With football back and Super Bowl agony unhealed, Falcon fans on road to recovery

The red, white and black Buick cruising up Vineville Avenue was hard to miss. It was a four-door eyeful of Atlanta Falcons regalia, adorned with enough bold logos to turn a 1995 Park Avenue into a bird of prey.

The car, a testament to the power of the National Football League and how far the fans of its teams will go to express their allegiances, was also a sign that life goes on.

The other day after the car’s driver parked at his house near Forest Hill Road, a reporter who had seen his salute to the Falcons roll by a few blocks away stopped to ask about the car. And to ask a bigger question, one that folks may be asking for eternity: How do you go on after the team you have devoted yourself — and your car — to blows a 28-3 lead in the Super Bowl?

That February defeat at the hands of the New England Patriots (and football gods who hath no mercy) was the home-state club’s most gut-punching defeat of all. Atlanta fans had spent the past half-century congealed in an endless buffet of bitter loss. Then came Tom Brady and company. In these parts, seven months of nuclear winter followed. What-if and denial reigned.

It was only football, you say. Just a game. But, no, this was more. The heartbreak lingers. Its memory will follow the Falcons into their sparkling new arena.

The place has a roof that opens and closes. Ghosts of the team’s haunted past will no doubt come and go as they please.

If it is any consolation, any salve, the football mansion, dubbed Mercedes-Benz Stadium, is a roughly $1.5 billion arena. Atlanta Magazine recently described the skyline’s new hood ornament as an “American cathedral,” the priciest structure ever built in the city. If coming incarnations of the Falcons do not win big, at least they will do it in style.

Which brings us to a fan named Larry Clark Jr., the man at the wheel of the ’95 Buick Park Avenue.

Clark, who is 49, has Falcons tattoos on both biceps. He works for a Macon moving company and has a part-time gig with the county coroner’s office. (Sometimes bodies are heavy. Muscle is required, and as Clark put it, “I’m in good shape.”)

The car he has decorated in Falcons colors pays homage to an Atlanta quarterbacking legend. The Buick may be the only automobile in America emblazoned with the name “Steve Bartkowski,” which appears in bold letters stuck to each side of the car near its taillights.

Clark began watching the Falcons when he was a boy, back in the middle 1970s when Bartkowski was a star. (When the reporter who dropped by Clark’s house texted a picture of the car — and the quarterback’s name on it — to Bartkowski himself, the old Falcon sent a one-word reply: “Beautiful.”)

If you have read this far and are an Atlanta-sports devotee, consider yourself — like Larry Clark and his Buick — on the road to recovery.

Healed? Never.

But you would likely never have read this story in the days and weeks after the Super Bowl. You would have averted your eyes from any hint of said calamity.

As Clark stepped out of his car and was asked for an on-camera interview, he said that would be fine. Clark put on a Falcons hat and, cringe, mentioned the Super Bowl.

“It was rigged up at the end,” he said.

He cited, among other causes for Atlanta’s epic collapse, the halftime show — “the longest halftime in history.”

Though the pain was seismic, a car-wreck of a downer, Clark’s faith in the Falcons has not wavered.

If it isn’t enough that he has decked out his car in Falcondom — his pickup truck and another vehicle, a Lincoln Town Car, also sport team stickers — the key to his house even bears the team’s logo.

“As you can see,” he said, “everything’s Falcons.”

But why?

“I just love ’em,” he explained.

He began decking out the automobiles he drives with Falcons stuff in the early 1990s. Sometimes people rib him. They make fun of his affection for the Falcons. Especially in lean seasons.

“I can do anything I want to do with my cars,” he tells them. “And I do it for the Falcons, because that’s my life. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke.”

Clark, who has Falcons season tickets, is ever the optimist.

“Our record’s gonna be 14-2 this year,” he said. “We’re gonna lose against Tampa Bay and Seattle maybe, … and maybe New England.”

Ugh.

Them again.

The Patriots, raining anew on Atlanta’s parade.

Worry not, though.

Clark has just the thing.

He keeps it in the back seat of his Buick: a Falcons umbrella.

This story was originally published September 7, 2017 at 12:00 AM with the headline "With football back and Super Bowl agony unhealed, Falcon fans on road to recovery."