TimesFour

Ok, I’ll admit it, I’m old.  Not ancient like some Packer fans.  I mean I never saw Curly Lambeau play and I never drafted Don Hudson for my fantasy football team, but I am up there in years, nonetheless.  I lived through the abyss that we now call the ‘70’s and ‘80’s (and I’m not just talking fashion here). So I thought it would be cool and interesting to throw some of my favorite obscure Packer memories from that time and see if anyone else knows what I’m talking about.

Packers Memories

Here are my top 5:

#1: Jesse Clarke invents the bobble head.  I will never forget the time the Packers were playing the creamsicle colored Bucs and Jesse Clarke broke open over the middle and had a clear shot for the endzone.  He ran so hard that his head bobbed up and down so hard it looked like his head was going to fall off.  He did score the touchdown, but had to miss the next two weeks because he gave himself a concussion.  OK, that last part isn’t true, but I’m old, I’m allowed to exaggerate.  It’s not like your grandpa really did walk 6 miles to school each day.

#2: Pre-mature Elation.  I remember when I was growing up and Dad used to always take us to “second service” at one of the local bars every Sunday.  The grown-ups would sit at the bar, the kids would play pinball or that game where you slide the thing down the thing to get close to the edge of the thing.  But, when the Packer game started, everyone would focus on that.  The one play that I remember watching from “second service” was when Dave Hampton broke free on a kick return for a TD, but in his joy, he spiked the ball at the 2 or 3 yard line.  My fading memory tells me, the Packers still got the TD, but the memory of the reaction of everyone at the bar has not faded.

#3: Case of the Epps.  I used to love Phillip Epps.  I remember one season where he caught like 190 passes (old man hyperbole again) and never once caught a TD.  Then in a late season game against the Seahawks he caught a pass near the endzone, but was tripped up and fell at about the 1 yard line.  The ref gave him a touchdown anyhow.  I think he felt sorry for him.  Isn’t that sweet.

#4: This isn’t a single play or game, but just a memory.  There was one season where WKBT out of LaCrosse (I’m sure it was done on other stations also, but at the time we only got two channels and one of them was from Minnesota) used to do a highlight package that was set to music.  Whoever did it, usually rewrote words to an existing song (you know, like a parody) or just made up a neat little ditty. “Harlan Huckleberry?…NO Huckleby”.  Those songs were true masterpieces, almost Shakespearian.  You can’t beat the classics.

#5: Just for kicks, really poor ones.  Remember Tom Birney.  I remember the cartoon that showed up in a Green Bay newspaper in late 1979.  It showed a pair of grounds crew members talking. In the background was a goalpost with netting all-around it, to the left, the right and below but nothing within the posts.  The caption read: “well, you asked me to put up the net so we wouldn’t lose any balls.”  Actually, I think part of my fascination with Tom Birney is that he had two first names.  For a while there I though his middle name was “Bernie” and his last name was “Wideright”.

There are definitely more; names like Fred Carr, Terdel Middleton and many, many more.  As we prepare for the start of another Packer season its kind of fun to look back at seasons past.  I hope this got your memory glands flowing and brought back some memories of your own.