by Jack Smith Of all the things you can do in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the single most thrilling attraction involves sitting on your ass in sub-zero weather. Green Bay Packers football is a locked-in tradition here — fans are linked by a love of the team that dates from its inception in 1919 and continues through St. Vincent Lombardi's dominant 1960s and to today's reigning Super Bowl champions — and on Sundays and the occasional Monday night during football season, time stands still while the team plays. In the NFL's smallest franchise city, the Packers are the only game in town, but it's a game that few have tickets for. Games at the Packers' home stadium, Lambeau Field, have been sold out since 1960. Even in the late 1970s and the 1980s, when the team sucked, tickets were hard to come by. Now that the Packers are back on top, passes are impossible to get, except from friends and family, or, occasionally, through promises of oral sex. The waiting list for season tickets is quickly approaching 40,000 people. The problem is, there are only 60,500 seats available, and on average only four pairs of tickets turn over each year. That's eight seats. Children born to Packer fans have their names on the waiting list before they're baptized, though when you do the math, it appears that I have a better chance of fulfilling my "Kathy Lee Gifford/Lucy Lawless double-team on a lunar colony" fantasy than little Billy does of scoring season tickets in his lifetime. "I married my wife because her family had tickets," Jim McVey, a factory worker from Milwaukee, tells me without cracking a smile. For some reason, though, everyone is blindly optimistic, like Willie Wonka's Charlie, that someday they'll score the Golden Ticket. In Green Bay recently for a game against the division-rival Detroit Lions, I ask five hopefuls why they bothered putting their names on the list, and they each tell me the same thing, in that characteristic Fargo-meets-fur-trapper accent: "Ya jus never knooo, eh?" Of course, there are ways around the list. "I married my wife because her family had tickets," Jim McVey, a factory worker from Milwaukee, tells me without cracking a smile. Packers fans who aren't so lucky in love still find ways to approximate the thrill of the game. A guy who introduces himself as "Tony — just Tony" explains that he tapes the games during the season and, during the summers, he cranks up his AC until frost forms on the windows while he and his buddies replay the entire season over a weekend of steaks and MGD Lights. During the season, ticketless fans come to the Lambeau Field parking lot anyway, just to tailgate. The air on game day is filled with puffs of charcoal smoke and the smell of bratwurst cooking on small Weber grills with Packer-helmet lids. Saying that Packer fans like brats and polish sausage is like saying Jerry Falwell digs The Lord. It's not surprising, then, that Wisconsin is at the epicenter of America's heart attack belt. All the usual game day sights are there at the Lions game — the TV vans, the giant inflatable helmets and footballs, kids tossing Nerf footballs over shirtless, body-painted drunks. But a few sights you'll see nowhere else. I watch a polka band wearing matching snowmobile suits segue from a German beerhall song to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll." Every one of the band members resembles Packer coach Mike Holmgren, which is to say they all look like walruses. Add a couple hits of acid and it's a live-action "Sgt. Pepper's." On my way into the stadium I see a 70-year-old man selling tickets at face value. He introduces himself as Bob Grznkznksk, or something else equally Polish and heavy on the consonants. When I ask why he's selling the tickets so cheap, he replies matter-of-factly, "That's what I paid for them." Which I mistakenly hear as, "I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat." Season tickets rank up there with killing a 30-point whitetail buck as the ultimate objects of male desire in the Wisconsin north. Inside, Lambeau Field looks smaller than 60,500 seats. The stands are close to the field and covered in green, gold, and the unofficial third team color, hunter's blaze orange. It's a subtle reminder that season tickets rank up there with killing a 30-point whitetail buck as the ultimate objects of male desire in the Wisconsin north. (Oddly enough, deer-hunting is another activity largely done while sitting on your ass in sub-zero temperatures.) The foam-rubber cheeseheads are everywhere, and at each score, I hear the low thuds of Gore-Tex mitten high-fives. Everyone is so bundled that the only way to tell the men from the women is that the men's moustaches are more Ditka-esque. Missing, though, is the mob mentality of other blue-collar football cities; Packers fans are actually quite cordial to the Lions fans. Even the drunks are nice. In fact, everyone seems tickled just to be there. Which makes Lambeau Field one of the most magical places I've ever seen a sporting event. On the way home, I consider putting my own name on the waiting list. Then I do the math. To get season tickets, I'd have to live another several thousand years. Then again, ya jus never knooo, eh? Jack Smith lives in Milwaukee and is a columnist for Smug. He enjoys sitting on his ass in subzero weather and pork. © 1998 Tripod, All Rights Reserved.