A little something on the Packers...

I came home yesterday to find the house completey redone in Christmas style with my Green Bay Packer Santa hat on the bedpost. Tis the season.

It's been a very bad past few years for the Packers. Teams that aren't doing well on the field like to call these times "rebuilding years" as if they are in the process of making something better out of what they have but the truth is these are just plain lean years for the Packers and thier fans. With a quarterback who is sure to be in the Hall of Fame but whose best years are in the rear view mirror the Packers have eked out just four wins this year, flashes of sunshine in a two year long gray day.

But they have a part of my heart. Probably always will.

I'm certainly not as fervent as some fans. They do, after all, have Packers caskets available for the person who wants to declare thier loyalty for the ages and I have no intention of using one. There are those, too, who will go in to a real depression when the team loses and truthfully need to get a life. The fact is my work schedule (Sunday is a work day for Priests) gives me little time to actually watch a football game and the best I often do is get some snipits of action on the radio as I drive home.

Still there is a part of me that's a Packer at heart even when other teams with better uniforms and records come calling for my favors. It's a combination of things really, growing up in Wisconsin in the glory days of the Packers, the 1960's, when everybody played the season just for the priviledge of being beaten by Green Bay in the championship game, the happy memories of childhood pretending we were Packers, and the idea that real heroes with names like Bart Starr and Ray Nitschke still roamed the Earth. The truth is it might best be said I'm a fan of all of those memories and not so much any particular Packer's team on the field in the present. But fan I am regardless.

There is a malicious part in all of this as well, a kind of response to the snobbery of some Minnesotans, folks convinced after a lifetime of living here and going nowhere else that this place is somehow the kingdom to which we all aspire and citizens of lesser realms are at best objects of the kind of pity reserved for the savages in missionary slide shows. The walloping of Minnesota sports teams, which happens more often than not, is a painful reminder to such folks that life exists, thrives, and even conquers outside of this place and for those of us who have come from other places gives a silent pleasure in the misery of those who remain perplexed as to why such terrible things could happen to such sanctified folks.

But this is a waiting year, a year to grab for any sliver of hope and remember the great days past when we were kids and played schoolyard football and dreamt of great days to come. They will, always do, and until then I'll take out my stuff every once in a while and show the colors. Go Pack!!!