A good kind of busy for Hall of Famer Jerry Kramer

If it’s Thursday, it must be Chicago.

Or Washington, D.C.

Or Cleveland. Or Houston. Or San Francisco.

Life has been a whirlwind for Jerry Kramer these days, especially since he got the word in February that he was finally going to be inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and was eventually enshrined in Canton in August.

But it’s a good kind of whirlwind for Kramer, 82, the former Sandpoint High, University of Idaho and Green Bay Packers great, who lives in the Boise area, but spends much of his time on the road, at autograph signings and speaking engagements, etc. ... basically being Jerry Kramer — a man who can tell a tale with the best of them.

And he has quite a few tales to tell.

“I just try to keep a pace, just try to keep going,” Kramer said Wednesday in a phone interview from Des Moines, Iowa, where he was scheduled to speak at a dinner that evening at Iowa State University in nearby Ames. “I don’t seem to have much trouble with that. I enjoy going, enjoy the people. And I’m reliving the best days of my life, too — it’s not like I’m talking quantum physics, or something like that. I’m talking about playing ball, and having a wonderful time and a wonderful coach and a wonderful bunch of players. A highlight in my life. That’s kinda easy to relive.”

Today, that pace leads him to Coeur d’Alene, as part of Jerry Kramer Day across the state of Idaho. He is scheduled to be the guest of honor at the annual Inland Empire Vandal Celebration tonight at the Hagadone Event Center. Festivities begin with a no-host social and silent auction. Dinner is at 7, with the program, featuring a speech from Kramer, at 8. Tickets are still available by contacting Shelly Robson at (208) 651-7992 or shellyr@uidaho.edu

THE FORMER Vandal recalled how he ended up at the University of Idaho.

“I had a chance to go to the University of Washington,” Kramer recalled. “And I was over there a week before school started, and they wanted me to go fishing up along the coast for a week, and enjoy myself, and go to the university later.

“I called my dad. ‘Dad, they’ll fly you to every home game for three years.’”

“I don’t need to fly to a game,” dad growled. “If I want to go to a game I can drive to a game. Now, you get home — you’re going to Idaho.”

Kramer thought back to something that happened a couple years earlier.

“Coach (Skip) Stahley had come into the locker room when I was a sophomore at Sandpoint,” Kramer recalled. “He was talking to some of the seniors about coming to Idaho. He was talking to three or four seniors, and I’m a sophomore — an awkward, clumsy, numb-nutted sophomore — I looked up, and he’s walking down the aisle toward me in the locker room. I’m at a dead end — there’s no way out. I looked behind me to see if there was somebody behind me, and there wasn’t anybody behind me. I’m going, ‘Damn, he’s going to come talk to me, I guess.’

“He comes down and pats me on the shoulder and says, ‘You’re the kind of boy we’d like to see down at the University one of these days.’

“I went ‘Wow, that is super cool. If he’s thinking about me going to the University when I’m a sophomore, maybe I can play that other game later on, after college.’

“I was thinking about the University of Washington and the University of Idaho, and dad wanted me to go to Idaho and I had a couple of buddies there, so it wasn’t a hard choice to go.”

So Kramer, who played nose guard and offensive tackle at Sandpoint, eventually hopped into his 1948 Studebaker — a graduation present — and drove to Moscow, where he and Wayne Walker were two-way players, on the field for nearly the entire game.

WHEN IT was time to leave college, there was no NFL combine back then.

Not even close.

“I got to play in the East-West Shrine Game, and the Senior Bowl in Mobile, and the college all-star game,” Kramer said. “I got about eight or nine letters from NFL teams, and they were all addressed, ‘Dear Player ... ’”

“Green Bay had an assistant GM, who was responsible for drafting about 12 or 13 of the Hall of Famers in Green Bay, and getting coach (Vince) Lombardi to come to Green Bay. He had a friend at Potlatch Lumber, about 16 miles out of Moscow. He scouted me, and he’s the only known scout that ever showed up to scout me.”

After his senior season at Idaho, Kramer was in San Francisco for the Shrine Game. The B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League also wanted him, but he wasn’t interested.

The Packers had drafted Kramer in the fourth round, with the 39th overall pick.

“I asked coach Stahley, ‘What kind of salary should I ask for?’ There weren’t any agents, there weren’t any publications with salaries in them, so there was really no way of knowing.”

“He said ‘Jerry, if you can get $7,000, you’d be doing really well.’

“OK.”

The Packers called — they were in town to play the 49ers — and the general manager asked Kramer to come over to the hotel.

“Well, we’d like to sign you to a contract, you got any thoughts?” the GM said.

“$8,000,” Kramer replied.

“Sign here.”

“Damn, I left some money on the table,” Kramer thought.

“I want a bonus, too,” Kramer told the GM.

“What kind of bonus?

“I was thinking $250.”

“They gave me a $250 check, and Wayne (Walker) and I cashed it in San Francisco, and went dancing.”

After the college all-star game, Kramer went to Green Bay, made the team, and started receiving his weekly paycheck.

“And my first paycheck had $250 held out of it,” he said.

“I said, ‘What is this about?”

“That was an advance we gave you,” he was told.

“I thought it was a bonus.”

“No, it was an advance.”

“So there wasn’t a lot of money being thrown around at that time,” Kramer said.

ALL THESE years later, and folks across the country still want to hear those stories.

Often, his fans have stories for him.

One of the owners of a company that brought Kramer in to speak came up to him with his copy of “Instant Replay,” Kramer’s best-selling diary of the 1967 season with the Packers.

“He said, I read this every year, at the start of training camp, been doing it for 50 years,’” Kramer said. “‘I got it when I was 12 years old.’ So he wanted me to come speak. Told my agent, ‘I don’t want anybody else, don’t try to sell me on anybody else. If Jerry’s not available, we don’t want anybody.’”

“The book has been kind of a sleeper in there, where certain people have read it, and learned some lessons, or gained some philosophy, made their minds up that they were going to do things the right way, and bust their backside and get things done,” Kramer said. “So they took some inspiration from the book.

“It’s very gratifying and very pleasing to have that awareness out there. It would just be nice to spread it over a longer period of time.”

But it’s all good, and Kramer no longer has to answer all the “Why aren’t you in the Hall of Fame?” questions he was getting for decades.

And he couldn’t help but notice a little bit of irony after being enshrined.

“I got a call from one of the voters who is selecting next year’s Hall of Fame group, and he was asking me about players,” Kramer said. “I’m going, ‘This is surreal. Now I’m in the Hall, and now I’m suggesting who should be in the Hall already?’ It was interesting to ponder the qualifications of some of the guys, and be on the other side of the street for a while.”