Quote:Cole Easson looks to his left, sees a set of headlights pause and yells, "Go!"

With that, he leans down, lurches forward and sprints fast as he can, or as fast as a guy going about 5-8, 145 can run yanking an industrial-stength dolly loaded with camp chairs and heavy folding tables.

Easson and his partner, Ben Eishen, must make a treacherous 30-yard dash from the University of Mississippi's Law Center down Grove Loop to a walkway that leads into the 10-acre patch of wooded land known at Ole Miss as, simply, "The Grove."

If not his life, Easson is risking limbs in order to claim space for some of the 15 clients who pay him $100 and more to set up their tents and tables at spots where many have Groved (verb) for years.

"Sometimes, it's a game of Frogger out on that road," Easson says, "especially when they are getting out of the bars."

On this Friday night, before the Ole Miss football team's Homecoming game against The Citadel, myriad trucks and trailers crowd the sidewalk, there for the same reason as Easson and Eishen, sophomores at Ole Miss.

Officially, the Grove does not open until 6 a.m. Saturday, but the "gold rush" as Easson calls it, began at 8:30 p.m. the night before.

"They ain't supposed to be in," says one of the Cobra Security guards, "but if a lot of people start swarming the place, there ain't nothing you can do."

The hundreds of contractors and "independents," as Easson calls the do-it-yourself fans, erect tents in colors as varied as a Crayola box, unfold every kind of outdoor chair imaginable and assemble tables sturdy and tables tattered. The noise is that of a harbor at night -- metal clinking, hammers clacking, tops of open-air tents whooshing in the wind.

Spotlights 12 feet up the massive oaks, elms and magnolias shine down on the fronts of tents, many advertising their whereabouts:

HERNANDO REBELS

DALLAS REBELS

YAZOO REBELS

Thus is this "hallowed place," as dean of students Sparky Reardon has called the Grove, transformed from one where contemplation and solitude prevail for 359 days of the year into a festival that is equal parts cocktail party, pregame rally, networking fair and (not least) place of woo.

As Cole and Ben arrange chairs underneath the tent belonging to a group of Memphians led by Larry and Susan Bryan, they remark that it's slower than usual.

"It's early yet," Cole says. "The other thing that makes it slow is because we're not having that good of a football season, so it's not as many tents."

As they have for the past four years, since they were juniors in high school, Ben and Cole are doing their part to ensure a successful football season.

Winning is part of that, as at any school, but at Ole Miss, especially in the past 15 years, the program's reputation has become inextricably linked to the Grove.

When they finish unloading Cole's just-purchased old bread truck, it is 10:45, or just 12 hours before they come back to the Grove in another capacity.

Cole plays trombone and Ben plays trumpet in the Ole Miss band, the Pride of the South.

"When you come back (for game day)," Ben says, "you don't see it as the same thing."

"The atmosphere," says Cole, "is completely different."

• •

When Chip Frederick, a folklorist at the University of Indiana, visited The Grove to do research for his PhD -- the Grove experience as a uniquely American festival -- he encountered friendly folks offering a consistent greeting.

"Well, you sure picked a good day to be here."

That might refer to many things -- the weather, the opponent, an anticipated Rebel victory, the size of the crowd.

When Alabama visits Oxford for Saturday's 11 a.m. kickoff, it should refer to three of those four.

On the Saturday of The Citadel game, it included all four, so long as you have a light blanket, as many early-arriving Grovers certainly did this October Saturday that felt, finally, like football.

Along the Grove path leading down from Farley Hall, the school's journalism building, Larry Bryan is standing in front of the Ole Miss logoed tent Ben and Cole set up the night before. He is talking to Jimmy Brown, a banker from Grenada who, like Larry's wife, Susan, is from Winona, Miss.

"If you'll notice, this thing is sectioned off by community," Jimmy says, sweeping his arm out toward the open-air tents that sprouted overnight, like mushrooms in a forest. "People say, 'I'm going over here to Jackson.' Or, 'I'll be at Yazoo.' Or, 'Think I'll go to Brandon to see Ralph.'"

The two men, who went to Ole Miss in the early '70s, remember when there were no tents and you could look across and see folks picnicking from one end of the Grove to the other. They also remember when cars were still allowed and everyone tailgated.

For Walker Jones, an associate athletic director with the school and a football player in the '90s, that old Grove was where he met one of his best friends, a kid named Peyton. Peyton's daddy, a fellow named Archie, played football with Walker's father at Ole Miss.

"I can remember it like it was yesterday -- we were parked in there and the Mannings parked next to us," Jones says. "Peyton's sitting on the tailgate ... and what I remember is wearing our dads' jerseys and playing tackle football and dodging the cars and meeting all the people you meet."

In 1992, then-chancellor Gerald Turner prohibited cars for the Memphis State game because of expected rainstorms that did not materialize.

Brown and Bryan share the sentiments of almost every Rebel fan when they say, "When they cut that out, people were so upset but it's the best thing to happen."

The regulars at Bryan's tent -- five couples in all, including U.S. Atty. Jim Greenlee -- begin to arrive, pulling wheeled coolers and carrying trays and bags filled with food.

Pam Warman precedes her husband, Jack, to the tent just before 10. She wears a smart brown dress that would work fine at a nice dinner party; attire in the Grove runs from business casual to formal, with Ole Miss students setting the tone -- young men in coat and tie, young women revealing varying degrees of skin with their cocktail dresses.

Wearing a sticker that says "Delta Gamma (hearts) OUR REBELS," Pam begins arranging food, making corn salad and unwrapping a monstrous caramel praline cake from Lucchesi's. Their setup, simple and elegant and complete with flower arrangements, is more practical than some.

Around the way, another tent is opening bottles of champagne. Candelabras are not uncommon, and some even hang chandeliers from the center of tents.

"It takes some doings," Pam says. "It doesn't just come together. Susan and I have a mental telepathy thing going. Since it's been going for 25 years, we just know."

The Warmans and Bryans date their Grove traditions according to their children, who are now grown and expected to arrive closer to kickoff.

Doti was 3 when they tailgated near Farley Hall. Spencer was 5 that time he broke a window punting his football. They all became Ole Miss students, and, presumably, will one day bring their children to the Grove, too.

"We brainwashed them and we brainwashed our nieces and nephews, too," says Pam, who is a speech therapist for the Shelby County schools. "We were the first generation to go. My father went to Alabama and mother went to Auburn so I had to go to Ole Miss."

Next to them, the HERNANDO REBELS are arriving and readying for the day. A common sound in the morning is the rustling of plastic bags and the crisp unfurling of trash bags.

Gerald Lauderdale fusses with one that is uncommonly stubborn.

"This must be a dadgum Mississippi State garbage bag," he says.

Because these tents are along one of the sidewalks leading into the Grove, old friends are constantly stopping to say hello. Brad Downs, an Ole Miss alum from Memphis, comes by with his wife, Courtney, and their two young daughters.

Like many of the more recent Ole Miss alums, Downs fell in love with the Grove as a student. Now, he and his college buddies have stayed close in large part because they meet back at the Grove five or six times a year.

"It's a family and friends tradition we look forward to each year," Downs says

His friends share a tent just off the "Walk of Champions," where the football team parades through about two hours before each game.

For The Citadel game, the path is lined on each side about four deep with people, and as first-year coach Ed Orgeron leads his players down into the Grove, the crowd's energy starts to rise.

Game time is near.

"That's probably one of my greatest memories of college athletics is getting off that bus and walking down that path and seeing people forever," says Jones. "I remember the chill bumps."

Now, as associate AD, Jones finds himself reminding people that, nice as the Grove is, there's a reason for the occasion -- football.

In a year like this, with Ole Miss an unimpressive 2-3 with the meat of the schedule upcoming, that's more challenging.

"It has gotten big, but you don't want it to ever get bigger than the game," Jones says. "Yeah, embrace it and use it as a rallying point but once you get there, let's remind them, 'It's a game this afternoon.'

"If we could ever get all the crowd out of the Grove, we could average 70,000 or 80,000 a game."

• •

When he was doing fieldwork for his dissertation, Chip Frederick experienced football Saturdays at other schools -- Clemson, LSU, Auburn -- before settling on the Grove.

"The things that really stand out to me are the beauty of the actual site and the really, deep profound historicity of that site," Frederick says.

"Few college campuses can lay claim to the connections to the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement with the James Meredith admission on that site. Combine that with college football and the SEC, and you really have a depth of meaning there socially that is really pretty unique."

Frederick points out that the Grove once served casualties of war, and a Civil War cemetary is as close by as the football stadium. It was where riots erupted -- two men died -- when federal troops came to campus in 1962 to ensure the admission of Meredith, the school's first black student.

For Frederick, the Grove also serves as a setting in which to discuss food, music, the history of Southern college football, the Mississippi social order and what he calls the "mating ritual." An Iowa Hawkeye fan, he is clearly fond of the Grove.

When Frederick conducted his fieldwork, the Confederate flag wars, stirred by former coach Tommy Tuberville's bold stand against them, were at their zenith.

It is telling that, in 2005, the flag controversy is now part of Ole Miss's history, not its future.

The defiance most prevalent in the Grove these days concerns the decision by Chancellor Robert Khayat -- former Rebel footballer himself, boyfriend to two Miss Americas as a student -- to nudge the school's old mascot, Colonel Reb, into retirement.

"Colonel Reb is MY Mascot," proclaim stickers affixed to many a button-down shirt or dress strap, far outnumbering the few visible Confederate flags.

The flags are now like weeds in this setting, so few in number they no longer seem native to the occasion.

Still, Frederick is too rigorous in his field work not to have noticed other less desirable characteristics of the Grove, specifically the racial dynamic. He describes, accurately, a nearly all-white crowd where the few black groups in attendance stay on the periphery.

Unlike many others, Frederick discusses this in dispassionate sentences and goes into the the complicated set of social and historical circumstances that go together to make Ole Miss, Ole Miss.

Since writing the dissertation, in 1998, Frederick has made it back to The Grove, and he finds his friend Sparky Reardon, dean of students, still trying to make progress on the racial makeup of Ole Miss's signature event.

"It is still there to be worked on," Frederick says. "Ole Miss belongs to every citizen of that state. ... I know it is something they are committed to working on, to make it better for all fans."

• •

About 75 minutes before kickoff, Cole Easson and Ben Eishen are back in the Grove, this time as members of the Ole Miss marching band.

They will return later, to collect money and break down the tents, tables and chairs from their 15 groups, but right now they are helping rev up this Homecoming crowd with favorites like the "Forward Rebels" and "To Dixie With Love" (a melding of "Dixie" and the "Battle Hymn of The Republic").

Eishen arches back his trumpet for "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah."

When they get to the "look away, look away" part, Easson and the trombone section tilt up and back, up and back.

When the band finishes, much of the crowd begins heading for Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium.

Back in the Grove, the Bryans, Warmans and Greenlees are preparing to leave. Food is covered, coolers are stuffed underneath tablecloths and conversations concluded.

Susan is telling the story of how she finally abandoned her Mississippi State loyalties -- she was there 31/2 years -- and fully embraced her husband's team.

In the '80s, when Kent Austin quarterbacked the Rebels, Susan's son, who is named Austin, drew a picture of his favorite Rebel and determined he would hand it to him during the Rebel Walk.

When Kent not only took the picture from Austin but got down on one knee to talk to her son, well, let's say Susan (hearts) Rebels forevermore.

"Now how could I not root for that boy after that?" Susan says.

Their group blends into the Grove crowd streaming toward the stadium, and large numbers of fans are still outside the stadium when the national anthem comes over the loudspeakers.

As it finishes, military jets roar low over the stadium, three sets of them in all.

Many children clutch their ears, terrified by the awful noise.

Lucky are the fans protected by headphones they wear to hear the Rebels radio broadcast.

"What a gorgeous day for football," intones David Kellum, the voice of the Rebels.

Or, as they might say back in the Grove: It's a great day to be there.