The seasons change hard in Wisconsin, and it was evident Friday evening on the drive north to Packer Country as I headed up to my parents’ house. There’s a slight twinge in the leaves, signaling that summer is soon to be gone. It’s still over a month away before the fall colors peak but it’s the beginning of the end for summer.

The highlight of the weekend is Saturday evening when the Packers play a preseason game with the Seattle Seahawks, but you first have to get there, and the journey to Lambeau Field is many times a story in itself. 70,000 Packer fans converge for three hours on game day but each has their own routine of what to do and how to get there.  So as I head north I can’t help but notice how the landscape has changed from spring to summer and now edging toward autumn. The corn is about ready to be harvested, though the field corn may be left standing going into November. The corn is tall and green and the tassels, when viewed at the right angle across the fields, shimmer in a golden haze. It’s no accident that the Packers are the Green and Gold; in this part of the country it’s a mandate.

I have with me pumpkins from my garden; they’re the size of small melons. These are the eatin’ variety so they don’t grow as big as the jack-o-lantern type; these are grown for flavor. In the morning Mom and I will process them and put the pumpkin mash in the freezer.

Saturday morning, it takes a while to cook the pumpkins and package them for freezing, but surprisingly, it doesn’t take long to cook a pumpkin pie. In the early afternoon after it had cooled we all had a slice; there is nothing like a fresh pumpkin pie where the ingredients don’t come from a can.

The afternoon was spent sitting around being lazy; it began to rain, the slow, gentle kind, but it was steady and constant. Much of Wisconsin is behind in rainfall for the year so it is sorely needed, but it does mean we’re in store for a soggy evening.

I more or less watch several action movies, all bad, but it was an afternoon that was perfect for bad movies. I learned two things about movies that afternoon: the world is always saved at the last possible moment and there is always a woman who is overcome with emotion and unable to run away from danger unless she is saved by a man. This is actually a revelation as I realize I have discovered the secret of making it big in the screenwriting industry.

My parents had been invited to a birthday party, one of the neighbors was turning 50, and the party was on Saturday. We meander over late afternoon and mingle with the people from the neighborhood. Dinner consists of deep fried fish, potato salad, coleslaw, and rolls. The men talk about hunting and fishing, and the women comment on the house and décor.

Life in Wisconsin.

I should add that one of the beverages being served was Graf’s 50-50. You either know what that is or you don’t. Life in Wisconsin, right?

I’m taking Mom to the game and it’s eventually time to go. Because of the weather, we were in no hurry to get there early. The game starts at 7:00 PM and it’s a little after 6:00 when we park the car and turn off the engine. We parked on a side street northeast of the stadium, mainly because it’s only a few blocks to the stadium and it’s free to park on the street. One block away toward the stadium people are paying $10 to park and up to $30 if you want to park right off of Lombardi Avenue. A 10 minute walk separates the free locations from the $30 spots.

Mom and I stop in the scalper pit; as it turns out, I have an extra ticket. Thanks to the Internet, I hooked up with someone who had a ticket but was unable to come to the game. It wasn’t going to be worth the trouble to find someone willing to pay anything for the ticket since it was a preseason game. There’s a percentage who don’t have much interest in the preseason and more who won’t come in the rain if they don't have to. In other words, there aren’t many who are willing to pay much to come to a game like this. The plan then is to find a warm body willing to use the ticket for FREE; better that than letting a $64 ticket go unused and be wasted.

In the scalper pit there are plenty of tickets available from the scalpers in addition to a number of regular fans stuck with extra tickets and there virtually are no buyers. I see one deal in the works and start to walk over but it was done before I could have an opportunity to give the ticket away. It was a couple that was buying so I doubt if they would have been interested in a single seat.

I decide to head over to one of the Lambeau Field tailgates because I knew one of the groups many times has people looking for tickets.

There is something you have to understand about Lambeau Field tailgating; there are the tailgaters and then there are the diehards. The diehards come early and line up on Oneida Street before the lot opens; when the gates swing apart they are off and will ignore the parking attendants because they all have their special locations to park in. These people are an institution and their dedication is mind-boggling. They are here every game no matter what. Lambeau Field tailgaters mentor tailgaters for all other stadiums, and these diehards mentor the other Lambeau tailgaters. If you ever come to Lambeau Field for a game you should just wander the Lambeau parking lot and soak it all in.

I’m not kidding.

I find the tailgate I'm looking for, but it wasn't surprising that no one in the group was interested in the ticket. Most people will have their ticket situation set before coming to the game. I’m talking to Dave, one of the diehards, and we discuss the game for a little bit. He’s having fun just being out here and he says he will probably wait until the second quarter before going in. The game doesn’t count and so it didn’t matter to see the starters because they’ve already made the team. He feels preseason is about the rookies and unknowns, and he’s interested in seeing how the players of the future will perform tonight. I thought that was an interesting way to look at the preseason.

Regardless, I still had a ticket in search of a Packer fan so we walked back to the scalper pit and I saw a group huddled around with some scalpers who looked like they were on the verge of a sale. As I’m watching this, one guy holds up his tickets and starts yelling “TEN BUCKS! … TEN BUCKS! … TEN BUCKS!” It’s 30 minutes until game time and this guy apparently understood the realities of supply and demand. Packer tickets may be a tough ticket but it’s a different story for a preseason game on a rainy evening. At this point I didn’t have much hope for giving away a ticket, even for free; people were already having a hard time selling tickets for $10 each.

I approach the group and ask how many tickets they needed; I was expecting them to say four or six but they said “One.” One? Well, I had one ticket and they could have it, for free. They were kind of dumbfounded with that but they didn’t argue. They gladly took the ticket and a guy “out there” on the Internet would be happy in knowing that his $64 ticket had a Packer fan using it.

With our mission accomplished, it was time to head into Lambeau Field. The freebie for preseason games is always a magnetic schedule. Mom and I each get one as we enter the stadium and we start making our way over to where our seats are located.

This is a “Milwaukee” game, which for us means we have the “good seats.” We call them the good seats because they’re in the second row of the north end zone. It is unbelievable how close to the field we get to sit and many times there are different kinds of interaction with personnel on the field. It’s a unique experience and far beyond anything you will ever get by sitting at home and watching the game on TV.

Before I go on, I should quickly explain what “Milwaukee” tickets are. The Packers used to play in Milwaukee but the last year they did was 1994. When the Packers moved all the games to Green Bay, they allowed the Milwaukee season ticket holders to keep their tickets. So the Milwaukee tickets get a preseason game and two regular season games while the Green Bay season ticket holders get the other preseason game and six regular games. Most people know this but it’s been 13 years now and it's possible that more than a few readers may not be aware of the two different season ticket packages. Season tickets are a dynamic thing so ticket holders of each group are not necessarily from Milwaukee or Green Bay but the majority of Milwaukee tickets will be from the Milwaukee area and the same logic will apply with the Green Bay ticket holders.

The ironic thing about this arrangement is that even though one may be able to call himself or herself a Green Bay Packer Season Ticket holder, they will not have tickets to all the games unless they are one of the very few who have both ticket packages.

Before heading down to our seats we sign up for the designated driver program, which entitles us to a free NA beer. Mom gives me her coupon and I get me a fake beer, the other coupon going into my pocket for later. I won’t say NA beer is fantastic, but it’s wet and it’s free.

We timed it to be sitting in our seats close to when the game would start so we missed the pregame contests and promotions, but that’s OK. We’re here to see the Packers!

The Milwaukee preseason game is always the “Shriner's game.” The Shriners benefit in some way, I don’t know the details, but the woman who sang the national anthem was someone who was a former Shriner's patient. She was in a wheelchair yet belted out a national anthem that rivaled any Hollywood talent. Four fighter jets, despite the weather, flew over in a thunder and it was time…

It may have only been a preseason game but it had been eight months since football was played at Lambeau Field. That was last winter; the winter turned to spring, spring into summer, and summer into Packer Season. Yes, the seasons do change hard here in Wisconsin.

I won’t go into the X’s and O’s, the stats are out there for all you armchair quarterbacks. Football at Lambeau Field is an experience unto itself and that is the focus of my trip reports. Part of the experience is the people around you. On this day, the people to my left were strangers; the guy who owns the tickets has been putting them on eBay partly because he has young children so it’s been hard for him to get away. The people to my right are from Plymouth, Wisconsin. Very nice people but they generally keep to themselves and can be very quiet. The people behind us, there are four of them in the group. Their family alternates who uses the tickets and when I was first started sitting in these seats sometimes there would be four girls behind us. They’d all swoon over Brett Favre and if he was within 30 yards of us they’d be screaming for Brett and I do mean screaming. Thus we gave them the nickname “screamers.” We don’t see them that much now, they’re married and such but one of them was there for the game. She’d scream when the Packers had a good play, she’d scream when the wave would come around, and she'd scream when she was having a good time, which was pretty much the whole game.

Whew!

The Screamer was pretty much in preseason form; it didn’t take much beer to get her going. The PA system was in preseason form too, the sound just not being right for much of the game. Even the referee’s microphone was not functioning properly. The announcing crew in the booth botched the music and commercials in between plays a few times too.

The one thing that night that seemed to be ready for the regular season was Lambeau Field itself. During the off-season they tore out all the sod, installed new drainage, heating, and what-have-you, and put down new grass. In addition, they had a special machine come in that inserted a synthetic thread into the ground eight inches deep and every third of an inch. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of threads were put into Lambeau Field. The purpose for doing this was so that the roots of the grass would grow around the threads and help it all hold together better.

The rain was not that intense but it had been a steady drizzle most of the day so the field was about as soggy as it could get. Not one divot came out that night. Any other time it would be a given that the sod would have been destroyed under such conditions. The rain did quit at the end of the first quarter but it started again at the end of the third yet the grass didn’t look like a game had been played when the contest was over.

As for the game itself, you never would have known it was a preseason game. The weather did keep the crowd down a little bit but they were still screaming and hollering almost as much as a regular season game.

The Packers had their way with the Seahawks that night, which is pretty evident with the 48-13 final score. The radio on the way home said something about this being the largest margin of victory in the preseason going back to the 1930’s or something like that.

What was special about this night was that the five touchdowns scored by the Packers were all in the north end zone and they all terminated with a Lambeau Leap. I was able to reach in and pat one of the Packers after one score, I was that close. One of the other leaps I was close enough to be in some of the pictures posted by the mainstream media.

It was just a plain, good time. It was good to see the Packers play well, it was good to see the Packers once again at Lambeau Field, and it was absolutely wonderful to have Packers jumping into the stands on a routine basis. The pitfalls of the regular season are yet to be seen, but games like this give you hope.

Mom and I get home late that evening and celebrate the good times with another slice of pumpkin pie.

Sunday morning, I had an errand to run and brought Mom along. I took the long way, meaning I stayed off the highway, taking the back roads of northeast Wisconsin just to see what I could see. I like to do photography and am always keeping my eye on the landscape. We found some abandoned farmhouses and picturesque farms that made for possibilities and I’d stop to take photographs. The rain continued to fall; it’s still light but enough to keep things wet.

There was a craft fair in New Holstein and we pointed the car down roads that would eventually take us out that way. Once in New Holstein we first stop for lunch at a little greasy spoon along the main street going east out of town. We had a hard time finding a place; all the bars were open and advertised “food” but we wanted a little more. The place we did find wasn’t that great but it didn’t have people smoking.

Not much was open at all there in New Holstein early afternoon except the bars.

The craft fair itself was a bust because of the weather. There weren’t many vendors and very few customers other than a few folks like us who were curious more than anything else. Mom did buy a birdhouse for $8, though.

When you take the back roads it’s interesting how you find sections of land that are still wild. Little forests here and there and old fields that have been unused and reverted back to prairie.

That was our Sunday; roaming through the farmland, windshield wipers on delay and peeling off a layer of drizzle every few seconds, and resting the eyes upon the Wisconsin horizon.

Back at my parents' house, Mom gives me dinner before I head back home, and I have one more slice of that pumpkin pie.

Fresh, pure pumpkins baked with love. None of that canned, fake, artificial stuff, no sir.

Lambeau Field is 50 years old this year. What’s funny about that is Lambeau Field really was a mistake; it was a low-budget, cut-the-corners project. The town couldn’t afford a “real” stadium so the fancy stuff was left out leaving a no-frill venue designed to cram butts inside for some football. The result of that mistake was creating a little scrape out of the ground surrounded by a basic set of seats.

And a legend was born.

Because of the need to build a cheap stadium, the result was a bowl where everyone was close to the action and had a great view regardless of where one sat. You can hear the quarterback, the coaches shouting on the sidelines, the thump of the ball being kicked. All this was preserved when the stadium was renovated five years ago.

Fresh, pure, with a team that is loved. Other stadiums, like the Metrodome, are nothing but cans that create an atmosphere of fake, artificial football. You can call it football but it still comes out of a can. Many teams are building new stadiums now, all designed for revenue but provide little in enhancing the actual experience of being at a game. The new Soldier Field is lauded for its sight lines but a large number of the seats are in the upper-deck nosebleeds and there are no restrooms or concessions available beyond the ground level. Soldier Field is yet another football-in-a-can venue, designed only to make money and giving the fans an artificial experience.

Football is played the way it was meant to be played at Lambeau Field. No preservatives, no artificial coloring, no filler ingredients. Just pure, real football. Fans of other teams are always annoyed with Packer fans because Packer fans always profess themselves to be above other fans. Can’t fans of other teams love their teams the same as Packer fans?

Perhaps.

But fans of other teams first need to try football picked fresh off the vine and not out of a can. Once they taste what Packer fans have been living on, only then can they say they’ve experienced the real thing.

There is a reason why they say there is no bad seat at Lambeau Field.

This is a place where the seasons turn hard, a place where the land gives you the things that come natural. You can’t put the prairie or the fishing or the old farms into a can and onto a shelf. Some things can only be served up real, like football; here, you will find the football to be real. So real that it literally jumps into your lap and you can touch it.

Life in Wisconsin.