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It’s a mistake Packer fans make every year; they wrongly assume the beginning of the season starts with Training Camp. And while Training Camp is three days away, the first order of business is the business meaning it’s time for the annual Green Bay Packers Shareholder Meeting.

I came up the night before from Milwaukee and stayed with my parents who live 30 miles south of Green Bay. Compared to where many other shareholders are coming from, Milwaukee can hardly be called exotic. Regardless, I had taken the long way, cutting across farmland and through small towns in order to avoid downtown Milwaukee when I left after work.

I’ve been coming "up north" more or less for around 40 years now and the landscape is changing. Gravel roads are now paved, county roads have become four lane highways, and the old barns have been literally collapsing and being replaced with red steel structures. It’s still the country but it’s not the country I’ve known.

Scene on the way to Green Bay

The Lambeau Field doors open at 8:00 AM and I’m 10 minutes early when I pull into the parking lot. The morning is hazy and promising to be a warm one thanks to the humidity. Shareholders are lined up and waiting to get in; not a huge crowd but enough to make the scene look busy. The meeting starts at 10:00 AM.

Once inside many shareholders head over to the Packer Hall of Fame since it’s free to get in for the day. At its peak the line is fairly long and it seems to be moving rather slowly. Many of the shareholders have come a long way to be here so it’s worth the wait for them. being fortunate to be able to visit the HOF on a regular basis, I opt to wander and take pictures instead.

There are a few vendors in the atrium which adds to the atmosphere and I notice that some of the door greeters are employees from the Packer ticket office, including Mark Wagner, the director. I stop to talk a bit; 47 people have turned in their tickets this year to the Waiting List, but that includes single seats. I ask Mark Wagner how the Packers feel about ticket scalpers and ticket "hogs." The biggest ticket ‘hog" has 331 season tickets and was recently in the news which caused the usual resentment in the Internet forums.

Essentially, the Packers position is this: They are not going to take away tickets from "hogs" who obtained their tickets fair and square and by following the rules. As for scalping, it’s legal in the state of Wisconsin and beyond the control of the Packers organization. Mark also pointed out how the city of Green Bay changed their ordinances regarding scalping a few years ago. The law essentially allows ticket scalping with very little restrictions. Laws are usually the result of people telling their leaders what they want and people in Green Bay didn’t want any restrictions on how they sold their tickets.

Individuals may have their own opinion on how many tickets a person should have and on the subject of scalping, but the way things are is just how it is.

One of the highlights of the day was after the meeting, shareholders would be allowed into the west side of the luxury boxes to see the radio booth and press boxes. Mark suggested I leave the meeting a few minutes early in order to avoid the lines. Last year the shareholders got a tour of the Packers locker room and it was a two hour wait. And that was the Tuesday evening before!

Eventually I picked out a seat in the bowl area; while we waited they played various tunes on the PA system. Everybody sing! "The Bears still suck, the Bears still suck, the Bears still suck…!"

Finally, it was time and Bob Harlan called the meeting to order. The first thing they always do at these meetings is announce the number of stock shares being represented. It is always a majority of the stock and they always say they have a quorum. And everyone always cheers. I can never figure that out; since no voting takes place I don’t think it matters if we have a quorum.

The various committees make their reports at this point; I don’t try to get everything down but I do try to jot down a few of the highlights.

First up was Ted Thompson with the Football operations report. This takes up the bulk of the meeting and many of the fans are on the edge of their seat. Ted briefly touches upon the various player positions and those fans into X’s and O’s give their full attention.

Thompson firmly believes in finding players who are "Packer People." He refers to them as players who are good people who know how to conduct themselves. He also told the shareholders that we are his bosses and that he wants to win and he wants to win now. The crowd applauds as many have felt the Packers were slowly rebuilding and have been impatient with the progress.

Ted also acknowledged the boos he received when he drafted Justin Harrell as the Packers number one pick in the college draft but said to ‘relax." The crowd chuckled and generally felt better when Ted reiterated that he felt Harrell was going to do good things for the team.

Next was the Treasurer report. The Packers are in good shape financially but there seemed to be an overtone that it is going to be a challenge in the near future to compete in the NFL. Other teams were getting new stadiums, the players union is starting to bang on their drum, so there seems to be concern about the changes to come.

The Investment committee report was peachy keen and full of roses, the Packers continue to increase their reserves and their investments are doing well for the strategies in place.

The Management of Operations report, well, it wasn’t much of a report. Operations consists of all the front office support such as tickets, lawyers, security, etc. Instead of discussing the details of keeping toilet paper available on game days, the report was nothing but feel good Packer talk. The guys in the front offices are with us; they live and die each Sunday when the Packers take the field. Curly Lambeau was probably the only player in the league to have played high school and professional football on the same field. This was in regard to the Packers having a practice scheduled at East high School. The best way to predict the future (of the Packers) is to create it ourselves.

Really good stuff but not much information about the struggles of keeping the water coolers full of water and other such front office concerns.

The Audit report gave the Packers a good rating on how they keep the books.

The Search committee is dedicated to finding an "outstanding individual" to replace Bob Harlan. They’ve contracted with a top-notch headhunting firm and is doing all they can to send Harlan off into his delayed retirement as quickly as possible.

The Corporate marketing committee is dedicated to "overseeing the Packer brand and culture." Kind of a dry statement, it’s kind of like a parking lot attendant standing up and saying he oversees cars parking.

The Foundation report was next but this is where I cut out to go get into line for the press box tour. I happened to be at the top of the bowl so I naturally exited onto the upper concourse and got in line at a stairway leading upwards from the second floor of the atrium. Down below was the escalator from the ground floor up to the club level and you could see a huge line already forming. Up here I was the fifth person in line. There were no staff monitoring the stairway so when it got close to 11:00 the lady at the front flipped off the little ribbon strips that blocked the stairs and we started going up. By then there was a huge line behind us and there was no stopping the crowd.

I pass lee Remmel along the way and wave "Hi" to him. He acknowledges me but I keep going. If I stop the crowd behind me will catch up and then I lose my advantage. besides, Mr. Remmel is feeling the effects of time and probably needed to get to wherever he was going. I don’t know if the crowd was a hassle for him. He is, sadly, getting to be feeble.

You had to go to the fourth floor of the atrium and then follow the concourse around to the west side where the elevator to the press box was located. I was virtually the first person to make my way through and it seemed like I didn’t belong there because the concourse up here was empty except for staff. But if you turned around, the crowd was back there behind me and… there was no stopping that crowd. There were a few other people up here who also managed to beat the system and were ahead of me but I was in the first group that went up the elevator to the press box.

Not surprisingly, the west side of the luxury boxes and suites look a lot like the east side. The press box itself is impressive and huge. It’s up on the top level so while the view isn’t bad, you’re starting to get into blimp territory. You could see Bob Harlan down on the field giving autographs to all fans who wanted one but they were starting to look like ants from up here.

When I was finished checking out the box and headed back out, you could see the line to get in was going to be horrible. The elevator can take maybe 10-15 people at a time so it was going to be a painful wait. Mark Wagner did me a huge favor by giving good advice.

Back at the Club level, Ted Thompson was meeting fans and signing autographs. A Lambeau Field poster was commissioned, I believe for the stadiums 50^th anniversary, and the artist was on hand to sign posters.

One of the party rooms had a TV playing a tape from Packers Fan Fest; it was a seminar on the new field that was being installed. The room was packed with people listening to all the details. I had actually been at the seminar and it was very interesting. Down on the field today was the machine that was inserting the threads into the grass that the root systems were supposed to grow around. Earlier in the year the entire field was removed, heating and drainage systems replaced along with communication cables and who-knows-what. The last stage was to insert a thread into the grass about every ¾ of an inch. It would take millions of threads to complete this part of the process. It is hoped that this will save money by not having to replace the sod every season.

I watch the crowd, take pictures, and I eventually decide that it’s time for me to go.

However, I am not going directly back to Milwaukee. Wisconsin has a 1,000 mile hiking trail in the works with some segments already being in place. It is called the Ice Age trail and I had volunteered to verify that the trail guide is accurate for specific segments, one of which being located in Point Beach State Forest. I make my way down I-43 and soon find myself back on the back roads and headed for Point Beach.

The trail work that afternoon proved to be a chore but that is another story. What is important here is the drive. Many times I will just randomly pick roads that are more or less in the direction I want to go and get partially lost to see what I can find. I enjoy doing photography so my eye is always on the landscape for Kodak moments.

Old farm hands 

The corn is growing well this year. It is hot and humid now, the miserable kind, but the farmers are out cutting hay. Some fields are a golden splash upon the hills; I’m not sure what it is, but I think it could be wheat fields. Either way, they fill the land with Packer gold in between the corn standing proud and green.

I find an old one-room school house and take some photos but the humidity and haze and the harsh sun ruin the effect I’m looking for. It would be best to come back in the fall when the overgrowth was in color. The school faced to the west so coming at sunset when the sun cast a reddish glow would give the scene potential.

Old one-room schoolhouse in Packerland

There are a number of old barns and such around here but many are virtually standing rubble or they’re surrounded by concrete silos or the red-steel structures that are slowly replacing the traditional barn. A decaying farm can be picturesque; but put them next to red steel boxes and any hopes of a nostalgic photograph is lost.

It makes a perfect Packer metaphor.

The times are a-changin’ up this way, and so it is with football. Cities are spending billions to put up new stadiums, some being the equivalent of a red steel eyesore such as Soldier Field. Regardless, the change is necessary. Lambeau Field was literally in decay, just as it is with the old farms and homesteads in rural Wisconsin. The old farms are giving way to cost effective upgrades and turning into corporate conglomerates.

Change is inevitable and necessary and usually for the better but no one ever likes change.

Some of the old farms are saved, being restored and transported to sites devoted for history preservation. Lambeau Field was saved, too. Lambeau Field was stripped of its decay and restored, thus preserving the stadium for generations to come. It’s fitting that Lambeau Field turns 50 this year.

But we all know that. One of the things that make the Packers the Packers is we don’t have an arrogant owner. We forget, though, that there was a time where Curly Lambeau wanted to move the team to a more profitable market. Perhaps the change would have been the proper business thing to do but Curly made the mistake of selling stock; shareholders involved with the decisions being made at the time prevented the team from leaving Green Bay.

We were warned of the changing landscape today within the business of the NFL. Arrogant owners, cities held hostage, million dollar children who think they can play the game, billion dollar stadiums, that is possibly the next generation of football. Yet, in Green Bay, thanks to the shareholders, the old time football still exists. We’re able to hold onto the past and live football the way it’s supposed to be.

Change may be inevitable but some things just aren’t meant to be changed. People from all over the country came here today for the meeting. Is there any wonder why?