Hours before Friday`s match at the Oak Brook Polo Club, the Charles Wegner family will arrive at the field with a picnic supper they`ll spread out on a portable buffet table–their car hood. They and scores of other fans then will participate in what has become one of America`s favorite pastimes:
tailgating.
These movable feasts, which occur in stadium and arena parking lots across the country, have changed the ho-hum image of a picnic into a happening. The pre- and postgame gatherings run the gamut from the simple to the sublime, and whether the guests are dressed to the nines or in blue jeans and T-shirts, merrymaking always prevails.
When the Milwaukee Brewers play at home in County Stadium, for example, tailgating is so popular and parking space at such a premium that the city sells permits for each game. Tailgaters then are assured of specific locations for their vehicles, enabling them to meet friends more easily. Large groups can even bring a tent for their festivities. During the Brewers` last series with the Chicago White Sox, nary a permit was left unsold.
On many college campuses, tailgating is one of the main activities during the football season for students as well as alumni. It`s not unusual for tried and true tailgaters to park their vehicles a day or two prior to the main event and begin the revelry. Some hold catered affairs with tuxedo-clad waiters to serve the vittles.
At the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, the carnival atmosphere that prevails for big games inspired Neale Stoner, director of athletics, to create the ultimate tailgate–the ”tailgreat party”–back in 1982. The school now boasts the designation of being the first university to hold a contest for tailgaters.
This year`s extravaganza is scheduled for Sept. 14 when the fighting Illini play Southern Illinois University. Tailgaters will plan their parties upon such themes as Traditional Illini, Super-Computer U and Cut-rate Tailgate, geared for those on a low budget. Prizes will be awarded for the best fete in each category. (Registration information can be obtained through the promotion department at 217-333-1102 or by writing them at Room 113, Assembly Hall, 1800 S. First St., Champaign 61820.)
Closer to home, Northwestern University is hoping to encourage more tailgaters to attend the football games at Evanston`s Dyche Stadium by offering pregame concerts and entertainment, even trotting out the school band and cheerleaders.
More important, a tent will be erected for each home game to serve as tailgating headquarters, says Kelly Sullivan, the school`s promotion director. ”This will be the place to see people and be seen. We want to promote a whole day of college football.” A 10-kilometer run along the lakefront also is scheduled prior to Northwestern`s home opener against Northern Illinois University at 1:30 p.m. Sept. 28. (The registration fee is $7.50. For information, phone 491-3205.)
The tailgating season is much like the endless summer. Tailgate galas have been in full swing for some time and numerous parties have been spotted in the lots around Comiskey Park, Rosemont Horizon, Soldier Field and Ravinia in Highland Park.
You can witness an onslaught of tailgaters arriving as soon as Soldier Field opens its gates at 3 p.m. Saturday for the Chicago Bears exhibition contest against the Buffalo Bills. Tailgaters then have three hours for feasting and imbibing before the kickoff at 6 p.m.
You`ll get a different perspective when the Cubs are in town. The lack of lights in Wrigley Field is secondary for hardcore tailgaters who maintain that the parking lots–what few there are in the neighborhood–were designed for kiddie cars. As a result, you`ll encounter few open trunks or festooned hoods before a Cubs game.
Why tailgate? For many individuals, like Charles and Joan Wegner of Oak Brook and sons Chuck, who plays polo, John and Ken, it has become a tradition. In fact, the brothers often throw their own tailgate soirees for their friends.
”Tailgating is a family event,” Mrs. Wegner says. ”When we moved to Oak Brook, it was very polo-oriented then. It was very rural with a lot of polo fields. Paul Butler (the founder of the Oak Brook Polo Club) was a dear friend of ours. We met him and were then introduced to polo. He had a private polo field behind his home and we first watched the whole family play while sitting on a station wagon where we drank champagne from a silver bucket.”
The Wegners then became habitues of the village`s first polo club. ”It was very tiny but charming,” Mrs. Wegner recalls. ”It had a landing strip for private planes. We`d have cocktails and watch polo and the planes come in. It became part of our way of life and our summer enjoyment.”
Yet, 27 years later, she still enjoys tailgating and toting a wicker basket filled with her linens, china and silver, and the repast of the day to a match.
”Polo is a very formal sport. Women wear dresses and hats and many carry parasols,” Mrs. Wegner says. ”The men usually wear sportcoats and ties. For polo, people bring out their best cars, many of them antiques. It`s as much fun to watch the people as the polo. It`s a great people-watching sport because so many people do dress up. It`s a fun thing.”
Newcomers to the polo scene who would like to tailgate shouldn`t think the matches are strictly a formal occasion, says Phylis Deeter, a former Oak Brook denizen who has been an aficionado of the game for 30 years and tailgates when she`s not sitting in her box.
”There are a lot of different ways to enjoy polo,” Deeter says.
”Attending a match can be relaxed and informal. You don`t have to get dressed up unless you want to. Anything goes now.”
On Chicago`s South Side, tailgating around Comiskey Park for White Sox games is typically a laid-back affair where plastic and paper products reign supreme. For the past three years, season-ticket holders like Tad and Sally Davis of Hinsdale have donned casual attire to tailgate out of an old van that sports Sox pennants. Their bill of fare depends on their mood and usually is as diverse as the team`s season has been.
Both tailgated individually during their college days and resumed the custom after they married. The Davises have become veterans on the circuit and have tailgated at the time trials of the Indianapolis 500 as well as the actual running of the Memorial Day classic.
For them, however, tailgating is de rigeur for Sox games. ”It`s easier logistically to get to the ballpark early and leave late,” Tad says. ”What better thing to do than enjoy non-baseball park food and visit with friends?
Tailgating is very relaxing. And it`s more fun to tailgate when the weather is warm and pleasant than in December.”
THE QUESTION: WHO MADE IT SO POPULAR?
According to the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origin, the word tailgate refers to ”the tailboard of a truck or station wagon and the term obviously is carried forward from the days of horse-drawn wagons. A third use of tailgate is to describe picnics preceding football games at places like Harvard Stadium and the Yale Bowl. Station wagon tailgates are lowered and serve as impromptu tables for the luncheon.”
There`s no question that socializing before games has been as traditional for Harvard and Yale loyalists as ivy-covered walls. Debate arises, though, when the talk turns to how tailgating became chic. Where did the practice take off? The Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League both take credit for tailgating`s popularity.
When the Vikings played in Metropolitan Stadium (until 1981) in Bloomington, there was ample space for tailgating and it proliferated, says Merrill Swanson, the Vikings` public relations director: ”People tailgated pregame, postgame and during games. People parked in the same place every week and the lots virtually became little villages. People became friends. They saw someone doing something a little nicer than they were doing and they`d try and do something a little nicer the following week. It got very competitive.”
With the arrival of coach Bud Grant in 1967, the Vikings` playoff berth in 1968 and the chance to win the Super Bowl in the 1969-70 season, tailgating was catapulted into the national limelight, Swanson says. ”So many of the out-of-town writers and broadcasters stayed in the hotel adjacent to the parking lot and they`d walk over to the stadium and noticed it. They`d talk about it on the air, take a picture or write about it.”
One of the most memorable tailgate parties at the Met was a wedding brunch ”with full wedding regalia including candelabras and linens on the table,” Swanson says. ”Another time, on a strip of dirt between two adjacent parking lots, one group dug a pit and roasted a pig. Tailgating may well have gotten more sophisticated at our games faster than anywhere else.”
Not so, says Al Stevens, corporate security officer and a historian of the Green Bay Packers Football Club: ”We began tailgating before the Vikings were in the National Football League. We had a team in 1919 (semipro). We were definitely the first to start the tradition based on the fact that the franchise has been in existence a lot longer. They`re neophytes when it comes to tailgating.”
