Football and all those Famous Folks

This past holiday season, I had the wonderful opportunity of going to visit Alfred and Nathy-Boo at their home in Cleveland.   My dearest sister put up with me let me stay for a whole week!  We had tons of fun.

Now, in case you haven’t noticed from previous posts (about skirts and socks and life), Alfred is a huge Packer fan.  And I’m pretty fond of football as well.  So I knew she’d at least think about it when I begged, “Can we go to the Football Hall of Fame? Please? Pretty please?”  And we did.

One snowy morning, we got in her car, fishtailed out the driveway and sludged down the freeway to Canton and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  It’s a drive that, to Alfred, is a bit of a roadtrip, but in Bay Area terms is just around the corner.  We had fun counting cars spun out in the ditches on our way there.

The museum – or whatever it is – is pretty neat.  I liked the exhibit on old football gear the best.  My top favorite was the old nose guard that was supposed to prevent broken noses.  Players stopped using it when it became apparent that the guard caused more broken noses than it prevented.  Reminds me a bit of discussions around a current piece of equipment…

The busts of all the inductees was pretty neat, too, especially since there’s so many Packers.  Sadly, there’s less Packers than Bears.  The video display of Ditka is also very cool, but Ditka’s such a part of American culture now that anything with him would be cool.  I didn’t know he used to be a player, so I learned something new!

Alfred didn’t take too kindly to one of the displays, which amused some of the other patrons.

The part of our visit that surprised me most was something that shouldn’t have been surprising; I’d just forgotten.  We were practically the only females in the place, and definitely the only females without male accompaniment, even though it was quite busy.  You see, where we come from, everyone’s a football fan.  There’s no such thing as football widows.  The loudest screamers and angriest yellers are always my aunts.  Mommy’s great-nieces have jerseys practically as soon as their born, same as her great-nephews.  But I guess the rest of the country isn’t quite the same.  Wisconsinites really are the luckiest people on earth.

And we got our picture taken with the Lombardi trophy!