Bob was a big Green Bay fan. He and my brother loved watching football together. They'd be out in my dad's huge office, a beautifully renovated 2-car garage with a solid wall of paned glass windows and wood stove. Very Swiss looking. On any Saturday or Sunday morning we could hear them hollering and screaming at the TV. Growing up with 2 football fanatics (where the word 'fan' comes from, btw) I just assumed everyone who watches sports on TV spends the time jumping up and down while yelling at the screen. Rick, my younger brother, could easily be heard swearing viciously at the set. Bob, on the other hand, rarely if ever used foul language. He didn't have to - a look was enough to make your head drop to your chest in humiliation for your own stupidity. So when he watched football, instead of swearing, he would clench his pipe tightly between his teeth and mutter, "You idiot... you moron...", or the rare, "You dumbshit.... what a schmuck." But it was slung at the ref or linebacker or tight end with such contempt that I'm quite sure it was heard all the way, over the airwaves, and down onto the field. When things were not going according to the plan he had in his head, he would jump to his feet, leaning intensely into the face of the television set, and yell mightily, "Jesus Christ! What an idiot!"
He had grown up in Wisconsin, picking and hurling cabbages in the snow for a nickel a day to help support his mother, Hazel, after his father's death. The Packers, named for the firms that sent those cabbages by railroad car to destinations around the U.S., would practice outside Racine, their winter headquarters. Bob said he would sit up on the snow-covered split rail fences to watch the team slide around in the muddy slush, near freezing, huffing steam, slinging epitaphs at each other. It gave him a sense of belonging, and provided role models for later in life. He was a tall, skinny kid of 14 or so at the time. The guys would have been wearing leather helmets and woolen uniforms. Many years later, watching the LA Rams, he would call the players wimps when they couldn't handle the ball in snowy weather away from home.
I watched some football with him and my brother occasionally. Mom would send me out with a plate of cookies to assuage the mighty Green Bay fans in their fanatical ardor for the leather-clad gladiators. I usually lasted a few minutes before the din wore me out and I returned to the safety of the women's quarters, the kitchen. But I have to say, I was impressed. It was the only time I ever saw Bob that het' up about anything.
He had grown up in Wisconsin, picking and hurling cabbages in the snow for a nickel a day to help support his mother, Hazel, after his father's death. The Packers, named for the firms that sent those cabbages by railroad car to destinations around the U.S., would practice outside Racine, their winter headquarters. Bob said he would sit up on the snow-covered split rail fences to watch the team slide around in the muddy slush, near freezing, huffing steam, slinging epitaphs at each other. It gave him a sense of belonging, and provided role models for later in life. He was a tall, skinny kid of 14 or so at the time. The guys would have been wearing leather helmets and woolen uniforms. Many years later, watching the LA Rams, he would call the players wimps when they couldn't handle the ball in snowy weather away from home.
I watched some football with him and my brother occasionally. Mom would send me out with a plate of cookies to assuage the mighty Green Bay fans in their fanatical ardor for the leather-clad gladiators. I usually lasted a few minutes before the din wore me out and I returned to the safety of the women's quarters, the kitchen. But I have to say, I was impressed. It was the only time I ever saw Bob that het' up about anything.
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