Both my sons are Green Bay Packer fans. My younger son went to college in California and still lives and works there. He continues to maintain strong ties to the Green Bay Packer games. He tries to find the bars in his area where they will put the Green Bay games up on the TV screens. And if the Packers are playing out in California he will try to attend the game there. One time soon after he graduated from college, he attended a Green Bay game versus the San Diego chargers with several of his friends. They were using their binoculars to look around the crowd. Soon one of my son's friends spotted a group of Green Bay fans in the crowd and a few of them were wearing cheesehead hats. Now for my readers outside of the United States, an explanation is in order here. First of all, Wisconsin has long carried the title of "The Dairy State" only recently having been overtaken by the state of California as having more dairy cows. But even so, dairy is still a very prominent occupation in our fine state. There are many creameries and cheesemakers. Hence people from Wisconsin have come to be known as "cheeseheads," because we love to eat cheese. Some one got the brilliant idea to make a triangular yellow foam hat like a large wedge of cheese and since the colors of the Green Bay Packers are yellow and green, fans began wearing these yellow cheesehead hats to the football games. If you look closely at the picture of the fans above, you will see a small scattering of cheesehead hats like the one below.
Back to my story: At the San Diego game, my son's friends started to make a big fuss about those Green Bay fans and their cheesehead hats.
"What is that thing they are wearing on their head? Crazy! It looks like a big piece of cheese. Are they nuts or what?" And laughing and more comments like that. My son just told them that is what is the going craze now for Green Bay fans. I had sent my son one of these as a gift and he proudly displayed it in his room. A few years passed and the Green Bay Packer football team became much better and in Super Bowl XXXI, in New Orleans, the Green Bay Packers won, beating the New England Patriots. Now all things Green Bay were suddenly verypopular.
"Hey, dude," my sons friend called to my son. "Can you get me one of those cheesehead hats to wear?" Even those friends who had belittled and mocked this particular item of Green Bay Packers regalia wanted one of these hats. Someone soon made a similar cheese wedge shaped hat but painted it silver and Detroit Lion fans began wearing them. They had copied the idea from the Packers though a silver wedge didn't make as much sense as a yellow one for cheddar cheese. But in general, suddenly those nutty hats that the Green Bay fans wore were the height of fashion.
The following photo, stolen from the advertisement for Original Cheesehead hats, tells the whole Wisconsin story.
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