Ron Kantowski chills out in a warm office as a co-worker’s dad recounts being at the Ice Bowl

Monday, Dec. 31, 2007 | 1:33 a.m.

I can still see it, although it happened 40 years ago today. Lambeau Field. Sixteen seconds to play. No timeouts. Jethro Pugh, swiping his spiked cleat across the frozen goal line, as if he was trying to scrape something nasty off the bottom of it. The scoreboard that read: DALLAS 17, PACKERS 14. The rotating sign at the Green Bay bank that read: -16, with a little circle to the right of the six. As in 16 degrees below zero. As in Dean Martin singing "Baby, it's cold outside." As in I wish they had steel mills in Miami so my dad could get a job there.

I still get shivers thinking about that game. And I was watching it in Chicago. On my parents' living room couch.

I was 10 years old when Jerry Kramer, No. 64, and Ken Bowman, No. 57, threw what arguably is the most memorable block in pro football history, knocking Pugh, No. 75, off that frozen piece of tundra so Bart Starr, No. 15 of course, could sneak past into the end zone.

Packers 21, Cowboys 17. The Ice Bowl endeth.

B-r-r-r-r.

Rob Miech, who sits to my right in the Sun sports pod, was 3 years old on Dec. 31, 1967. He says his only memory of that game is a faint one of his father thawing out in a steaming bathtub of their Milwaukee home.

Al Miech, Rob's old man, was 28 years old in 1967. Although there were 50,861 human icicles in the stadium on that God-forsaken afternoon when the wind chill was minus-48 Fahrenheit, Al Miech is the first one I have spoken to, because Donny Anderson never answered my fan letter, thereby turning me into a card-carrying member of the Elijah Pitts fan club.

Al Miech was shoveling snow off the walk - with an ice pick and a blow torch - on that bitter cold Wisconsin morning when his pal Dick Turnquist, who owned a pizza joint in West Bend, famous for its cordless iron, called to say that he scored a couple of tickets to the title game and was warming up the dog sled.

"It was New Year's Eve, so I had to get approval," Miech said. "When we got there, it was incredible."

Incredible as in "I can't believe I've got tickets on the 20-yard line for the biggest game of the year" but more incredible as in "I can't believe my lips have turned blue and it's only the pregame warm-up," which, come to think of it, is a poor way to describe jumping jacks when it's 16 degrees below zero.

"What I remember most is that everybody was dressed like deer hunters," Miech said.

By halftime he was ready to anticipate Christopher Walken's role in "The Deer Hunter." When the halftime statistics include rushing yards, receiving yards, and frostbitten toes, Russian Roulette seems like a better option than staying for the second half.

Instead, he and Turnquist repaired to the men's room, where they had to wait to get in. Once inside, they sipped brandy from a flask while other Packer fans tried vainly to flush ice cubes down the urinals.

Though Green Bay fans are noted for their hardiness, the only ones removing their shirts to spell out "P-A-C-K-E-R-S" on their bare chests were Mister Freeze from Batman, one of Admiral Byrd's grandsons, an Eskimo, a Yeti and three guys who sold brassieres to witches.

"Nobody had their shirts off, at least not in my section," Miech said.

As for the game itself, Miech said he barely could remember the Packers taking a 14-0 lead, Dan Reeves throwing a 50-yard halfback option pass to Lance Rentzel to put the Cowboys in front and a journeyman running back named Chuck Mercein running and catching the Packers into the red zone - by then frozen blue - as time was running out.

"All I remember is I thought it was going to be a pass," he said about the most famous quarterback sneak in football history.

What he didn't know is that the woodwind instruments of the Wisconsin State University at Lacrosse Marching Chiefs band had frozen before the game and that Vince Lombardi was getting cold, too.

So instead of kicking a field goal, which would have meant overtime and two more frostbitten toes, he told Starr: Let's win it now. In a worst-case scenario, Pugh stops the sneak and the Cowboys play the Chiefs in the first Super Bowl, but a warm losers' dressing room seemed like a better option than sudden death. Or catching one.

Al Miech said that if he had known the game would go on to become the Ice Bowl, he would have kept his ticket stub and framed it.

And, no doubt, worn long johns.

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