Opinions

It’s football season again, and the Pack looked pretty good in its first preseason game, even though we didn’t get to see some of our stars play. The coaches are necessarily playing their new recruits to see who will make the the squad for the season. Even so, it was fun to watch the Green and Gold beating Philadelphia fairly handily.

I have been a Packers fan since I was a little kid. I have also been an avid Badgers fan for as long as I can remember, so football season is exciting to me. I’m one of those guys who has paraphernalia to wear while I watch the games.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, isn’t it, the way Wisconsinites support “our” Packers? I read an article once a couple of years ago that said that the average person in Wisconsin has something like 14 pieces of Packers paraphernalia. Look around in church on a Sunday; it’s amazing how many people are wearing the green and gold or the cardinal and white.

Here we are, in the first week of August, and the back-to-school merchandise has been on the shelves in the stores for several weeks already. Going back to school in the fall was always kind of a happy time for me. I loved school, and I got a chance to see the “city” friends that I’d hardly seen all summer.

When I was a kid, I walked 10 miles uphill both ways in the rain and sleet and snow to get to and from school.

I’m kidding, of course. We lived about 2 1/1 miles from school. But walk I did, along with most of the other kids in the neighborhood, and we didn’t think much of it. There was a big group of us – all my Konitzer cousins, the Lutzes, and my sister, Joyce, and me, and along the way we’d pick up another Konitzer family, the Steffens kids and the Ostrengas as we made our way to St. Anthony’s in town.

Those were the days before parochial school kids were allowed to ride the buses that carried the public school kids to school. So we walked.

A lack of love

To the editor:

We have so many problems in this country and in our state! And they all center on a lack of unconditional love for our fellow humans.

For instance, in Wisconsin, we now spend well over $1 billion annually on the Department of Corrections; far more than we pay for education. Rolls off the tongue until one bothers to calculate it takes 32 years to live one billion seconds! Each of us pays hundreds of tax dollars annually intentionally inflicting pain and suffering while helping almost no one.

We have over 22,000 incarcerated and the number is increasing – again. It’s all part of a financial growth industry and perverted/unholy/evil psychology that specializes in cruel and inhumane treatment.

One evening last week, while I was mowing the lawn in the waning minutes of twilight, I was suddenly accompanied across the lawn by a flock of lightning bugs. Maybe you prefer to call them fireflies? Some people in some areas of the country call them glow worms.

Remember the Mills Brothers’ hit from 1957: “Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer! Lead us lest too far we wander. Love’s sweet voice is calling yonder! Shine, little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer. Shine …”

Wow, senior year in high school! We had some great music back then! But I digress.

Lightning bugs. What great little pieces of engineering. They’re not bugs or flies or worms; they’re actually beetles. But whatever they are, they’re fascinating creatures.

We recently got scammed on our computer. The scammers were pretty clever, more clever than I am, for sure. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that I got suckered when our email disappeared from our computer, and heaven knows, we can’t get along without our email even though two-thirds of our emails would be considered junk mail if they came in our USPS mailbox.

So, anyway, in an attempt to recover our our email, I went to Google support, or so I thought. What I actually got into was some scammer posing to be Google support who promised to fix my problem. After about an hour and a half on the phone explaining my problem, he promised me he could fix my problem for me for a small fee. He actually did make my email reappear for a short time, but then he said that in order to guarantee that the problem would not reoccur, I would have to have him “scrub” my computer for viruses.

To the editor:

The years have gone by now since one native of Oconto Falls’ life was taken in combat. It’s been 50 years (July 18, 1967) since the Greetan family received the news that their son/brother, Pvt. Roger W. Greetan, was killed in action while serving his country during the Vietnam War.

Roger will always be remembered for the person he was, along with the outstanding athletic ability he had during his four-year, four-sport career at Oconto Falls High School, the only four-sport athlete up to this present date.

He always gave it his all, at every sporting event he participated in. Many of his teammates will account for this, along with the fun they had playing together at events through the years. He entertained many fans and earned the respect of all his coaches. Just as his combat buddies have stated, and have shared their stories about him, up until his final day when he was killed in combat.

To the editor:

Points to ponder

1. Half of U.S. popcorn is grown in Nebraska.

2. Seven percent of Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

3. Twenty-five percent of Japan’s population is retirement age. The sale of adult diapers exceeds those for babies.

4. In 37 states the highest paid employee is a sports coach or athletic director.

5. Sixty-five percent of U.S. households own a pet.

6. There are over 700,000 health insurance policies on pets.

7. The cost of raising a medium-sized dog to age 11 is $16,400.

8. Coca-Cola was originally green.

9. One-third of America’s hundred best paid CEOs earned more than their corporations paid in federal taxes.

10. The largest block of Republican voters are white males with a high school education or less.

Bert Grover,

Gresham

One of my favorite cartoon characters was Pogo, the title and central character of a long-running daily American comic strip created by cartoonist Walt Kelly. Set in the Okenfenokee Swamp of the southeastern United States, the strip often engaged in social and political satire through the adventures of its anthropromorphic funny characters.

Pogo mouthed some of my favorite comic strip lines. In one strip, Pogo and Porkypine are walking through the swamp, and Porkypine says, “Ah, Pogo. The beauty of the forest primeval gets me in the heart.” To which Pogo responds, “It gets me in the feet, Porkypine.” In the next panel we see that the swamp is full of litter and junk, and Porkypine says, “It is hard walkin’ on this stuff.” And here’s the line I love: Pogo says, “Yep, son. We have met the enemy and he is us.”

In another strip, Pogo announces, “Friday the 13th came on Tuesday this month.”

The ability enjoy harsh weather, getting along with eight family members and friends for seven days without seeing another person, staying up very late at night and thoroughly enjoying fishing are all requirements for a seven-day Canadian, fly-in fishing trip.

Wednesday, June 21

Last night was another one of those nights where the first of us went to bed at 3:30 a.m. and the last two were still standing at 6 a.m. That may sound a bit off the wall to you, but we come here from as far away as Walker, Louisiana, and each of us knows the importance of getting every possible minute out of an experience like this.

Today is day 5 on Shultz Lake (Chimo Lodge and Outposts). Everyone will head out of camp about 11 a.m. and will return at 10:30 p.m.

2017. It’s been 60 years since the high school in Oconto Falls burned down.

March 8, 1957. We were seniors in high school, less than six weeks away from graduation, when Oconto Falls High School burned down.

And while many of our contemporaries had often made smart-aleck remarks about wishing for some catastrophe so we could have a few days off, almost no one was happy to have that wish fulfilled.

It was a cold wintry March day, and as the school buses arrived at the school, there were officials waiting to tell the bus drivers to take everyone back home. Only the senior boys were allowed to disembark. We were pressed into service to rescue what we could from inside the building.