Uncle Don was a Packer fan, from Wausau, and had played guard in the days of the single-wing offense. He was a big man with a big bark and he got intensely involved emotionally with the game. My dad never played football and thought that fanhood was childish, perhaps even unchristian. Don’s two boys and my three brothers and I sat on the couch or on the floor, Dad sat in an armchair, and Don got up close to the screen where he could yell at it. My Dad looked at a book, any book, to avoid seeing a grown man yelling at an appliance, “That was holding! You didn’t see that? Open your eyes, ref! He had both arms around him. He was tackling him and the guy didn’t even have the ball!” And we boys watched this seminar on the meaning of masculinity, as the women coaxed the dinner toward the goal line.
Lavish aromas, six well-behaved boys, my absentee father, and Uncle Don living and dying with the Packers, sometimes moving laterally with the play. He simply could not contain himself. All my other uncles — I had a dozen of them — were soft-spoken men who avoided showing strong emotion, and here was Don — in his heart, he was on the bench, suited up, ready to go in and bash heads.
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