To follow the Chicago Cubs you got to love the game. To their fans, winning is only second on the list. Fortunately there are a lot of people in Chicago, the ‘Windy City’, that share my view. Last year, almost every game at Wrigley Field---named after the chewing gum company that owned the team until the early 80s---was sold out, if not all of them. In total, over 3,000,000 persons saw the Cubbies make it to the playoffs---only to loose the first three and be eliminated from further competition.

My love of the game began long before 1966 which was the year that I relocated to Chicago. I was excited about the prospects of following the Cubbies, as they are affectionally refered to, because they are perpetual loosers. Only when you truly love a sport can you follow such a team's exploits.

Back then, I was working for a scientific publishing company and was generally on “the road”, tooling across the US of A. Yet, on a particular week, in April 1969, I was actually in the city, making calls on clients. The radio in my car was on and tuned to WGN, “The Voice of the Cubs.” The first game of the season would be starting at 13:30. The announcer, Lou Boudreau was saying, “Hey, baseball fans, there are still empty seats in the bleachers [the worst seats in any stadium] so come on out to the ball park on a beautiful spring day in Chi Town!” I looked at my watch and saw that the game would be starting in about 15 minutes; I wasn’t far from the ball park, so I “U” turned, in that direction, immediately. I could even tell my boss, in New York, what I had done. He had played minor league baseball in his youth---he would understand.

Wrigley Field is a small park with an outfield wall covered in ivy that holds 40,000 people and located in a residential neighborhood on the near north side of the city. There were, then, no large parking lots, nor several story high parking garages. I found an illegal parking space and hurried to the stadium.

Once there, I saw two very long lines at each ticket-selling window. Shortly after one of the windows closed---tickets sold out---that line merged with my line. It was now twice as long and it didn’t look good. Five more minutes went by when I noticed a man walking along the line waving something in his hand and saying something. When he got to me, I realized he was trying to sell a ticket. I waved

him over and asked what he had? “A box seat ticket,” was the answer. “Is it at a good location?” His reply: “Great one!” Hmmm...”How much?” The answer was five dollars for a three dollar priced ticket. Well, okay, I could afford it and the chances of buying a ticket at the window was pretty close to impossible. I gave him the five.

The seat location, listed on the ticket, meant nothing to me. I entered the stadium and looked for the section and once I found that, I passed through an alley like ramp and emerged at a location between home plate and first base. Wow! I showed an usher the ticket stub and he led me to the holy-of-holies section directly behind the baseball dugout where the players sit. My seat was four rows from the team. I had died and gone to heaven which is a place in Wrigley Field.

I had been sitting for only a few minutes when the man sitting on my right turned to me and said, “Where did you get the ticket?” I told him how someone had sold it to me outside the stadium. He continued, “Tall, sandy hair, about 30-35?” “That’s him!” He then asked, “How much did you pay?” “Five dollars.” He looked at me as if he was looking at some fool and said, “I sold it to him for three dollars.” And with a smile on my face, I replied, “I would have paid twenty dollars to sit here if I had known.”

...And the game? Well, Ernie Banks, who would go onto the Baseball Hall of Fame, and one of my all time sport heros, hit two home runs. Fergie Jenkins, another of my heros, pitched a masterful game going into the ninth inning, I think it was, before being replaced by a pinch hitter when he was due to come to bat with the game tied. The Cubbies won the game in the 11th inning on a pinch-hit home run by a new comer to the team, Willie Smith.

This was the kick-off game to a great season which saw the Cubs in first place until the beginning of September when a new New York team, The Mets, came out of no-where to become the Miracle Mets and go to the World Series---they won, too. I still remember a photograph that appeared in one of the newspapers during that last month. It pictured a nine or ten year old boy---with ball, glove and bat---kneeling next to his bed in prayer. The caption read, “Please, God, let the Cubs win the pennant,” that would have allowed them to advance to the World Series. Alas, God was out-on-lunch.

They have not BEEN in a World Series since 1946, and lost when a fan's pet goat was ejected from the stadium and a hex...but, that's another story. Even worse, they have not WON a World Series since 1908. It is now 2009 and the drought is in its 101st year. So, here I am, waiting for the beginning of a new season and hoping that God gets back on the job.

When traveling into a new country, we always keep our eyes open for old dairy packages. Not only because old packages are as valuable vintage items as any other ornamental, or designed vintage items but mostly because old packages are valuable items which can tell us, visually, a lot about the local, or national life style at their time.

We bought these Norwegian vintage packages from an old Norwegian man who owns an antique shop on the beach somewhere along the versatile Norwegian coastline, through the years he has been collecting a lot of vintage items in his shop, but these had caught our eyes both with their design and their content.

Back in 1950-70, packages were made for everyday foods, like orange marmalade, cranberries marmalade, and fresh cream. They were designed simply and clearly, as may be expected of creation in the midst of Scandinavian modernism.

We think that even now Scandinavian package designs are wonderful, as they are still designed with clarity and simplicity. But we love the vintage ones better because of the cool and nostalgic feelings that they communicate. When looking at them, we feel that can gaze through time and imagine how Scandinavian dairy life were during the modern age.