A Tradition Like Many Others’

This article reminds me of what my father and I do every Jets game as well. Ok, we haven't been doing this since the Shea Days like them, but we have been pretty consistent since 1998. I think we missed ONE game (Buffalo 2004).

I drive from PA (1:45min one way) to sit in a parking lot for three hours thinking about the yard work I didn't finish the day before. You see, it doesn't matter... I've learned that the JETS take priority. It will be 1-2 more years when my son will be old enough to join us, and that in itself will start a new tradition. I like the quote about getting his ashes spread in 4E. So what do you think Dad, put ours in 13C?

A Tradition Like Many Others’
By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI
East Rutherford, N.J.
New York Times

ON a crisp Sunday morning last month, Kevin Carpenter and a dozen friends and relatives gathered in the parking lot at Giants Stadium to prepare themselves for a Jets game, just as they have done for the last 22 years.

Mr. Carpenter, 50, had made the chili the night before, then left that morning at 8:30 — four and a half hours before kickoff — for the 90-minute drive from his home in Lake Ronkonkoma, N.Y. Traveling with him were his wife, Deirdre, and the youngest of their four children, 7-year-old Devin, whose face they had painted green and white.

The Carpenters parked in Section 4E, beneath darkening clouds and spiraling footballs. They set up a table and chairs and fired up the grill a few feet in back of the family S.U.V., the one with the plates that read OVRDUE. But these are not vanity plates; they’re more like humility plates. For Jets fans, it has been a long time since 1969, the year their team went to, and won, its only Super Bowl.

“A lot of years, a lot of crazy games and crazy weather,” said Jeremiah Suppes, 65, a retired New York City police detective who drove in from Seaford, N.Y., with the youngest of his three sons, Michael, 36, to join the Carpenter tailgate party. “I have some great memories.”

And the ticket stubs to prove it.

“Take a look at these,” Mr. Suppes said, reaching into the pocket of a bright-green down vest with a fading Jets logo on the chest and pulling out a stack of yellowing stubs that went as far back as 1970, the year he became a Jets season ticket holder.

Mr. Carpenter got his season ticket in the late ’70s. He met Mr. Suppes through mutual friends who all agreed there was really only one proper way to spend an early Sunday: eating, drinking and talking football in parking lots.

“Tailgating at Jet games is a priority,” said Mr. Carpenter, an administrator for the Commack School District, who wore a Jets safari hat and a No. 79 jersey with “M. Powell” across the back (Marvin Powell was an All-Pro offensive tackle in the early ’80s).

Mr. Carpenter’s wife knows all about priorities.

“We cut short our honeymoon in Cancún to make it to a Jets game on time,” she said. “We took the six-day package instead of the full week.”

The Carpenters and the Suppeses are part of a Long Island group whose numbers can swell to 100 or more on any given Sunday and who have been tailgating at Jets games since 1984, the year the team left Shea Stadium for the Meadowlands.

Through rain and snow and heartbreaking losses, Carpenter and company have not lost their enthusiasm for tailgating or for football, which one member of the group, Barry Chapman, a 61-year-old hospital administrator from Bethpage, described as “two separate events.”

“We come out here for this,” said Mr. Chapman, who is Mr. Suppes’s cousin, pointing to the hot dogs and hamburgers sizzling on the grill (he has been known to bring venison in hunting season) and to his fellow tailgaters, who were sipping wine, beer or something stronger while sitting in beach chairs.

“But we go in there for that,” he continued, pointing to the Jets banners hanging from Giants Stadium, where his favorite team was a few hours away from a stirring victory over the Detroit Lions.

Michael Suppes, who followed his father into the New York Police Department, said that Jet-setting at the Meadowlands had led him to miss a number of family functions over the years and often prevented him from making significant Sunday contributions to his other home team.

After a late afternoon game, the return ride to Seaford can be roughly three hours — twice as long as the ride in — leaving Mr. Suppes just enough time to kiss his wife, Deanna, and their 4-year-old daughter, Ciara, goodnight. Then it’s time to crawl into bed, pray for the Jets and go to sleep.

“I remember my dad taking me to Jets games at Shea Stadium when I was a kid, and now we’re together again in New Jersey,” he said. “Anywhere the Jets are, we are.”

Though the team has only once rewarded the Suppeses’ loyalty with a National Football League championship, Michael said that huddling with friends and family — his two brothers, Stephen, 45, and Jeremiah Jr., 38, had to miss the game against the Lions — was motivation enough to keep crossing the Hudson.

“Getting together with everyone is just a lot of fun, a lot of laughs,” he said. “There’s so much work to do at home, but when I come here, I forget about all of that.”

As he spoke, Michael Suppes spotted young Devin Carpenter, who was wearing a No. 87 Laveranues Coles jersey and tossing a football around. Mr. Suppes raised his hands to show that he was open, then hauled in a pass that was on the money.

“You know what?” he said, smiling. “I can always clean the yard next week.”

As game time approached, the tailgaters agreed that if the food tasted good on Sunday afternoons, it tasted even better on those rare Monday nights when the Jets played at home.

“Ahh,” Mr. Chapman said, toasting a lamppost. “There’s nothing so romantic as to be eating lobster under the sodium lights.”

Although members of the group have tailgated together on the road — before Jets games in Miami, Indianapolis and New Orleans, for instance — they have one city they still hope to visit.

“I want to tailgate in the city that hosts the Super Bowl that the Jets are in,” Mr. Carpenter said. “I was 13 years old when we won it last, so wherever it is, whenever it is, I’m going.”

With kickoff less than a half-hour away, the winds started picking up, the sun hid behind some clouds and the temperature dropped. The group had made quite a dent in its bottle of “Jets juice” — vodka turned bright green with food dye.

One event was winding down. The other, equally important, was about to begin.

“You know, when you add it all up, this tailgating thing doesn’t make much sense,” Mr. Carpenter said. “We drive for hours just to sit in a parking lot, sometimes in the freezing cold and rain and snow. But I love doing it, because I love the Jets and I love getting together with friends.

“I told my wife that when I die, I want my ashes spread out right here — in Section 4E.”