Over the years, since I live closer to Minneapolis than Green Bay, I have taken the opportunity to drive to the Cities when my teams (the Packers/the Brewers) were in town.
I used to love to go out to the old Metropolitan stadium in Bloomington because to my way of thinking that was a real stadium as compared to the Hubert Humphrey Wind Bag.
I am priveleged to say that I saw the Bears' Gale Sayers beat the Vikings with a long kick off return back in the day.
But there finally came a day when I had taken all the abuse I was going to take from Viking fans and I vowed I would never spend a penny in the state of Minnesota if I could avoid it, including stopping for fuel on my way to North Dkota.
That crowning day was the Sunday that I was invited to go to the Viking/Packer game at the Metrodome with my good friend Bill Rude, who just happened to have two tickets through a customer of his.
We drove up in my Packer green 1965 Oldsmobile 98. The only way anyone could know it was from Wisconsin was by the license plates and a small Packer "G" on the passenger side vent window.
We parked as close as we could get, and went into the dome. I was wearing my Packer jacket so I guess I should have been ready for abuse, but I didn't think it would be so virulent.
Coming into the stadium, everyone was given a free granola bar as promotion, and as we came out of the tunnel and into the seating area, a drunk in purple stood up (sort of), pointed at me and yelled: "Get the fuck outa here and don't ever fuckin' come back!"
I just waved at him and replied: "It's nice to see you too."
We found our seats. The gentleman behind us leaned over and said: "Don't pay any attention to that asshole. He's drunk before the game evern starts."
I asked him where he ws from. Turns out he was from South Dakota, with Viking season tickets.
Since the Vikings were having a winning season, I turned to the man and asked: "If he's like this when they are winning, what's he like when they are losing?"
"Oh," he replied, "when the Vikings are losing, he's gone by half time."
The Vikings won that day. On the way out we received a lot of verbal abuse. Bill wanted to get into it with a couple of them, but I thought discretion was the better part of valor.
When we arrived back at the Oldsmobile we found that someone had chewed up and spit out about six of their granola bars, all over my car.
That was it! I vowed never to come back.
All the idiots standing on overpasses with big signs reading "Fuck the Packers! Go Home!" and giving Wisconsin plates the finger didn't exactly endear me either.
So yesterday's lambasting of the Vikings 34 -0 felt pretty damn good! I screamed my head off 4th quarter, worried that we wouldn't preserve that shut out.
Go Pack Go!
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