Hi and welcome to all of Leah's readers from her Zihuatanejo blog and the few friends and family I have been able to con into taking a look at our new effort. Those of you who read Leah's last blog entry know that we have decided to create a new blog that will chronicle her experiences as an ESL teacher in the Minneapolis public schools. We will alternate posts and I will write whatever comes to mind with a hope someone will find it interesting. So without further ado, here is my inaugural post.
A couple of weeks ago there was much excitement from the talking heads that make up the sports reporting industry about the return of NFL football. I didn't realize it was gone as there was a lockout during the off season and the only things lost were a few off season practices and the always fascinating Hall of Fame Game. But to hear the sports pundits unanimous hoorays you would think their jobs depended on the dispute being settled. Anyway, it got me to thinking about the fact that I have been watching the NFL for more than fifty years and as you can imagine things were different fifty years ago.
I grew up (some people contend I never have grown up) in Green Bay during the 50's and 60"s and then as now, you couldn't be in Green Bay without feeling the cultural phenomenon that was and is the Green Bay Packers. Every kid was invested in the Packers and as much as I was born a Catholic, I was born a Packer fan. In 1959 the Packers hired Ray “Scooter” McLean as their head coach. Scooter moved his family into a small stone house just around the corner from our house in an older working class neighborhood. Back then the head coach didn't live in a gated community or in a mansion. He lived in our modest neighborhood.
Right across the street from us Bobby Dillon, a 5 time pro bowl Packer defensive back, rented a modest stone and brick house. Bobby would come out in the front yard and play football with the neighborhood kids. Every time he came out to play with us it would end up with eight kids trying to tackle him. There would be kids hanging from his arms, legs waist and back. Eventually he would lay down on the lawn, careful not to hurt any of us, and we would exult in the fact we had tackled a Packer.
The point is that there was a lot less money in the game back in those days. The players and coaches were much closer to their fans with respect to income and life style than they are today. Scooter even invited my brother and me to come down his basement where the entire Packer coaching staff was breaking down film. In those days the entire staff was about five or six coaches including Scooter. He asked us if we wanted autographs and we ran home and got our books and they all took turns signing. Today, that house would need to be doubled in size just to hold the seemingly dozens of assistant head coaches, coaches, strength coaches, film coordinators and who knows what that make up an NFL staff.
The fan experience was different in those days too. My father bought season tickets for himself, me and my brother the first year Lambeau field opened. The kid's season tickets cost around $2.50 to $ 2.75. That was for the season! Now you have to remember that these were 12 game seasons and the Packers split their home schedule with Milwaukee. Still, it's hard to believe that price bought you three regular season games and the Bishop's Charity exhibition game. Back in those days the glorified scrimmages that were played before the season began were called exhibition games. Now, the NFL calls them preseason games because they think that will soften any criticism they might receive for charging full price for an inferior product.
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| My brother and I on Lambeau Field in 1957 (I'm the handsome one on the left). |
My season ticket got me a seat in Sec. 9 in the corner of the north end zone. Section 9 was the kid's section. My father sat with my uncle and his father in law in the south end zone. Adults and kids were segregated. When I think about the decision to put all the kids in one section without any adult supervision you have to wonder about the common sense of the people who made that call. I think it was related to the different parenting style back then when kids were to be seen and not heard by and large. Not too many people were worrying about their kid's self esteem and kid's relationships with adults were fundamentally different than they are today or have been for the last 20 years. For example, my father was a big sports fan but even he didn't go to all my games, let alone practices. Kids looped their gloves over their handle bars, placed a bat across the handle bars and looped their baseball shoes around their necks and rode their bikes to practices and games. Parents who had lived through the Depression, WW ll, and the Korean War were catching up with their own interrupted lives and their kids had to make their own way more than today. With that came more freedom for the kids which included the freedom to fail and suffer certain degrees of humiliation. So I am inclined to give the people who designed the "kid's section" a little slack.
My brother, my cousin and I sat in row 3 of Section 9. Those seats were not without a certain level of peril. Mainly because there were hundreds of kids sitting behind you who lived to throw everything they could get their hands on during the course of the game. I think a study should be done to determine how many rocket designers, munition experts and aeronautical engineers sat in Section 9 when they were kids. Projectile creativity was on display every Sunday.
Among the staples were:
· The Crushed Sugar Cube Bomb. The trick here was to get your hands on a sugar cube that was the size of about one and a half bazooka bubble gum squares, carefully crush the cube into powder, open the wrapper just enough that when it was thrown it would rain down a sugar shower on the kids seated down lower in the section. A direct hit would cover your head in sugar with an ample portion going down your back.
· The Snow Cone Shower Cluster Bomb. This was achieved by sucking all the syrup out of a snow cone and then launching the remaining ice toward the unfortunates sitting in the lower rows. A direct hit was both a startling and wet experience.
· The Cotton Candy Cone Spear. This was the paper cone that was at the center of the cotton candy. It was an inferior missile as it didn't leave a mess and it didn't hurt that much when it hit you. But what else were you going to do with it after you ate the cotton candy, so they retained their popularity through the years.
· The Hot Dog Wrapper Missile. Back in the day the Lambeau Field hot dogs came wrapped in tin foil. This was real tin foil, not like that silver paper you get today. The object was to take the foil wrapper and spend about a quarter of the game squeezing it into a tight round projectile. Once you had achieved the perfect hard packed sphere it was ready for launch. The hot dog wrapper missile was the one I feared the most. Just as you were intently watching Willie Davis chasing Gayle Sayers around the end you would get hit in the back of the head with the hot dog wrapper missile. It was as if lightening had struck inside your head and made a sound that can best be described as "THWOK". By the time you regained your senses the play was over and you were looking over your shoulder the rest of the game.
· The Sandwich Fixings Mortar. This was simply the inside of a sandwich carefully removed from it's bread and hurled down on the unfortunates. A sandwich fixings mortar provided one of the distinct memories I have carried with me through the years. Picture a June Cleaver like mother packing little junior a nice big bologna sandwich in wax paper so her little darling wouldn't get hungry during the third quarter. "Would you like mustard on your sandwich darling?" Once at the game the little bastard knew what he had and sometime during the first quarter he removed the big bologna from it's wonder bread cover and dripping with French's yellow mustard threw the bologna like a processed meat Frisbee. A kid sitting just to the right of me got smacked squarely on the side of the face. The big bologna stuck to his face for a moment and then peeled off leaving a nice patina of mustard.
I am leaving out the pop cans that were tossed as I only saw that once. A close friend who also sat in the kid's section recently told me he saw a kid throw a can of pop that landed in the bell of a marching band member's tuba. Apparently the tuba player soldiered on but I have to believe the can affected his sound.
Another near genius move by the stadium seating planners was to put the section where the visiting team's fans sat right next to the kid's section. While I am willing to cut them some slack for putting all the kids together, this move seems inexcusable even today. There was always a small war between the kids and the visiting fans but it took on a whole different degree of intensity when the Packer's hated rivals, the Chicago Bears, came to town.
With apologies to Chicago, the Bear fans were a bunch of drunks. If there was one thing you learned growing up in Green Bay at that time, it was how to identify drunks. The war started a half hour before kickoff and lasted the whole game. The other time I saw a pop can tossed was during a Bear game. In those days, you were allowed to bring anything into the stadium. I never saw anyone try to bring a hunting rifle to the game but just about anything short of that was permissible. Kids would bring coolers full of ordinance disguised as food and pop. The pop came in real tin cans. Just as aluminum foil has gotten wimpy through the years so have pop cans. Back then a pop can was not something you squashed between your thumb and fore finger. There was no tab to open the can. To open it you needed a church key that allowed you to put two puncture wounds in the top of the can.
Back to the Bear came. The war of words and projectiles at this particular game was intense. As it was reaching its peak, two drunk Bear fans unfurled a bed sheet sign depicting a Bear devouring a Packer. The two Bear fans were slowly making there way down the aisle carrying their sign while receiving wild support from the Bears section and loud derision from Section 9. Just as the noise was reaching it's apex a proud son of Green Bay stood up and hurled an unopened can a pop at the sign. Luckily it made a direct hit in the center of the sign (and not the head of any Bear fan). The two drunks caring the sign wobbled for a moment and then toppled over and rolled down a couple of steps. The entire kid's section rose as one and let out a roar celebrating some kind of victory in the war between the two sections. There was no better feeling than beating the Bears on the field and their fans in the stands.
By the way, Scooter’s 1959 Packers went 1 – 10 – 1 and he was fired at the end of the season. The Packers hired some guy from New York, but he moved into a more upscale neighborhood. Today's NFL seems a little antiseptic to some one who lived through the earlier era. The extensive security, self importance, big money and arrogance tend to wear thin at times. Just as I am concluding that the good old days were more fun and better "THWOK" and I think again.
