Wait, am I recording? You are listening to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. All right, let's bango. Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. My name is Lindsay. I am getting my PhD in art history, and it seemed like a good idea two and a half years ago to start a podcast. And here we are, 25 episodes later. I'm feeling pretty good right now because I just finished a dissertation chapter that I was supposed to finish in early September, but hey, it's 2020, and I am just doing my best. Thank you very much for joining me for today's episode. It's a topic that I've wanted to talk about for some time. I originally had planned to do it earlier in the year, but decided to wait because it's not your typical art history topic. As the episode on the Winchester Mystery House has shown, however, people are excited about non-traditional art history stuff too, which is awesome because that's kind of my thing. I do appreciate that this episode's topic is a bit more of a reach in terms of art history, but I will return to a more traditional art history topic for the next subject that I tackle. Pun intended. I have made the executive decision to cut this particular topic into two episodes because I'm worried that it's going to get too long, which is not only difficult to edit for me, but also I know that some people appreciate shorter episodes. A la, you know, for me short is like 45 minutes, versus uh an episode the length of a Marvel movie, which is maybe a little a little too much to handle at any given time. So this topic will be covered in both episode 25, which is where you are now, as well as episode 26, which should be up in the next two weeks. As some of you might know, and new listeners might guess based on my accent, I am from Green Bay, Wisconsin. I was born and raised in Green Bay, and I am now back in Green Bay for the foreseeable future after spending six years in St. Louis. Prodigal daughter has returned. Wisconsin is getting hit very hard right now by coronavirus, as is the United States, as is the world. But Wisconsin is uh one of the worst hotspots in the country at the moment, and Green Bay in particular is not doing well. We are actually doing very poorly, and I'm just really bummed about that. I thought, what a better time to sit down and write a little love letter in the form of a podcast episode to Green Bay, not only because the city needs it right now, but also to remind myself and others of the strength of this community. This is that love letter, it's a two-parter, in which I tell you stuff about a couple of things. The Green Bay Packers and their historic Lambeaufield Stadium, part one, nineteen nineteen to nineteen fifty nine. Blue forty two. On August 11th, 1919, things were afoot in the offices of the Green Bay Press Gazette in Green Bay, Wisconsin. On this day in 1919, a Green Bay native and Notre Dame football star named Earl was meeting a man named George, who served as the sports editor at the Press Gazette. Earl and George were not there to talk about the news, though their actions that day would later become quite newsworthy. They had instead met at George's office to discuss forming a local football team. Both George and Earl were former sports stars, Earl more than George, but both of them missed playing the game and thought that a local team would not only be smart, but also had the potential to be quite good. And they decided to give it a go. Earl recruited some of his friends, while George ran an ad in the paper soliciting anyone who was interested to come to a meeting the next week. Earl also decided to seek sponsorship for his new team from his employer, a company that had just moved to the city and who would do well to ingratiate itself and advertise to the local community. The company agreed that it would indeed be a good investment and a marketing opportunity, and so they threw in 500 bucks so that Earl and George could purchase pads, a dozen footballs, some wool jerseys, and even provided a vacant lot for them to practice on. There was just one itty bitty requirement. The jerseys had to bear the name of the company, the Indian Packing Company. The next week, Earl and George recruited about two dozen local guys to join the squad, with Earl serving as both player and coach, while George took up the role of general manager, public relations, marketing, you name it, he did it. And so Earl Lambeau, better known as Curly Lambeau, and George Calhoun started a football team in Green Bay, Wisconsin. One that would soon become known as you guessed it, the Green Bay Packers. It is difficult to overstate, if not impossible to overstate, just how important this moment was for the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Just as it's also difficult to state how critical the Green Bay Packers are to our city today, not only in terms of civic pride, but also in terms of profit. The city and the team are so intertwined it's impossible to untangle them, or for one to exist without the other. It is a marriage, for better or for worse. And let me tell you, we've seen both. At the heart of that relationship is the Packers Stadium, known as Lambeau Field. A stadium that, if needed, could comfortably sit 80% of the city's population, which is about 104,000 people. In the early days, however, the Packers didn't have a stadium. They barely even had a field. In this episode, I'm going to cover the founding of the team, its early relationship with the city, and the initial years of what would one day become known as Lambeau Field Stadium. I am not going to get super in-depth about the team and its players and games because, surprise, surprise, I am an art historian, I'm not a football scientist. Yes, I know that there's no such thing as a football scientist, but I'll be focusing more on the Packers as a cultural institution, which is to say about the team's development as part of Green Bay's history and tradition. To start, we need to go back to the beginning. As I mentioned earlier, the Green Bay Packers as a team was founded by Curly Lambeau and George Calhoun in 1919. Their initial efforts were sponsored by Curley's employer, the Indian Packing Company. Obviously, that's not a politically correct company name these days, but that is what it was called, the Indian Packing Company. The Indian Packing Company was a company that packaged meat products, and it was relatively new to town at the time. I think it had only been in Green Bay for like a couple of years at most, if even that. Fun fact, that is not really fun at all, but it is a fact, which is that Green Bay is still home to several large meat packing companies. In the 1920s, the Indian Packing Company was bought out by another meat packing company called Acme, A-C-M-E-ACME, which continued to sponsor the Packers for a bit. In old-timey photographs, you can see players rocking blue and gold uniforms that say Acme Packers. And yes, the original team colors were blue and gold, which is why the Packers' throwback jerseys, or the jerseys that the team wears to honor its roots, like I don't know, once a season or so, are blue and gold. For those of you unfamiliar with the world of American football, the Green Bay Packers are, of course, now known for their colors of green and gold. So much so that the Packers are sometimes simply called the Green and Gold. Like if someone says to me, Oh hey, the green and gold, I know that they're talking about the Packers. However, once upon a time they were called the Blue and Gold, the Acme Packers. In the early, early, early, early, early days of the Packers, the first couple of years that they were in operation, the team played their games at Hagemeister Park on Green Bay's east side. Now, as you know, as I've professed, I'm not a football scientist. I feel like I should make a shirt saying that. Not a football scientist. But I can confidently say that in those early days, football was not played the same way that it is today. In the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, if you were a player on a team, you played both offense and defense. You also played probably the whole game. There were very few substitutions, and that's just how it was. Players were also very rarely over the 240-pound mark. That is not the same thing as today. Some of these dudes are huge. Which is not to shame anyone. Okay, no shame. I bet you that they can all run a mile way faster than I can. But back in the early days, football was just different. Just like how tennis was different. You know, I'm sure I don't know, I don't even care about baseball, I can't comment on that, but things were different. The way that society thought about football was also different. Nowadays, professional football is the be-all end-all of football. Like you go, you play your little league games, then you go to high school, then you go to college, and if you're really lucky, you can make it in the big times. Unlike today, back then, football was extremely popular at the college level. And then after that, interest really petered out. If you were a college star, awesome, good for you, but then afterwards, there was really nowhere to go with that talent. That's not to say that there weren't professional teams. There were. There were a few that were part of the American Professional Football Association, later known as the National Football League or the NFL. But largely, once you graduated from college, football was played by local and regional teams that had to scrounge up money and who mostly played football to play football. They liked the game, they wanted to keep playing, so you start up a regional or a local team. And then most games were played within a certain region. So, like the Green Bay Packers would play the Menominee Whoever's and the Milwaukee, you know, who's he what's it's everyone would be within the same general couple hours by bus or train radius. And all of those teams had to work their butts off to scrounge up money. Money, money, money, money, money. Isn't that what it always comes down to? Money. Talk about green and gold, am I right? When Curly Lambeau and George Calhoun started the Packers, they did it for the love of football. That's one of Curly Lambeau's famous quotes that he said quite later in his life, but he said it nonetheless, which was that the Packers began for the love of football. These were guys who were usually fresh out of college, sometimes they even played in these leagues while they were in college, though that was, you know, usually against the rules, and they were guys who just wanted to play. They wanted to be competitive, they wanted to have a team, they wanted to be the best that they could be at a sport that they loved. But a team does need money. Love does not pay the bills, alright? And there were indeed bills to be paid. That was especially true when the Packers entered the APFA, the American Professional Football Association, which again would later become the NFL. No one at this level thought that the Packers would last. There was no way in hell that this Ragamatag group of local boys from a small town in Wisconsin would be able to compete at that level. And even more so than that was that membership to the APFA required them to pay a franchise fee. And there was just no way that the APFA saw that this small town team could generate enough revenue to pay that fee. In many ways, they were right. The team did struggle to earn enough money to pay for everything that needed paying off. And this financial hardship is a pretty common refrain that you'll hear throughout the Packers' history. And for good reason. It's hard to earn enough money to pay your dues when you are coming from a small town. But Curly Lambeau and George Calhoun are hustlers. Along with three other guys, they formed a group that would become known as the Hungry Five, who sought out ways to earn revenue for the team. Now they devised a bunch of strategies to earn money, but the biggest revenue earners by far were ticket sales and selling stocks in the team. The stocks part is especially important because to this day the Packers are the only professional American sports team, not just football, but all professional sports in the US, that continues to be publicly owned. This is not a Mark Cuban situation, this is not a Jerry Jones situation, this is not a Robert Kraft situation. The Packers are not owned by a billionaire, they are owned by the people. Although I am sure that billionaires are amongst their ranks. And that whole business, that whole strategy started in the early 1920s, when the team offered up 80 stocks for $100 a piece, which generated enough revenue to keep the team afloat for several years. However, the financials became so bad at points during the early decades of the team that there was constantly talk of moving the Packers to Milwaukee, which was the larger market in the state that had much better resources. The NFL was not a big help because it just didn't see the Packers being successful. Green Bay is such a small town, and teams from bigger towns didn't even want to travel to Green Bay because they didn't make as much money from those games. It's a pretty simple equation. If you're not making enough money in this small town and no one wants to come to your small town, then you probably want to move to a bigger town. But the fact of the matter is that early on, the Packers were pretty damn good. And they became better as the team started earning more money, because more money means that you can start to draft really talented players rather than depending solely on local talent. One of my favorite anecdotes that I read that I just have to include because I love it, is that when Curly Lambeau signed Johnny quote unquote blood McNally, he made an offer of $100 for the entire season. And Johnny was like, nah, bro, I'd prefer $110. So Lambeau came back with an offer of $110, but there was a catch. Johnny wouldn't be able to drink alcohol past Tuesday of each week. Now I'm assuming that that means that Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were all fair game, then the rest of the week, Johnny, who was a notorious party boy, would not be able to drink the alcohol. Johnny McNally, however, came back with a counter-offer of hey, I'll accept that $100 you offered initially if you let me drink on Wednesdays, too. Thus they had a deal. Johnny Blood McNally became a Packer player. And uh I didn't even know that he existed until about four weeks ago, and he's now one of my favorite Packer players in history. Because I feel you. I feel you, Johnny. As you may have guessed, as you may have anticipated, simply from the fact that Lambeau Field Stadium is indeed called Lambeau Field Stadium, Curly Lambeau was one of the most important figures, I would say the most important figure in Packers history. Period. Like there's no one else, I mean, there's like maybe one other person, but he's number one. Not only was he a great player and a great talent on the field, but he was also smart off the field as a coach, and later in more managerial positions. Curly Lambeau knew football in and out, and he knew what talent he needed to win. In 1929, 10 years after being first formed, the Packers won their first championship. Now at this point, there was no such thing as the playoffs, there was no such thing as the Super Bowl, you just won whatever league you were a part of. And in 1929, the Packers had a 12-0 and one season, meaning that they won 12 and tied once, but they didn't lose any games. And so they won the championship, and this small town of Green Bay, Wisconsin goes freaking bananas. When the team returned home to Green Bay, they were met by 20,000 fans. 20,000. It's 1929, Green Bay is not that big, and 20,000 people show up to welcome the team home and to celebrate the team. There were so many people gathered along the train tracks that the line extended for five miles. These players were getting the royal treatment for winning this championship. It's that event in 1929 that led then-Mayor John Diner to proclaim Green Bay may be the 241st city in size in the United States, but it is the first city in football. That celebration was repeated the next two years when the Packers won the league championship in both 1930 and 1931. The Packers would continue to be a winning team even after the NFL devised a playoff system, which is not the same thing as the Super Bowl, we'll get to that in part two. But the Packers did go on to win league championships again in 1936, 1939, and 1944, after which things kind of fell apart. One thing, however, was clear. Yes, you could get a whole season of football tickets for $12. Or the other option was that you could pay 50 cents to see a single game. That is the same amount of money that George Calhoun charged in 1919 to people sitting on the sidelines. It's now the 1930s, and the Packers are one of the best teams in the league. But even then, times were tough, and those times were made tougher during World War II, when one third of the men playing in the NFL were drafted. Of all of the teams in the NFL, the Packers was the team that lost the most men to the war. Once the war was over, however, people just wanted entertainment. They wanted to forget all of the bad stuff that had happened. It's around this time in the 1940s that Curly Lambeau, who again is super duper important to the team, it's around this time that he becomes kind of a jerk. Though to be fair, we all have our moments. He was a very proud man, he was very combative when anyone challenged his decisions, he also cheated on his wife a ton, and those are not Green Bay values, sir, as you well know. The fact that one of his mistresses was a California beauty queen, or aspiring beauty queen, I think, just really pissed everyone off. Green Bay is a small town, it still is today, and when you're a homeboy hero who's married to his high school sweetheart, you are a god-like figure in this town. And you go cheat on your wife? You start hanging out in California more than Green Bay. You start talking about potentially moving the Packers to San Francisco. Curly curly curly. Eventually this led to a very nasty breakup between Curly Lambeau and the Packers as a team slash corporation. And for the next 10 to 15 years, the Packers were just not good. They were pretty bad. But in the early 1960s, something miraculous happened that would change the Green Bay Packers forever. But hold your horses, because we are not quite to him yet. But before we get to that, let's talk about the other crucial component of Packers' history, the team's stadium. You'll notice that I haven't said anything, really, about where the team played for the majority of the early years. In 1919, as I said, the team played at Hagemeister Park in East Green Bay. It was all very DIY, shall we say, but eventually there were wooden benches that sat about 200 people. But for the most part, it was a very, very modest situation. It was not a stadium, it was a field with some bleachers. Eventually, the Packers couldn't play there anymore for whatever reason, and they had to build their own stadium, and I'm doing this in air quotes, stadium, right next to Green Bay East High School, that was known by the very clever and highly creative name of City Stadium. As of the late 1920s, City Stadium was state of the art. However, state of the art is a relative term, and in the 1920s, the bar was set very low. By state of the art, I mean that the city stadium had wooden bleachers on both sides of the field, not just one, both sides. It had a capacity of about five to six thousand people. So, you know, nothing to sneeze at. And perhaps best of all, it had really nice grass. Yes, grass. It had a beautiful grass field that was well maintained by an irrigation and drainage system and all of those kind of fun things. You know what the city stadium didn't have? Bathrooms. It also didn't have locker rooms. The Packers used the high school locker rooms, and the poor visiting team had to change in their hotels. But it's the 1920s. This is the height of small town luxury, my friends. As the years go on, however, City Stadium really takes a turn for the worst. It took them like 10 years from building the stadium for them to even install bathrooms. And I promise you that those are probably disgusting. By the 1950s, the City Stadium was gross and decrepit, and it wasn't in any state to host games. Which is kind of the purpose of a stadium. After a while, people just can't take it anymore. The situation's not good. There was some talk about renovating this stadium because, from a financial purpose, the Packers didn't really have a ton to go with. So people were like, let's just fix up the stadium so we can have our cheese curds and uh a bit of beer while we watch the football. And then you've got Schmucks in Milwaukee being like, Come to us, Packers, we will give you the newly built Milwaukee County Stadium if you move to Milwaukee. They were trying to poach the team, but that doesn't work because win, lose, or draw, the city of Green Bay has always had the team's back and our claws in their jerseys. Because as a city, we understand the value that the team brings to the community, both financially and culturally. That was just as true in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s as it is today. When people buy a ticket to a Green Bay Packers game, you better bet that they are also spending money at local eateries, bars, shopping centers, hotels. That's a huge economic boon for the city. Green Bay did not want to lose its team. So the city proposed a resolution. The city, Green Bay, would put up almost $1 million in mid-1950s money to build a brand new stadium with the understanding that eventually the Packers would pay the city back for half of the amount. So the city pays for all of it up front, and the Packers write the city a big IOU for 50% of those costs, which it then pays over the years. You get it. This measure was put up to a vote. You know, the people of Green Bay had to agree to it, and it passed with flying colors, with over 70% of Green Bay voters agreeing to the measure. Now, at this point, the Packers hadn't had a winning record in 10 years. The city was prepared to put up $1 million to build a stadium for a crappy team. Now, obviously, the record of the team doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't generating money, but I think it's pretty clear how beloved this team is to Green Bay, that 70% of voters would approve a measure to fund a stadium despite the team being really, really, really bad, with really no hope of them becoming any better anytime soon. But there was always that little hope, that little teeny tiny seed of hope, that the team would return to the height of its glory days of 1929, 1930, and 1931 when it won all of those championships. But for right now, they kinda suck. Not even kind of, like they're just bad. But they're gonna get a brand new Spankin' Stadium. This stadium was given a super creative name. Are you ready? It was initially called New City Stadium. The design of the new City Stadium was put forth by a construction firm called Somerville Incorporated. Specifically, the work of the company's owner and architect, John E. Somerville, and another architect named Richard Gustofsen, who went by the name of Gus, like my dog. Gus Gustafsson did what any good architect or professional would do, and he looked at examples of these kinds of projects that he already knew to gain inspiration for how to go about designing this site. One of his main points of reference was Michigan Stadium at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, where Gustafsen had gone to school. Taking a note out of the book of Michigan Stadium, Gustafsson designed New City Stadium with one primary focus in mind, amongst many others, but this was particularly important. Sightlines. In other words, Gustafsson wanted to ensure that any spectator sitting in a seat could see the game as clearly as possible. Obviously, that's like what you want to do when you go to a football game. You want to see it. Unless you're me, and then you're more concerned with the hot pretzel and cheese that your mom bought you at your first Packer game at the age of 27. I was very excited about my hot pretzel. But obviously, sight lines are also very important during a game. What was also important and very challenging for the Somerville firm was to build a stadium that came in at or under budget. The construction team had to work very, very hard to manage all aspects of the building project so that the resulting stadium would be strategic not just from a functional perspective, but also a financial one. As I keep saying and will continue to keep saying, Green Bay is a small city. The citizens did come together to fund this project, but it's still Green Bay. The budget just isn't there for bells and whistles at this point. The project had to be cost conscious. The whole thing did go over by a couple hundred thousand dollars. The bid was for $960,000, but the ultimate cost was, um, I've seen estimates between 1.2 and $1.5 million. But even in the 1950s, $1 million, $1.5 million, whatever, that didn't go very far, and certainly not for a stadium of this caliber. The construction team had to get creative. Keeping all of that in mind, one of the most important things about building New City Stadium was finding the right site. A site that was both convenient and, again, strategic. The Packers found the perfect spot. In the middle of freaking nowhere, just off of Highway 41, which to this day is still the most prominent highway in the city. It runs through the entire state, all the way down to, I think, Florida. So it's a serious, serious highway. Having Highway 41 nearby meant that people from around the state, whether they were from Green Bay or not, could easily travel to see a game. Someone from Milwaukee, for example, could make it up to Green Bay in a cool hour and 45 minutes or so, and barely have to take any exits in order to get to the stadium. And of course, some people came from further away than even that. But Milwaukee fans in particular were really important to the Green Bay Packers. Not only did the team regularly play games in Milwaukee so that those fans could see them, you know, play, but even to this day, certain home games are designated as Milwaukee ticket holder games. And Highway 41 makes it really easy for them to get to the stadium. The Packers purchased a 48-acre lot of farmland from Victor and Florence Vanievenhoven. This plot of land was the ideal place to build because it had a natural slope to it, and the stadium was set to take the form of a bowl. These days, when you talk about football bowls, the Rose Bowl, the Pearl Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, it's usually in reference to a game. But the name of those games comes from the stadiums in which they are played. The Rose Bowl, for example, is played at the Rose Bowl. Bowl being not only a very hard word to say into a microphone, but also an architectural shape that most stadiums take. Now, for those of you who know classical terminology, the fancy word for this is called an amphitheater. For those of you normal people who don't spend your days studying classical archaeology and, you know, probably have well-paying jobs and secure medical insurance, for which I envy you, think of the Coliseum in Rome. That's an amphitheater. It's not technically a bowl, I don't think, but it's really close. That's actually a good comparison because New City Stadium was Green Bay's Coliseum. Instead of bread and circuses, however, you've got hot pretzels and football. The natural slope meant that there was no need for extensive excavation at the site. Nature had already done most of that work. John Somerville, the owner of the Somerville firm that built New City Stadium, would later say that without having found this particular site, the stadium simply wouldn't have been possible to build within the price range that was approved. There was absolutely no way that they would be able to pay for the amount of excavation needed if that slope hadn't been pre-existing. The basic structure of the bowl was formed by doing some excavation and using that displaced soil to create the initial shape of the bowl's curvature in the form of compacted earth. So the construction workers placed and formed any displaced earth into the desired shape that they wanted and the desired slope that they wanted, and then they poured concrete over it, utilizing that compacted earth as the primary structural component for supporting the concrete. This method of building, using the earth and poured concrete, was utilized for the first 21 rows of seating, with row 21 being at ground level. So rows 1 to 21 descend from ground level towards the field. They are supported by the earth, the natural geography of the land, and poured concrete. The remaining 39 rows were then built utilizing a man-made support structure with your usual, you know, iron and rebar and all of that stuff. That went from the ground level up. This approach to the building process of only having 39 of 60 rows above ground level was absolutely necessary for keeping the construction not only on price point or you know near, you know, near price point, near budget, but also for sticking to the time schedule, the schedule, if you will, because the construction team could start building the structure of rows 22 to 60 while another part of the construction team was pouring the concrete for rows 1 to 21. To visualize that, I don't know if this will work, but bear with me. Think of someone digging a hole in the soil and they create a nice little bowl for themselves. That person can pack the sides of that hole or build up the earth or do whatever they're doing below ground level while someone else builds up a structure around the hole that continues the curvature made by the person digging. In other words, the upper portion, that is, the man-made structure, does not depend on, or at least does not fully depend on, the support of the lower portion of rows 1 to 21. Both of them are kind of self-sufficient portions that can be built at the same time. There's also an additional benefit to this structure, in that only 39 rows extended above ground level. So it's not like the structure was ginormous. The stadium still looks completely crazy compared to the surrounding area, don't get me wrong. Nowadays it's a bit less so given some of the developments that have happened in the area, but back in the 1950s, if all 61 rows were above ground level, this thing would have looked even more like an alien spaceship than it already did. So in addition to considerations of time and money, the construction team also considered how this stadium would fit in with the surrounding area and the city more broadly. That being said, the design of the bowl also made room for the possibility and likelihood of later expansions. They built the stadium with growth in mind, which, as we will see, was a very good strategy. In the 1950s, this stadium was incredible. It was the first ever stadium built specifically for an NFL team. All of the other football teams shared their stadiums with other professional teams, usually of the baseball variety. And the new city stadium featured my favorite thing in the whole world, other than hot pretzels, which is it had plentiful parking. That's the other really great thing about building in the middle of freaking nowhere. You can see pictures of it, it's just barren farmland. Because once construction is done, everything around this stadium can just become parking. I'm sorry to say that today there is still ample parking at the stadium, but on game days it's not nearly enough. Fun fact: people who live around the stadium today make bank. They make so much money on letting people park in their yards. There's like a nutso amount of money in that particular arena of business. Your yard is probably effed afterwards, but you're making hundreds of dollars per game. Anyway, the new city stadium opened in September of 1957, just in time for the season's opening game in which the Green Bay Packers played the Chicago Bears. Vice President Richard Nixon attended the game and said some very nice things about Green Bay during a little ceremony, which, when I read them, primarily sounded like backhanded compliments. This one's pretty good. Quote, it's as good as anything I've seen in California. Gee, thanks, mister. I was surprised when I saw photographs of New City Stadium right after it was finished, you know, right after it was born from the earthen womb in 1957. And the reason I was surprised was because the bowl really does look like an amphitheater. It's got the field and then the stands that come up from the field, and there's really not a lot happening around those components in terms of a structure. I say this because most people who are familiar with the stadium, especially those who remember it from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, will know that the stadium was characterized by its green walls really isn't the right word, but it was this massive green structure that surrounded the stands and the field. But that didn't come until the 1960s, when the stadium did undergo a series of expansions. And there is a reason for those expansions. Remember, in the 1950s, the Packers were not good. They had not had a winning record since the 1940s. They stunk. In the first season that the Packers were in this new state-of-the-art new city stadium, their record was 3 and 9. They won three games, they lost nine games, which, uh, not a good look after your city just put up 1.2 to 1.5 million dollars to build you this new stadium. But even so, the demand for tickets and seating was sky high, with things really picking up around 1959. It was in 1959 that the Green Bay Packers got a new head coach, one who would take this team out of its decades-long funk to once again become not just one of the best teams in the league, but one of the greatest teams in football history. And that man's name was Vince Lombardi. That is where I'm going to stop part one of the Green Bay Packers in Lambeau Field Stadium. We're not even we're not even at Lambeau Field Stadium yet, technically. Though, spoiler alert, you've already been introduced to it. Lambeaufield Stadium and New City Stadium are the same thing. I used a variety of sources to write today's episode, including William Pavletic's book, Green Bay Packers: Trials, Triumphs, and Traditions, in addition to the series on the Packers by Larry Names, and the book Green Bay, A City and Its Team by James Hurley and Thomas Murphy. I also pulled information from various websites, digital newspaper archives, and the Packers website, and absolutely everything that I could remember from my tour last year of the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. As always, citations for my source material and pertinent images will be at stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. Part two of the Green Bay Packers and Lambeaufield Stadium will be up in the next two weeks or so, maybe even the next week. It's written, I just have to record and edit it, which takes a considerable amount of time. But I do hope that you will check back in soon to listen to the rest of the story. It's kind of where like where it gets good. Thank you to everyone who has left a review recently. I really, really appreciate it. And if you haven't left a review or rating yet, I would be very grateful if you took the time to do so. I make this podcast in my closet. I am a one-woman team, which is why my episodes don't come out very often. But seeing those reviews and seeing those ratings really gets me hyped. I get hyped. You can't see me right now, but I'm dancing in my closet. So if you could leave one of those, I would so appreciate it. I check them every once in a while, and they always bring a smile to my face. As for Gus Corner this episode, Gus is doing great. He is slated to get some minor surgery next week. So if you keep him in your thoughts, I would appreciate it. Uh also keep me, my dad, and the vet in your thoughts because I have no idea how we're going to get Gus in the building. He hates that place. But he'll be just fine, I'm sure. Still scary, he'll be fine. He is currently laying on my bed, snoring away, happy as could be, and I am happy that he's happy. That is all for this episode today. Please check back in a week or two for part two. I hope that you are all staying well, happy, and healthy in these uncertain times. And for those of you who are US citizens over the age of 18, I sincerely hope that you have already voted or will vote in the upcoming election. Please, dear God, vote. The usual thanks go to hooksounds.com and freemusicarchive.org for the royalty free music used in the podcast. The first song that you hear is a version of Box Brandenburg Concerto number four by Kevin McLeod, and the drawn to your tune is one called Success Dreams. Uh yeah, GoPaco, Green and Gold, Titletown USA, all that jazz. I'll catch you on the flip side. Oh, and uh don't forget to take the time to look at something beautiful today. A la prossima. Bye.