Carl Gerbschmidt recalls Growing Up Packer through times thick and thin and back again.
I can’t tell you how or when I became a Packer fan. It just always was that way. It is rumored that my mother pumped green and gold fluid into my world when I was little more than an amniotic wish. In our family, it was as inevitable as being born Catholic.
They say some children are stimulated in the womb with symphonic music from Mozart or Bach, but being born on January 12, my in-utero world was punctuated by weekly shouting, whistles, and Vince Lombardi yelling, “What the hell is going on out there?” I suspect that may have affected my Packer development though I am not aware of any peer reviewed studies on the subject.
Early life was grand. The Green Bay Packers won championships in my second and third year of life. My parents took note and made sure I too was a winner. My hair was neatly coiffed in the Lombardi tradition, carefully trimmed by my father in the basement with the same trimmers he used to groom our toy poodles. I was always attired in the latest line of NFL apparel. Even my Packer pajamas were a scientific miracle. They were lined with asbestos to protect me should I combust spontaneously or be carelessly left behind by my parents in a house fire. (That’s a real thing, look it up.) I am not sure today how healthy it was to have asbestos Packer PJs, but they did make neat sparks when my brother and I rubbed them under the matching asbestos blankets.
Chinks in the Packer’s mythic armor began to show as the 60’s scuffed onward. The Packers in 1968 finished 6-7-1 under first year Head Coach Phil Bengtson after decades of winning. Little did I know it was the start of the “Gory Years” that would stretch to 1990. During that time, the Packers only had five winning seasons and made the playoffs twice, once in a strike shortened year.
My parents remained die-hard Packer fans. Sometime in the 1970s they purchased an RV that they had painted green and yellow. It was like a Packer time capsule where you could find anything Packer. There was a Packer Coca-Cola bottle, Packer sweaters, jackets, wigs plastic silverware, plates, cups, beads, pitchers and, of course, more than a few cheeseheads. On fall Sundays, my parents would pack up the four kids and pilgrimage to Mecca which, in those days could be Milwaukee County stadium or Lambeau field. In Milwaukee, the seats we purchased were from a friend who was wise enough to be placed on the Packer season ticket list as a zygote. His work often got in the way of his fandom, which meant we could see the game on his tickets. This was a blessing and a curse. His tickets, you see, were obstructed view, and as a middle child, I often found myself seated behind an iron girder that supported the bleachers above. I could see the Packer quarterback pass, and, if I was swift enough to move my head to the other side of the girder, I would also see the catch.
As the ‘70s trudged onward, Ragnarök descended on the land and the Vikings were the only Central division team to appear in a Superbowl, four of them to be precise. Arguments about civil rights and Vietnam became daily news, and my parents, never the most enlightened, often pointed out that mixed marriages would almost never work. She was not talking about civil rights however, she usually making reference to her brother’s son Steve, my cousin, who married his Bear fan wife after their graduation from the University of Illinois. From that day forward, Steve was a pariah. You could not mention his name without my mother rolling her eyes in disapproval and sucking her bottom lip until it squeaked.
By the time things began to turn, I was in law school. I have few memories of the ‘80s and some would suggest it is a form of PTSD and repressed memory following the Bears “Superbowl Shuffle” of 1985. It was that year Mike Ditka, coach of the Bears, steamrolled my team for a one-yard touchdown with a defensive lineman named after a kitchen appliance. But then came the ‘90s. It was Majik Man. It was a time of recovery and reclamation. A time when, once again, the Bears would “still suck” and it made sense.
As the ‘90s moved forward, there was a return to glory with Packer names like Ron Wolf, Brett Favre, Reggie White, and Leroy Butler. The Lambeau leap was invented in the last game of the 1993 season as Reggie White lateraled to Leroy Butler following a fumble. I swear shortly after that game, my mother even traded in her St. Christopher medal for one stating “Minister of Defense.” The early ‘90s games felt magnetic, where the hair on the back of your neck would bristle with the energy of the stadium. It was a fast build from ‘92, ‘93 and ‘94 back to the Super Bowls of ’96 and ’97. Winning seasons had returned like the sun following a nuclear winter.
Since that time, we have been spoiled by the riches of success. With few losing seasons yet, as perennial contenders for Lombardi trophy each year, we find time to complain. Somebody is always wasting somebody’s prime as if there is never any competition. For almost three decades now, it has been good to be the King. As a Packer fan, I know that someday we will once again face the winter of our discontent, but today, we are made glorious by “this sun of York” (with great apology to William Shakespeare). And today I delight with you, my brethren of the Outbox, chalice in calloused grasp.
