Tent City Saturday
“If I have to tell you one more time to get in the truck, you’re gonna be grounded!” McKinley Buxton III — better known to his good friends as “Mac” — promised his oldest son McKinley Buxton IV, who for some reason went by the nickname Trev.
Trev — who had just turned 17 — groaned. “I don’t understand why we have to go to every single game! They suck and they’ve sucked for years now! And I hate the hotel we stay at. The wireless never works and you can’t order room service. Why can’t I just stay home this weekend? I’ll follow all the rules.”
“Just get your butt in the truck,” Mac ordered him, openly annoyed now. No way was Mac taking that chance. He instantaneously envisioned a horde of teenagers in his house, crowding the deck out back, drinking and smoking and doing God only knows what else while the rest of the family and most of the parents were gone three hours away to Oak Ridge for the big opening game against Northeastern South Dakota State, a sure win, Mac hoped.
“No way!” Mac yelled as young Trev wheeled and stomped off toward the three-vehicle garage and his fate for the weekend. Mac noted before he turned around that Trev was already pounding out a text or Snapchat message on his iPhone, no doubt delivering the bad news to his eagerly waiting little co-conspirators who were soon to be severely disappointed at not being able to use the Buxton’s home as their secret party pad for the weekend.
Mac shook his head. He couldn’t understand why Trev and the other kids gave him so much crap every time they went up to Oak Ridge for the weekend to see the Crusaders play. Mac and his wife, Elaine Buxton, nee Rutledge, of The Family Rutledge — soybean magnates from the western part of the state — loved going to the football games. It was one of the highlights of their fall social life after all, and Mac’s job and Elaine’s society and country club events schedule permitted them few other opportunities to get out of town otherwise.
Weekends in relatively quaint Oak Ridge — where their alma mater was located — provided them the chance not just to watch the Crusaders play from their luxury box up on the west side of the stadium (“their” meaning Mac and his father-in-law, Nelson Rutledge Jr. of the Family Rutledge, split the ridiculous cost of leasing the box each season), where Mac could hold court while entertaining legions of friends, acquaintances and securing possible business deals, but to also hit the long-reliable eateries and bars they had frequented as students, and meet up with all their friends for dinner, breakfast, drinks, and of course, the tailgating.
It was a regular pilgrimage of sorts, and that wasn’t overstating the entire thing.
Elaine liked it for the same reasons Mac did, as well as the added opportunity she got to soak up the latest gossip from the other women on which relationships were on the rocks and why, to whisper about which kids were acting like little criminals (none of their own of course — the Buxton kids were perfect; it was always somebody else’s), name-drop when strategically required, and to engage in some drama-creation of her own.
The men talked about football and business, name-dropped, humble-bragged, tailgated, ate, and drank. The women talked about the men, the kids, and the other women (sometimes as soon as one of them had turned her back and walked away from the group), and gossiped, name-dropped, humble-bragged, created drama, and tailgated and drank. They also enjoyed seeing which garish little ensembles the fraternity and sorority kids had come up with for that particular weekend. It was like they all got together beforehand and decided to wear the exact same thing. Too much individuality, you see, was frowned upon.
On the rare occasion Mac and Elaine were introduced to a person who was a relative outsider, they engaged in a rather strange and convoluted discussion with said person that to an objective observer would appear completely ham-handed and stunted, trying like hell to find some sort of common ground, which, of course, didn’t exist between said outsider and them, leaving said outsider feeling like the proverbial fish out of water and wanting to extricate himself as soon as possible.
The kids — on the other hand — wished they weren’t there. They — like young Trev — would have rather been at home for the weekend. The truth was, Oak Ridge was vastly overrated, and being under their parents’ gaze and control all weekend totally sucked. They hated it.
Now none of the parents’ actual reasons for being there were the articulated ones for making the pilgrimage, but outside the football game, the sit-down meals and the tailgating, these things filled in every void, every minute of “downtime,” as it were.
It was finally time to head out. Mac never understood why it took everyone but him so damn long get ready to leave. He was literally chomping at the bit to get going.
The brood now ensconced in the massive Suburban, Mac engaged the house’s alarm system, walked out into the cavernous garage, and got behind the wheel. Elaine sat to his right, texting furiously while Trev — sulking as hard and openly as he could — and Bart and Amy sat silent in the back staring at their iPhone screens too. Bart was a year younger than Trev, and Amy was the baby of the family at 13. The Buxtons were directly in the midst of raising three teenagers, and this fact alone provided an overabundance of drama on an almost-daily basis.
Behind the kids in back, the truck was jammed to the roof with tailgating equipment. Mac didn’t mess around on this score. He was well-known down in the “Range” — the unofficial name for the school’s massive tailgating area next to the stadium — as having one of the best “setups” around. Every season, Mac paid what any reasonable person would consider an obscene sum of money — in addition to what he already paid for season tickets, the luxury box and catering and setup for the same — for a “space” of ground for tailgating on the Range. And his payment was well-rewarded.
But the gear Mac had in the back of the Suburban was just a small collection of things, because he had a storage unit a mile off the campus in Oak Ridge where he kept the real stuff: Five big screen TVs, two massive grills, and several huge ice chests for use out on the Range. He paid a guy named Seth Jenkins to go retrieve that gear and set it up in Mac’s space so that all Mac had to do on Saturday morning was show up, pull the Suburban into the Range at 9:00, and hook everything up to his desires.
Seth was also charged with purchasing and filling all the ice chests with a diverse collections of cold beverages, bottled and canned beer, and little fizzy drinks for Elaine, ranging from White Claw, to Miller Lite to much stronger craft beer from nationally established breweries like Dogfish Head (someone had told him about this obscure-sounding craft brewery in Delaware that sold its beer worldwide, although Mac had never heard of it, let alone tasted it); something for every palate, from the unrefined to the thoroughly-experienced, so everyone that sauntered by would find something to their liking, although Mac noticed the stronger stuff usually went untouched, and he ended up giving it to Seth after the games were over. Everyone loved the Miller Lite though; they blew through it like a swarm of locusts.
As they were slowly pulling out of the driveway on Pebble Beach Lane in their gated, sylvan-hilled neighborhood, Mac’s space of tailgating ground up on the Range was still bare, the grass that had grown up since last winter and the little scattered civilizations of ants and other insect ground critters that had enjoyed a relatively peaceful, if not cool, summer not having the faintest clue about the onslaught that was about to hit them the following day and destroy their placid and boring little existence.
Indeed, by 9 a.m. Saturday morning, legions of vehicles and workers would invade the Range and set things up to the big spenders’ liking, installing hundreds of tents and thousands of chairs, and running generators and electrical extension cords all over the place with multiple outlets — somehow it all complied with whatever local ordinances existed — so that Mac and his fellow tailgaters would need a minimum of time to fully set up their individual little tailgate fiefdoms once they arrived to begin the festivities.
Mac and folks like him had paid a premium so they could pull right into their spot, pop the rear hatch, crack the top on the first beer, light the grill, and turn on the big screen, as soon as possible, all under the massive tents the workers had already set up for them. Indeed, once things got going, the Range resembled a massive tent city, filled to the brim with the faithful, a near-religious, mobile crusade where the sermon was the current state of the program.
Now safely out of the neighborhood and smoothly sliding the behemoth SUV into the east-bound traffic on the interstate toward Oak Ridge on this early September Friday afternoon, Mac smiled contentedly as he pondered the first opportunity of the new season to show off his setup. He had to admit to himself, it was pretty sweet. After all, he had no idea what life would be like if he couldn’t make this pilgrimage five or six times every fall.
He actually shuddered at the thought.
Glen Hines is the author of six books, including the recently published Welcome to the Machine, all available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. His writing has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Task & Purpose, the Human Development Project, and elsewhere.
