By By BLAIR DEDRICK ORTMANN
July 28, 2008
Posted: July 28, 2008, 10:37 PM CDT
PORT NECHES – Some Port Neches-Groves season ticket holders, hoping to trade their seats for even better ones in the new stadium, started lining up in lawn chairs outside the school district’s administration building a day and half before they can start swapping at 8 a.m. today.
The line had attracted 10 people by late Monday afternoon.
“Once an Indian, always and Indian,” said purple-shirt-clad Dinker Wallace of Port Neches, who was one of four who have been waiting since 9:30 p.m. Sunday.
Wallace was waiting to trade tickets for her parents, Edith and J.D. Burchfield, whose seat assignments had changed with the stadium reconstruction.
“They’re 83 and they still come to games,” she said. “They have a great-granddaughter just starting high school this year, so they’re excited to see another one go through.”
Wallace graduated from PN-G in 1969 and her daughter graduated in 1988.
“It’s in the blood,” she said.
Billy Waller, a 1987 graduate, came prepared for the night with his cooler, a book to read and his very own, never-been-used portable toilet.
“You can use it,” he told the others. “I just picked it up, so it’s clean.”
Waller came because, like the others, he “just wanted better seats.”
“You can’t do one thing and please 6,000 people,” he said, referring to the seating changes that came with the new stadium, although he said he was happy about the stadium itself. “I was raised here, graduated here, moved off – this is the place to be.”
The others all agreed: There’s no other place to be than the Port Neches-Groves area, especially for football.
“We’re hated everywhere we go,” Waller said. “As many people as pack the home side here, we take that many people on the road. We support our kids.”
That support was obvious in the devotion that brought them out to sit in the heat and wait for the best tickets they could get – many, like Eulene Werner, already wearing their purple.
“I have worn purple on Friday when there’s football games since 1978,” she said proudly. “Everyone loves Port Neches.”
There are more than 1,400 season tickets for those who don’t already have them. They go on sale at 8 a.m. Wednesday at the district’s administration building, 620 Avenue C in Port Neches.
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