Note: The pictures are not in Jim's book. I added them to this excerpt. They are from various tailgate parties. Also for those of you who know us, the names below will not make sense, as he changed them for the book, but I'm sure you can figure out w ho's who. If interested, you can order the complete book by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page.

A Pilgrimage to Lambeau

 Excerpted from Fanatic: 10 Things All Sports Fans Should Do Before They Die by Jim Gorant, published by Houghton Mifflin June 2007. Copyright Jim Gorant. For more information go to jimgorant.blogspot.com

Charlie is bumming on my head. A born and bred Wisconsinite, he is a writer and editor I met about 10 years ago on some random adventure. Since then we’ve jet skied in near-freezing waters off Nantucket, snowmobiled to the summit of a 12,500-foot peak in Idaho and raced in rickety outboards to the mosquito-infested Marquesas. I knew I’d become friends with him the first time I read his business card. Below his name and the address for his “Global Headquarters” (his home in Oshkosh) reads a singular line: “A good man to have along.” Over the years I’ve continued to find this not only funny but true.

No surprise then that I called Charlie as soon as I knew I’d be headed to Green Bay. He not only had a wealth of information to share, but he offered to make the two-hour drive up to keep me company for the day. That sounded great but he is the barer of bad news. He’s nixing my shirtless cheesehead plan. Based on our history I know it’s not because he lacks a sense of adventure or because it’s a night game in the middle of December. “Three things are generally considered bad form at Packers games,” he explains. “1. Complaining about the weather; 2. Leaving the game early; 3. Taking off your shirt and wearing one of those cheeseheads. Among real fans, it’s just not done.”

This delivers a serious blow to my fantasy and makes it hard for me to open the trunk of my rental car when Charlie’s around, because I don’t want him to see that I’ve already bought a triangular chapeau of faux cheddar. I’m sad, but in the end, I make peace with the idea of wearing a jacket and going cheeseless. I had wanted to do those things because I’d been seeking the quintessential Packer experience, but if they are actually the opposite of what real Packer fans do, I guess I’m going to have to make like a good football team and adjust. In truth it doesn’t mean that I can’t lose myself in the game, it just means that I won’t be wearing my fervor on my goose-pimpled skin. I must admit that this moment of clarity comes after I step out of my car at noon and the 22-degree air takes a bite out of my face, the only exposed skin on my body.

Instead, at Charlie’s behest, I take a different path to the heart of Packer mania.  He sends me an article by Cliff Christl, a writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who grew up in Green Bay and has covered the Packers on and off for the better part of four decades, in which Christl outlines all the historical Packer sites around the city. I not only read it but e-mailed Cliff, and he agreed to show us around.

So it was we stepped out of a blustery day and into the old Chicago North & Western train depot. The place has been turned into a bar and restaurant called Title Town Brewing, and there among the green-and-gold banners and black-and-white photos of strapping men in leather helmets and lumpy shoulderpads, Charlie and I find Cliff and his wife and we four sit down for lunch.

Cliff and Charlie trade Wisconsin talk and Packer stories, and Cliff, a jowly guy with a brush of white hair and a diamond stud earring, proves to be a great tale-teller with a ton of knowledge. For instance, this isn’t just any old Packer-themed eatery. This was the train station from which the Packers used to depart for games and to which they’d return afterwards. Fans would gather for send offs and greetings. When the Packers won the 1929 NFL championship, Cliff tells us, something like 15,000 people swarmed the station and lined the tracks waiting for the team to return.

This is just the starting point of Cliff’s Packer tour, so we load into his car and hit the streets of Green Bay. The city rides on the Packers, literally. From the Nitschke Bridge to Lombardi Ave, the thoroughfare that runs right by Lambeau Field, the team is ever present.

We see the remains of City Stadium, where the Packers played from 1925 to 1956, now a high school field. The school itself sits on property that includes the sandlot where the team played from its inception in 1919 until 1925. We drive by the WBAY building, a former community club where fans would gather during away games to listen to wire reports as they came in. A large grid at the front of the main room tracked the movement of the ball up and down the field.

We stop for a minute before the former Northland Hotel, where visiting teams used to stay. Since City Stadium had no visitors’ locker room, the teams would dress at the hotel and take a bus over. As a kid Cliff was once invited onto the bus where the hated Chicago Bears waited to be ferried to the stadium. They were as nice to him as could be, shaking his hand and signing autographs.

We see Lambeau’s gravesite. Lombardi’s houses. We ride through the deserted downtown, where what was once a typical American Main Street of shops and storefronts has been plowed under in favor of anonymous strip malls and banks. It’s there, on Irwin St., that we stop in front of a small brick house; this is where Curly Lambeau, the charismatic yet problematic founder, player, and coach of the Green Bay Packers, grew up. Originally it was thought that he’d been raised in a different house, but a local kid working on a high school research project discovered that as a young boy Lambeau, resided right here. (Aren’t high school research projects supposed to be about the space program? Or the deeper meaning of the Doors?)

Some of the sites are marked with plaques or small busts, but just as many give no indication of their place in Packer history. Marked or not, the places really aren’t much to see, especially if Cliff isn’t there to provide the narrative. As a sightseeing tour, it makes a pretty good bus route.

As I stare out at these landmarks I find myself searching for some sort of emotional breakthrough, a moment where I somehow feel connected to the past, but all I see are old high-school fields and aluminum sided suburban houses. Whatever magic these places once held no longer exists.

Or is it that I’m incapable of conjuring it? During the ride I sneak little peaks over at Charlie who looks out the window mesmerized. He peppers Cliff with questions, and asks for clarification on various points of history. When we get out of the car and wave goodbye to Cliff, Charlie can’t stop talking about how cool the tour had been.

What am I missing? Could it be that the heart of the Packer mystique lies not in the bracing cold of Lambeau but in the heated confines of a white Ford Taurus?

 
*****
 
As protection against the renowned cold of northern Wisconsin I’m wearing insulated hunting boots, wool socks, long johns, jeans, a thermal shirt, another thick shirt over that, a fleece sweatshirt, full-length snowmobiling pants, a hunting jacket, snowmobile gloves, and a hat. But as we set out into the parking lot about three hours before game time the temperature is 15 degrees, and it’s only going to go one way from there.

I’m no longer much impressed by parking lot parties, but this particular tailgate at least comes with its own cheap thrills. One guy busies himself behind his truck setting up miniature goal posts that are strewn with bras, many of them signed by the women who gave them up. I want to believe this is a totem of good times past, but when the guy opens the truck door I see a box with several pieces of lingerie draped over the top. I get the sense his is a self-made glory; it’s hard to imagine someone removing any bit of clothing in this weather and even Green Bay doesn’t have enough alcohol to convince so many women to root for the Pack while leaving their own team unsupported.

Another new twist here is the animal hats, Daniel Boonesque things made of full animal skins, designed so that the pelt cascades down the wearer’s back, complete with little fur archipelagos of former limbs dangling off them. The creature’s face, fully intact, stares out from above the wearer’s forehead. Talking to someone who sports one causes a confusing moment when I’m not sure if I should be making eye contact with him or his headwear. After spotting a few I start an informal count. In the end my tally includes coyote, skunk badger, fox, raccoon, beaver, and one guy who has a stuffed duck tied to the top of his head.

I’d been told I’d find some serious mid-western hospitality out here. All I’d have to do is say “hello” to someone and he’d offer me a beer and a brat, went the conventional wisdom, but an hour into our walkabout Charlie and I have yet to be offered anything other than free cell phone minutes if we change carriers. I’m getting hungry, cold and cranky. That’s when Charlie sees a sign that appears like  an oasis or a pair of golden arches suspended above a lonely highway: OSHKOSH PACKER FANS.

“Oshkosh?” Charlie says. “I wonder if I know them?”   

He approaches a man stirring a huge pot with a large aluminum ladle. Street names are exchanged, landmarks, places of business, names of people who might be mutual acquaintances. A stocky woman who’s been standing nearby steps up behind the table where the pot sits. “You look familiar. What’s your name?” Charlie tells her. “Yeah, that’s familiar,” she says, putting a finger on her chin. “Well, Charlie offers, my dad is a doctor in town, has been for years, works at the hospital, so a lot of people recognize my name because of him.”

“That must be it,” she says, snapping her fingers. “He must have been the doctor on call when we brought Frank in.” The synapses have connected. We’re made men. I’m pulled over to the table, there are introductions and hellos. She’s Deb, short, blonde, pleasantly round of feature and chattering away in the notorious upper Midwest accent that’s just short of Canadian and can’t help but make me think of the movie Fargo. The guy with the ladle is her brother-in-law, Bob. “The trick,” he says, as he hands me a Styrofoam cup filled with a thick brown bubbling goo, “is to put the noodles on the bottom and the chili on top.” I nod. I smile. I take a heaping spoon of the chili. It is hot. And good. Flavorful and just greasy enough to leave my lips feeling a little slick. Charles Plueddeman—A good man to have along.

We make our way around the table and into the tent behind, into the very heart of the Oshkosh Packer Club, which, as it turns out, has been in existence for 30 years. Deb points out the essentials: beer, space heaters, a table full of food. Here the club members lounge in folding chairs or stand hopping from foot to foot in the frigid air. “There’s about 30 of us,” Deb says. “It’s great because someone always has tickets. If they’re not going they’ll give you theirs, or if you can’t make it you give them yours, and lots of times we won’t even have enough tickets for everyone, but you come to the game anyway and just watch from the parking lot. You can just relax out here and eat and drink and have a good time.”

As I finish my chili I can’t help but think of Holly Swyers and her communities of sports fans.The Bleacher Bums have nothing on the Oshkosh Packer Club. I peruse the table. The options include everything from a giant football-shaped sausage to a cake that’s an amalgam of crushed Oreos, graham crackers, and peanut butter. It looks and tastes like something out of Good Housekeeping circa 1958 or that you’d find on the bottom of a Cool Whip container. None of which prevents it from being delicious. All of it is laid out with care. Placed on the pristine white tablecloth like offerings for a sacrament.

I fall into conversation again with Deb. Only she turns out not to be Deb but Deb’s sister, Jean, who’s married to Bob the chili man. I notice that Jean’s wearing a pin with a picture in it. “Who’s that?” I ask.

“Ohhh, that’s Deb’s husband, Frank. He died last winter of a heart attack. Very sudden. Shocked everyone. He was a huge fan. So now we wear these pins to remember him.”

Just then Deb herself walks up and hands me a cup of hot chocolate. It is the best hot chocolate in the world, thick and creamy, just short of whipped hot fudge. “Mmmm,” I say after the first sip.

“Ya, that’s from the farm,” she says.

“What farm?”

“Ohhhh, we own a dairy farm. My 23-year-old son is there right now, milking the cows. Poor kid, he graduated college last year right after his dad passed so he got forced into becoming a farmer. I think all he really wants to do is stand on the field at Lambeau and take pictures.”

“Well, there are people who do that,” I say.

“Ohhh, he’d love that,” she says. We talk a little bit about the perils and possibilities of professional photography and about her son and her husband and the approaching holidays. “Of course, we’ll be here for Christmas and New Years,” she adds, pointing out that the Packers play home games on both holidays.

“What’s the plan for Christmas?” someone asks. “Ohhh, we’re going to set up two long tables right here,” she says, motioning lengthwise along the spine of the tent, “and we’re going to serve lasagna. And we’ll set up a separate area for the drinkers because we want it to be nice. But no salad because it’ll freeze.” Turning from the main part of the tent back to me, she adds, “A few years ago the Packers played on Christmas Eve. That time we made three huge turkeys and had a big sit down dinner. We served 79 people.”

Indeed the Oshkosh Packer Club picks up members the way Jim Taylor picked up first downs. As far as I can determine the prerequisites for joining include being at the game and signing the van. The van turns out to be the central part of the Oshkosh Packer Club encampment. It’s the sort of mini-bus they use to shuttle people from the airport to the car rental agency. It’s the main mode of transit between Oshkosh and Lambeau for a large part of the club. The inside houses a horseshoe of padded seats complimented by a tangle of spare winter clothing, scarves, mittens, hats, snow pants, pom poms, Packer jerseys are strewn about, dangling from the overhead shelves and stretched across the floor.

One side of the exterior is covered with gold stickers shaped like helmets. People have signed the stickers. Charlie and I are given helmets and a marker and told to sign it and stick it, which we do. The bus is also the support for the banner that flies over the party. It reads “Oshkosh Packer Fans, Oshkosh; Borth; Madison; Fond du Lac; Valparaiso, IN; Evansville, IN; Madison, SD.

Why South Dakota? I ask Jean. “Ohhh. One year, Jean says, we saw two guys sitting on the curb drinking beer and eating chicken out of a bucket. We said that’s no way to tailgate, come with us. So they joined us that day and they’ve been coming back ever since. They live all the way out in South Dakota, and when they come to a game they arrive a day early and stay at our house overnight. We get people who show up every week from South Dakota. They say we know the Waysons, and we say, come on in. Here,” she says pointing to two guys in the corner. “We got these two guys from Texas this week.”

“Yes, sir,” says Joe, a tall, lanky kid of maybe 25 who has a long nose and freckled cheeks. “Drove 20 hours, from Dallas. Stopped in Ames, Iowa, to pick up my dad,” he adds, nodding to the tall bearded man next to him, “gave my great-grandma a kiss, then right to here.”  

“Why the Packers?” I ask.

“Don’t know,” he says, “just always liked them. Just something about them.” His dad nods as if to confirm this. The two have been to a few Packer games in Dallas, including a playoff game in 1994, but this is their first trip to Lambeau. As Joe stands there, ear muffs over hat, one hand holding a beer, the other driven deep into his pocket, I ask him if it’s all he imagined it would be. “Oh,” he says, “everything and more….”

  To find out how Gorant’s journey to Lambeau turned out, and how he fared at the nine other events on his list (the Super Bowl, Daytona 500, Final Four, Masters, Kentucky Derby, Wimbledon, Wrigley Field, Ohio State-Michigan, and Opening Day at Fenway Park), click above to order a copy of Fanatic today at Amazon.com.