By
Jack A. Eckert
You have to expect that someone from
Wisconsin with a website will try to concoct a tale involving both the Coast
Guard and the Green Bay Packers to impress his readers.
One fall when both the Cutter’s Coos
Bay and Cook Inlet were in Curtis Bay, one of the Yard Birds who worked
at the Baltimore Memorial Stadium offered to sneak us in to see a professional
football game if we came around to a certain gate just before the game was about
to start. I was the Chief Engineer of the “Cookie Cutter.” I told Arnie
Cousins who was the Chief Engineer on the Coos Bay about it and he said he would
like to go. Arnie wanted to wear his dress blue uniform and I went along with
the idea for whatever reason.
It was a beautiful fall day with nary a
cloud in the sky, just cool enough to be perfect football weather. The Colts
were playing the Packers (I am an extreme die hard Packer fan as are most
Wisconsinites.)
To shorten the story we met the Yard Bird
at the designated gate. He escorted us into the stadium even though the game was
a sell out, telling us to lose ourselves in the crowd until he could get back to
us to get us into the press box. We wandered around the stadium and a number of
security people seemed to sense that we didn't belong. We couldn’t find a seat
and stuck out like sore thumbs in our dress uniforms. There was nowhere to hide,
so we just kept moving, hoping for a place to sit down so we wouldn’t be so
conspicuous. About the time the security began to close in on us our Yard
Bird friend caught up and hustled us into the press box. This was after the
second half began. We were so busy evading security we hadn’t seen much of the
game up until that time. We watched the Pack beat the Colts and it was a joy to
see Hornung and Taylor, et.al. in the flesh. The Pack won and I was elated as we
left the stadium, our hide and seek adventure over.
We retired to “Ernell’s”
where we imbibed in a few, quite a few.
Lesson learned:
If you are going to sneak into a sold out stadium, don't wear your dress
uniform. It stands you out from the crowd.