On Saturday, November 30th, 1996 I got a call from Jim Spaeth, a friend of mine at the place I work. His wife was going to have twins soon, so he needed to get rid of his beloved PACKER tickets. He asked me if I wanted 4 Packer/Bear tickets AT FACE VALUE (which is unheard of)! The game was THAT Sunday, Dec. 1st. Packer tickets at Lambeau are more precious than Gold in our part of the country, and even harder to come by! I snatched 'em up in a heartbeat!

I unsuccessfully tried to get 4 tickets for $150 earlier in the week, but they were gone in 20 minutes, and I was 5 minutes too late. These tickets were fantastic! In the south end zone, at the goal line, in the sixth row. GREAT SEATS! I couldn't believe it, what great fortune!

The Packer-Bear rivalry is intense and has a long history of over 100 games. Our fans love to hate their fans and vice versa! I know of many children who haven't been born since the last time the Bears beat the Packers, though, so the rivalry isn't quite as intense as it used to be. The Packer-Cowboy rivalry has replaced it, at least temporarily, until the Packers WHOOP Dallas when they finally come up to Lambeau next year! Hope that's a December game!!!

The trip up began at 7:30am. The roads were a bit icy going up there (2.5 hour trip) from Milwaukee. The radio announcer for the Bears spun out his car on I-94 in Racine county (south of Milwaukee) on the way up to the game. A carload of Packer fans picked him up and rode him (drove AND teased) all the way up there! We arrived 2 hours early and tail-gated until game time -- cooked bratwursts and drank Miller beer. Ahhhhh, that was HEAVEN!

I took my sister-in-law and 2 nephews. We crawled to the top of 20 foot tall snow banks and took pictures with THE LAMBEAU SHRINE of in the background -- from many different angles. It's the oldest football stadium in the country, built in 1957, but also THE BEST. You can feel the history, and our Packers are invincible at home! Crazy fans were being sociable with other wild fans they never met before. A Green Bay local who lived on Lombardi Ave., directly across the street from Lambeau painted their fence with this saying: "Reggie in the Superbowl, it has a nice RING!" There's nothing like the atmosphere of pre game festivities in the lot before ANY game!

Roaming around the stadium, I ran into Tim Lewis, a Navy Reservist I knew, who was decked out in a very unusual sombrero his mom got from Mexico. It was green and gold, but he customized it by cutting out the center and replacing it with a "Cat in the Hat" style green and gold striped hat. He made it on the Jumbotron stadium TVs and I saw him on my TV at home later in the season.

My nephew brought face paints, and did his up, so I figured, "What the hell!" I painted up my face with a white stripe down my nose and a goalpost on my forehead. The rest of it was alternating green and gold from the cheeks up. In the 1st quarter I found my ugly mug on the stadium's pair of huge jumbotron screens! Later in that day a guy saw me in the john and recognized me from the jumbotron shot. "Hey, wasn't that you on the jumbotron?" It's a game I'll never forget. Lost my voice for some time from cheering so long and hard!

Jackson caught a touchdown pass right in front of us and jumped up high to toss the ball over the goalpost arm. I could of almost reached out and touched him!

The PACKERS won 28-17. A completely awesome day, and I had the opportunity of a lifetime... to be at a game played by our future Superbowl Champions!