After 28 years absent from the World Cup stage, Scotland supporters were never going to let a traffic jam dampen their spirits on the road to Foxborough.
Fans revelled in the gridlock for hours before kick-off, hanging out of yellow school buses on the I-95, singing songs and waving flags at a crawl of barely a mile an hour.
The sense of joy was so palpable you could have reached out and touched it, with vast waves of Tartan Army supporters occupying every street corner across Boston.
Seven minutes before 9pm local time, Scotland walked out into Boston Stadium, a riot of colour and noise that felt as much like a theatre as a football ground.
Flower of Scotland rang out with extraordinary power, its force seeming somehow greater on a foreign field than it ever does at home, sending shivers down spines across the arena.
The scene stood as an antidote to all that is wrong in world football, cutting through the rampant greed and unrelenting bombast with something raw, powerful and emotional.
Scotland began reasonably well but slowly faded, with Haiti growing into the contest and looking wasteful yet more dangerous than their heavily-fancied opponents as the half-hour approached.
Then the Tartan Army began calling on John McGinn, beseeching the Aston Villa man to do something, and two minutes later he delivered with a goal that crept in via a double deflection.
Nobody cared that it was not the sweetest of strikes, because it was a Scottish goal at their first World Cup in a generation and, by definition, a thing of absolute beauty.
Scotland’s total of victories at the finals rose from four to five, a rare and precious tally, but the relief was short-lived as Haiti pushed hard for an equaliser in the closing stages.
Frantzdy Pierrot rose above Grant Hanley and headed narrowly wide with six minutes remaining, sending palpitations through every Scotland supporter watching on.
Andy Robertson, in one desperate moment, hoofed the ball away as though his footballing life depended on it, which, in that moment, it very much did.
Goalkeeper Angus Gunn summed up the mood afterwards with a revealing admission: “When we look back, we won’t be happy, but we’ve just won a game at the World Cup, so…”
Billy Gilmour’s composure was missed throughout, as was the brilliance of McTominay and the authority of McGinn, with Scotland’s standout performer being Ben Gannon-Doak, who was a double handful all evening.
Steve Clarke acknowledged what the result meant in the broader context of the group, saying: “Everybody told us that it was a must-win game and we’ve won it.”
The celebrations among supporters were as much about relief as genuine joy, the weight of nearly three decades without World Cup football finally lifting, however inelegantly.
Scotland now travel back to their Charlotte base camp as tired men but, crucially, as winners with three points already secured in the group.
McGinn said the team have more gears to go up, and they will need every single one of them when Morocco come to Boston next week.
For all the anxiety and exhaustion, the enduring image remains those supporters hanging out of school bus windows, radiating undiluted happiness at simply being back on the biggest stage.
Many of them will return for more against Morocco, where another night of pressure and angst is guaranteed, but there is nowhere else on earth these people would rather be.
