getting up off the ground and thinking he was no longer in the same spot he had been in before but did not know how he got there. He then felt me shoving him and thought we ran for a very long time. He was screaming at the top of his lungs the entire time we were running. I only realized he had been screaming when we made it into the concourse and I yelled at him "We're out! We're out!" and he looked startled. 

I was an odd kid and for me the entire thing seemed like an adventure. I think it took some time before Dave saw it as an adventure. Through the years though we tell that story and laugh.

You know, Mick, whenever I have been in Europe it always feels much more relaxed to me. I don't know if that is just that I am on vacation when I am there or that's just how it is. In the United States there is this electric current of tension and anxiety constantly humming in the air. 

Sometimes I think that's the current driving people mad here. Has them reaching for their guns and at each other's throats. They can't shut it off and they finally snap and all they can do is kill as many people as they can because that's all they feel will silence the hum...the current...always buzzing, always hostile, always there.