Distant Replay

Twenty-nine of us showed up, 29 members of the 1966 Green Bay Packers, the team that Vince Lombardi took to Los Angeles in January 1967 to beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the first Super Bowl. We went back to Green Bay a few months ago for our first full-scale reunion in almost 18 years. The group included six members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and just as many legitimate millionaires, none of whom had made his money, or even a good share of it, on the football field. Willie Davis was there, a Hall of Fame defensive end, my former roommate and now a member of the board of directors of MGM, one of my favorite people in the world. So was Jimmy Taylor, a Hall of Fame running back, also once my roommate, now a successful Louisiana businessman and one of my least favorite people. Fuzzy Thurston, my fellow offensive guard, who had just won a battle with cancer, showed up, and so did Forrest Gregg, another Hall of Famer, now struggling through his first season as head coach of our old team. Also on hand was the man he had replaced, our Hall of Fame quarterback, Bart Starr, who several months earlier had been fired as head coach of the Packers. Ray Nitschke, a Hall of Fame linebacker, showed up, and so did Herb Adderley and Willie Wood, a couple of great defensive backs. When we were introduced at the Green Bay--San Diego game, Herb, another Hall of Famer, was in such good shape that he raced halfway to the center of the field, spun around and backpedaled at full speed the rest of the way. Willie Wood, on the other hand, had gained so much weight that one of the guys yelled to him, "Hey, come over here, Willie, so we can take a group picture of you!"

We were together for three days in October, all these men I had once written about in a book called Instant Replay, and I've never been hugged and kissed so much by men, and I wanted to write about them again. I saw guys I hadn't seen for 15 years and we picked up conversations as if they had been suspended only yesterday. Some of us had passed our 50th birthdays and some were just approaching 50. Some of us had brought our first wives along and carried pictures of our grandchildren, and some had brought new wives young enough to be their daughters. While the men played golf one day, the women played their own version of Trivial Pursuit; one of the questions they asked was, How old were you when your husband played in the first Super Bowl? and Jimmy Taylor's wife answered, "Five."

For this weekend, at least, we were all young again.

•

More than a quarter of a century has passed since I arrived in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a raw and totally unsophisticated small-town kid from Idaho, a rookie in the National Football League. A quarter of a century. That's hard for me to believe. Aren't I still a flat-bellied, whippy-wristed college kid? No, I'm not. I still feel the same inside; but more and more, this shell they've given me is showing signs of wear. Gray at the sideburns and even a little higher, maybe. Too much stomach where part of my chest must have slipped. Wrinkles around my eyes. Aches and pains I never felt before. Amazing process, this living and dying. What the hell is going on?

I used to think I would live forever, which is funny, considering how many times I came close to dying. As a kid, I shot myself, accidentally, with a ten-gauge shotgun and severed the nerves in my right arm, which left me with a fist that I could never quite clench. Then, chasing a calf, I ran full speed into a splintered plank and the jagged end ripped into my groin; that one sent me to the hospital for a few operations then and several more 12 years later, when doctors, suspecting I was dying of cancer, cut me open and found four forgotten slivers of wood lodged in my intestines, gradually causing tumors and internal bleeding. I broke my neck and my leg and just about all my ribs playing football; I suffered brain concussions and a detached retina; and by the time I was 30, I had undergone a couple of dozen operations, most of them major. And yet I was still positive I couldn't die. Maybe because I had gone through so many near-death experiences, death didn't seem like a threat. It wasn't something to worry about. But lately I've been worrying, maybe because I've got more to lose now.

I'm coming up fast on 50, just a year away. I've been married twice, I've got six kids, and one of them has been through a divorce and another spent time in jail after an automobile accident and a third has pushed himself bravely, and successfully, to overcome a speech impediment. I've found out how it feels to make $1,000,000 in a single business deal and I've found out how it feels to lose $1,000,000 in a single business deal and, believe me, Lombardi was right about winning. It is the only thing--as long as you do it, as he said, fairly, squarely and decently, within the rules, the written and the unwritten ones. Lombardi's been dead now for more than ten years. That's scary, too. I knew he would live forever.

I think a lot about death these days, which is funny, because I've never been healthier. I've had only one serious illness in the past ten years, only one near-death experience. I haven't broken a bone, not even a finger, since I stopped playing football 16 years ago. My weight's not bad, about 240, 20 pounds less than when I was playing, and most of the time I feel awfully good. And yet now, more than ever, I sense that I'm mortal.

A little more than a year ago, I lost my father to cancer, and I don't think I'll ever get over his death. In some ways, I think it was more difficult for the family than it was for Dad. He was a very religious man and he was ready to go. He had his faith and he was locked in the arms of the Lord. Sometimes I wish I had that kind of faith. But I don't. I just have questions.

Which is why, I suppose, I embarked on a new project, one I had started before our reunion in Green Bay. I decided to go see some of my old teammates, as many of them as I could, to update what I had done in Instant Replay--to take a new look at a group of men linked yet separated, aging, perhaps maturing, maybe sadder, maybe wiser, maybe not. I want to find out what they're wondering about, how they're reacting to life and age and death--something to measure my own thoughts and hopes and fears against, just as I used Instant Replay for therapy, for self-analysis, to explain to myself why I played professional football, what I put into the game and what I got out of it. Football was easy. Now I get so tangled up trying to figure out life--why I am playing it, how I am playing it--and I wonder if anybody else has answers.

•

I couldn't have gone looking for this kind of help a few years ago. The first ten or 12 years I was out of football, I wouldn't listen to anybody, I was just so full of how bright I was, how wonderful. It's nice to have self-confidence, but I was ridiculous.

I'll tell you how cocky I was. I had dinner in Los Angeles one night with Rod McKuen, the poet, who was a friend of mine, and Rod said, "Hey, Sinatra's recording some of my songs tonight over at this studio. You want to go?"

I said, "Hell, yes." Who wouldn't want to? We walked into the studio as Sinatra was recording a song called Two Can Dream a Dream Together. He finished the song and came over and said hello to Rod, and Rod introduced me, and I said, "Hi, Frank, I've been a fan of yours for a long time but, boy, you were beating the hell out of that song."

He said, "What?"

And I said, "You're beating the hell out of that song. That's a beautiful thought--two can dream a dream together--but you're just beating on it. It ought to be a little softer."

Sinatra looked at me like I had an asshole right in the middle of my forehead. He turned to McKuen and never said another word to me. I ceased to exist. Would you believe it took a few years before I realized that I'd better stop listening to the wonderful sound of my own voice? Now I want to listen to my old teammates, to other voices, loud or soft, either way, whatever they want to say.

I've seen many of them, on and off, over the years, and it's an amazing thing: As soon as I see one--boom!--the old feelings of warmth and affection come right back. It doesn't matter if I haven't seen the guy in six months or ten years, there's no sense of having been separated. The emotional bond is still there. A few years ago, I was in Milwaukee for a golf outing, a Lombardi memorial, and I was sitting in a bar and looked across the room and thought, Hey, that looks like Herb Adderley. Then I said to myself, Nah, can't be, and I turned to talk to somebody. I felt a hand on my shoulder and spun around, and he said, "J.K.," and it was Herbie, and we gave each other a big hug. "It's still there, isn't it?" he said. It was--and it always is. It's there whenever I bump into any of the guys. Except one. It's a warm feeling with everybody else.

I see Willie Davis about as often as I see anybody from the team. When I tell people about his three Schlitz distributorships in Los Angeles and his Inglenook distributorship and the five radio stations(continued on page 116)Distant Replay(continued from page 82) he owns and his position on the board of directors of Fireman's Fund and Consolidated Foods as well as MGM, I'm proud--proud because he's my friend, proud because he's a football player who has demonstrated that he has the mental capacity to compete and win in the business world. And I'm proud that I know a guy who came out of Grambling College with a degree in physical education and, realizing it had left him ill prepared for the world, had the dedication and discipline, while he was playing so brilliantly in the National Football League, to spend six years going to the University of Chicago to earn an M.B.A.

Willie was my roommate my final season. I think we were maybe the second set of black-and-white roommates in the N.F.L., after Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo, and we went through a lot together. We worried about each other then, and we still do. I worry about Willie's weight. Someone tricked him into getting on a scale during the reunion, and he was up over 280. I tell him that extra weight puts extra strain on the heart, but he just laughs at my worrying, and I love to hear Willie laugh. He's a very important person now, very influential in business and politics, but he hasn't changed any. He's still Dr. Feelgood, still remembers his roots and his friends.

I see Fuzzy occasionally, Fuzzy Thurston, my old running mate at guard, who used to tell people, "There are two reasons the Green Bay Packers win: Jerry Kramer is one of them and you're looking at the other." Fuzzy has had his ups and downs since we stopped playing ball. The restaurant business he was in with Max McGee, another ex-Packer, expanded rapidly during the early Sixties and early Seventies. In 1974, they did more than $14,000,000 worth of business at 11 restaurants. But the recession in the mid-Seventies hit them hard, and the partnership fell apart. Fuzz ended up with three restaurants, Max with one. Max took his and, with some strong financial backing, turned it into a franchise operation, a chain of Mexican restaurants called ChiChi's that made him a millionaire many times over. Fuzz's restaurants kept sliding and, eventually, he went into bankruptcy. He's got another restaurant now, Shenanigans, in Green Bay, and he and his wife, Sue, are working hard to make it go.

Of course, Fuzzy's had to battle something harder than bankruptcy. A couple of years ago, he underwent surgery for cancer, had his larynx removed. Right after the operation, I called to see how he was doing, and he couldn't talk at all, but he handed Sue a note that said, "Tell Jerry I'm doing fantastic." Then Fuzzy held up his hand to tell Sue to wait a minute, he was going to write another note. "And that's bullshit," he wrote.

I played golf with him a few months later, and he held his finger against his throat, so his words would be audible. "You've got to give me three strokes a side--for cancer," he said. He wanted strokes, but he's a tough man and he didn't want sympathy. So many teams had let him go before he ended up in Green Bay, before he proved he could play. He stretched himself to the limits of his ability, the way so many of us did for Lombardi. Fuzzy won't let up against the cancer, either. There's no way he'll quit on himself. He was the main force behind the reunion in October, and when we were introduced at the game, he sprinted onto the field. He looked like he was ready to play, ready to pull out and lead the blocking again.

Ray Nitschke looked like he was ready to play, too. Ray and I have always had a strange relationship. I started it on a sour note in camp at the College All-Star Game in 1958 when, half joking, I made some smartass remark about his brain power, something about a mental giant. Ray didn't think it was funny, and it wasn't. He came out of his chair and challenged me in a loud, menacing voice. I was wrong and I backed down, but Ray never forgot. He always looked at me like I was a dog that had bitten him once.

We had a few other confrontations in our early years at Green Bay. The last one I remember well. We were out partying, drinking more than we should have, and Ray said some things he shouldn't have said. One thing led to another, and he finally asked if I wanted to step outside. I said, "Hell, yes," and started for the door. I looked over my shoulder and Ray was right behind me. I said to myself, Oh, self, you are in trouble! I figured we were about to get serious and I had better get my bluff in first.

I turned and grabbed Ray around the throat and said I was ready to tear his head off. I backed him up against a brick wall and said I was crazy enough to fight or drink, whichever way he wanted it. He looked at me and said, "No, man, you're my teammate. I don't want to fight you," and back inside we went.

It was a truce, but an uneasy one. We were never that close to it again, but every time I blocked him in practice for the next few years, I knew that he'd be waiting for me--Ray and that damned forearm of his. He had one hell of a forearm, and he was the best linebacker I ever saw in the middle. Butkus was up there, and so was Joe Schmidt, but I think Ray was the best.

A couple of years back, we had a chance to spend some time together in Reno at an N.F.L. alumni convention. Ray and I played golf together two or three days in a row, and I guess it was the most relaxed we'd ever been with each other, a really good feeling. As we were saying our goodbyes, he said, "Thanks. Thanks for everything."

I said, "What are you talking about?"

He looked at me and said, "You know what I'm talking about."

•

Sad to say, there are two guys from the team whom I won't be seeing.

Henry Jordan lived across the street from me on Careful Drive in Green Bay. His wife, Olive, and my first wife, Barbara, were close friends, and so were our children. We did family things together. Henry was a good old boy, a great family man, a great defensive tackle. After his football career ended, he became the director of the Summerfest, a fair they hold each year in Milwaukee. It was an important job and Henry was doing it well, and then one day seven years ago, jogging in a health club after playing racquetball, Henry just fell over and died from a heart attack. He was 42 years old.

Then there's Urban Henry. You probably don't remember Urban. He was with us for only a year in the early Sixties, and he wasn't a great football player, but he made a great impression on me. He came to us from the Los Angeles Rams with a reputation as a head-hunter. He was the kamikaze man on the kickoff team, a crazy man, completely without fear.

The first time Urban practiced with the Packers, or one of the first times, Lombardi put us up against each other, one on one, me and him. Urban was about 6'5", maybe 275 pounds--two inches taller and 15 pounds heavier than me. He came roaring into this blocking drill. I mean, he just brought his hat and his lunch and everything with him, and I met him and met him and met him, some godawful collisions. Neither one of us was going to back up, and he wasn't a fancy footwork man, just powerful. Later, I saw him do semisquats with so much weight on his shoulders that the bar would droop at the ends. I don't know how much he was lifting, but it must have been 500 or 600 pounds. He was a hulk, and it was all-out war between us that day. We went bang, bang, bang, seemed like all day long. One of the sportswriters watched and did an article afterward that said the earth shook and the trees wiggled--that kind of stuff. And there were some hellacious collisions.(continued on page 152)Distant Replay(continued from page 116)Urban decided then and there that I had a little courage or a little insanity, maybe both. And I certainly knew that he wasn't bashful about physical contact. So right away, we had a fundamental basis for a relationship, some understanding and appreciation of each other, and that relationship just grew and grew.

Urban was raised in Morgan City, Louisiana, bayou country, and he was part Cajun, or all Cajun--a coon-ass, he called himself. He and I started off hunting and fishing and drinking beer together, and our relationship developed into a long and deep friendship. It didn't have anything to do with families. Urban was a bachelor, never married, a man's kind of man, not a woman's. We were business partners, too, Urban and I and Jimmy Taylor, who was my roommate for five years in Green Bay. Jimmy's in the Hall of Fame, and he's also in my shithouse. He's the one former teammate I don't feel any warmth for, not even a little bit. It all goes back to the business we had in Louisiana, a commercial-diving company.

One time, after a hurricane, we got a contract to blow up a sunken barge that was blocking the channel, a danger to navigation. Urban knew the business better than Jimmy and I did, so I asked him, "Who the hell are we going to get to blow it up?"

He said, "I'm going to blow it up."

I said, "You don't know anything about explosives."

He said, "Yeah, man, I got a book. You use plastic explosives; it's all in the book. No problem." And he did it. He'd already taught himself how to dive, and he went down and blew up the barge. Urban was like that.

He was fearless, and he was bright, a quick learner, and he was different. Not long after he stopped playing football, he moved to the swamp, into an old slave's shack right on the edge of the swamp, paid something like $400 a year in rent. He loved the swamp. He lived there with Sally and George and Scrap Iron and a couple of other dogs. My wife, Wink, and I used to go down and visit him and stay in the shack and just love every minute of it. One time, the three of us went to a bar nearby, and while I was in the phone booth trying to make a call, Urban tipped it over and flattened the folding doors against the floor so I couldn't get out. He kept me there for half an hour, laughing his head off.

We did a lot of crazy things together. One night, about midnight, we decided we'd go into the swamp and go frog hunting. We each carried a gig, a little spear, and I had a light strapped to my head. We were half drunk and half crazy, two large men and one beer cooler in an old metal motorboat, slipping through the swamp. It was darker than hell, and the tide was so high that the water hit the banks where the frogs usually sat and chased them back into the bushes. There was no way we could catch them or even see them. We went a couple of hours without seeing a frog.

Then Urban turned to me and said, "Hold it, there's a gator. C'mon, we'll catch him." I could see two bright-red eyes about the size of dimes, with maybe four inches between them. We shut our motor off and drifted toward the gator, and as we got close, it backed down into the water, leaving just a piece of its head exposed.

I said, "That's not a gator, that's a snake or a turtle or something."

Just then, Urban reached down and hauled whatever it was into the boat. It must have been three or four feet long, and it spun around and began chewing on Urban's wrist, so he just sort of rolled out of the boat and threw it at me. The damn thing landed on my thigh, latched onto my leg, tore my pants and drew blood, and I still wasn't sure what it was. I tried to back up and get away from it, and I fell over the beer cooler. Urban was in the water, hanging onto the boat, laughing like crazy. I finally got my light aimed and saw that it was just a little gator, and Urban dragged it out of the boat. Then he decided he wanted to catch some more. Not to keep them, just to catch them--for the fun of it.

The next gator we spotted had eyes the size of quarters, about six inches apart. We turned off the motor again, and as we drifted beside it, Urban did a dead fall into the water, grabbed the gator--about a six-footer--and began thrashing around till he had it pinned, under control. Then he just let it go.

He caught two or three more that way before we saw a pair of eyes the size of silver dollars, maybe ten or 12 inches apart. "Let's head toward him," Urban said, and I said, "No, you silly son of a bitch," but he got himself all set to jump. Then, about 50 feet away from this giant gator, a real granddaddy, Urban fell into the water, pretending he was trying to catch it. As he climbed back into the boat, he snapped his fingers and said, "Doggone, I missed him."

Urban was unbelievably talented. He supported himself for a while by painting scenes of the swamp, beautiful paintings, and selling them for as much as $2000. Then, one day, he saw some porcelain birds that were selling for $7000 or $8000 apiece and he said, "Hell, I can make a porcelain bird better than that."

He went and got a book and studied and built himself a kiln and started the long, slow process of making birds from porcelain. He'd go out into the swamp and catch a bird and take it home and freeze it, then study it, not just for minutes or hours but for days at a time, making certain he knew every detail. He had one book on birds' feet and another real thick one on wing structure--that's how important detail was to him. When he made his first porcelain bird and painted it and built a lovely scene around it, it sold for $2000. His plan was to do only four or five more, with a limited number of reproductions. But one evening, as he was cooking dinner, he had a heart attack and fell over, dead.

I was stunned. Urban was so full of life. He was still in his 40s. It was hard to accept the fact that he was gone. I still get the urge every now and then to go to the swamp and drink and hunt and fish with him: Hey, I think I'll go down the swamp and spend a few days with Urban. And when I realize that I can't, I get pissed off all over again.

•

I think about Urban and I think about Henry Jordan. They were both about my size and my shape, and we all came from similar backgrounds, and I wonder why I'm alive and they're not. And I wonder how much time I've got left and what I'm going to do with it. I've had seven years already that Henry didn't have. I've had the last of my three younger children since he died. I've watched these children spring up. I've had so much pleasure that he didn't have. What have I done with those extra years? What have I done with my time?

I ask that question and I remember reading a book called Life After Life, about people who were clinically dead and then came back to life. One of the people told about floating up and encountering a being of light that asked somehow, nonverbally, "What have you done with your life [that you want] to show me?" I remember putting the book down and asking myself the same question, then answering it by listing my possessions--my ranch in Idaho, my cars, my boat--then suddenly stopping and saying to myself, "Oh, isn't that wonderful? The greatest thing you've done on this earth is collect a pisspot full of toys. Isn't that neat?"

Then I started thinking about what I really wanted to do with my life. I wanted to contribute something positive, and I tried to think of how I could do something of lasting value, something that meant a damn. I began looking at my children and realizing that the best thing I could do on this planet would be to give them proper values, a set of guidelines that would help them survive in this world, and flourish. I realized that I hadn't done for them what my father had done for me.

I have no complaints about the values my father left me. I have faults, but I don't blame him. He was an extreme disciplinarian, very quick with the strap, and I think that both helped and hurt me when I was young, made me strong and brave and sometimes mean. I'm not so mean now; and I'm not so brave. But my father's values have stayed with me. He had a store that sold television sets, and I once stole 50 cents from the till. I jacked the handle back and forth about 25 times before I made up my mind to take the money. What the hell? I figured. If he finds out, he'll just beat me, and he's doing that pretty regularly, anyway. He came home that night and confronted me: He was missing 50 cents. I was going to lie to him, but before I could, he just hung his head and said to me, "If I can't trust you, son, who can I trust?" And that cut a whole lot deeper than any beating.

Dad lived by a set of rules, and I'll never forget that. He's gone now, but his values, his principles are still alive. If I can't trust you, who can I trust?

That's the question that always comes to mind when I think about Jimmy Taylor. I treated him like a brother when we roomed together. I took care of him, stood up for him, shielded him, made excuses for him. He was raised on the streets, had to scramble for every nickel and every dime, never had a father to give him the kind of guidance my father gave me. I knew that accounted for a lot of the way Jimmy acted, the chip on his shoulder, the cocky attitude, the need to prove himself over and over. But I cared about him. That's why we went into business together.

Eventually, we merged our diving business into a big outfit called Petrolane, and we each got a lot of stock. Of course, there were expenses involved, and after the merger, Jimmy ended up owing Urban $1700. He owed Urban the money for three, maybe four years and just refused to pay. He always had an excuse, but there was no good reason for not paying. It was just Jimmy squeezing every nickel and every dime.

One night we all got together at Urban's shack in the swamp to discuss the company's finances--and Jimmy's debt. Jimmy took a wad of money out of his pocket and, with a big show, peeled off 17 $100 bills. Like he was giving Urban a gift or something, like a real big shot. Urban reached over and slapped him in the face. Jimmy just sat there with his head bowed and Urban slapped him again. Jimmy got up and Urban slapped him again. Jimmy walked to the door and Urban slapped him on the back of the head. Jimmy went out to his car and Urban reached in through the open window and slapped him again. Not once did Jimmy act like a man. He never faced up to Urban, never raised a hand to defend himself. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Here was this romping, stomping fullback, who had shown such fire on the football field, acting like a whipped dog with his tail between his legs.

I later heard that he sold his Petrolane stock for close to $1,000,000.

I used to ask about it, but I haven't really talked to him now for three or four years. He's come up to me a few times at golf tournaments, trying to start a conversation or shake hands, but he's always come up empty. I'm not sure I'll ever talk to him again. He was sure one hell of a running back but, to Urban and me, such a disappointment as a human being. I just can't get over that. If I can't trust you, who can I trust?

•

I still get all riled up just talking about Jimmy Taylor. But, aside from him, I've got nothing but good memories of football. It was a hell of a trip. I loved the game, loved the guys, loved Lombardi. I wouldn't change a minute of it--not the highs, not the lows, not even the injuries and the pain.

I haven't forgotten the injuries. I've got a couple of jammed vertebrae that still give me some shoulder and neck pain every now and then. Offensive linemen get reminders from their necks; we used our heads to block at Green Bay.

Come to think of it, maybe there is one thing I would change: By today's standards, the salaries we got at Green Bay were pitiful. Not long ago, at an N.F.L. alumni outing, I was talking with Ray Nitschke and John David Crow. I had always been curious about Ray's salary, since we were rookies together and teammates for so long, but we were forbidden to discuss our salaries at Green Bay and, believe it or not, we didn't. Anyway, I looked at Ray and said, "Hey, Nitsch, what kind of a bonus did you get to sign with the Packers?"

He looked up, kind of grinned and said, "I got $500, man."

I said, "You s.o.b., you doubled me. I only got $250! Two fifty for signing and $7750 for the season."

Nitschke said, "You got $8000. I only got $7700."

John David said, "You two are both pikers. I got $1000 as a bonus and $14,000 for the season." Of course, he won the Heisman Trophy and was the number-one draft choice that year. And now I see that Randy White recently signed a contract with Dallas for $800,000 a year--100 times what I made! That's hard to comprehend. But I guess what's really hard to comprehend is the power of television.

I don't watch much football on TV these days, and my three younger kids don't know much about my football days. They've seen a few things on television mentioning the old Packers, so they know I played, but that's about all. They never saw me in action, though, and we've never gone to a game. I've taken them with me on trips to Green Bay, to visit the older children, but I've never taken them to the Packer Hall of Fame, never bothered to show them I'm in it. I was elected in 1975, the same time as Lombardi and Willie D. and Taylor and Fuzzy and McGee and Paul Hornung and Henry Jordan. Not a bad crop that year.

But I'm not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the one in Canton, Ohio, and I've got to admit, I'm pissed about that. Not as hot as I was when I first became eligible and wasn't elected, but still resentful, a little bitter. Back around 1970, when the National Football League put out a book commemorating its first half-century, I was named the outstanding guard of the first 50 years. So how the hell could I not be elected to the Hall of Fame? The only thing worse is that Hornung hasn't been elected, and he deserves it ahead of me. I guess they feel they already have too many Packers. Still, I think Hornung should be there, then Willie Wood, then me. Hell, I think the whole team should be there.

As much as I care about my former teammates, though, and as good as I feel about them, I don't usually dwell on the past. In my work--I'm in the oil and gas business, concentrating on exploration--I never bring up football. Half the people I deal with probably don't give a damn about it, and the other half want to spend so much time talking about the Packers that it gets in the way of accomplishing anything.

I'm still working as hard as I did in Green Bay, when Lombardi would chew on me. I'm still trying to shoot an elephant, to make a score so big I won't have to worry about anything the rest of my life. I'm not sure why I keep driving myself, living on the road most of the time, working, planning, dealing. I could retire now, settle down with my kids and my wife, who's the kind of woman I dreamed about when I was young. I could sell the ranch, which is probably worth more than $1,000,000, and live out my life comfortably. But I've got to keep going, got to keep pushing.

Part of it, I know, is the work ethic instilled in me by my father, and in all the Packers by Vince Lombardi. And part of it goes back even further. All my life, ever since I found myself growing bigger than most of the other kids, I've been trying to prove I've got a head on this big scarred body, I'm not just a big dumb jock. I suppose I've proved it to a lot of people. But I don't know if I'll ever prove it to myself.

Maybe I'll find some answers talking to the guys. Maybe one of them has the secret. Maybe Urban had the secret. I wish he and Henry Jordan were here. I wish we were all going to live forever. I used to think we were.

"I turned and grabbed Ray around the throat and said I was ready to tear his head off."

"After he stopped playing football, he moved into an old slave's shack right on the edge of the swamp."