Buckeye, Ariz. – The line went from the cash register below the Buckeye Beer sign, out the door across the street from Buckeye Pharmacy and snaked around the corner into a dirt lot not far from Buckeye Elementary. That’s home of the Falcons.
Believe it or not, they’re not the Fighting Tressels.
In line was a Buckeye invasion of Buckeye, a dusty farm town that’s booming as a Phoenix bedroom community. But it never boomed like it did Saturday. Two days before the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes meet the second-ranked Florida Gators in the BCS national championship game in suburban Glendale on Monday night, Buckeye held Buckeye Days.
Anyone with an Ohio driver’s license could come to Beard’s Western and Country Store and get a free T-shirt reading “Buckeye Championship Series. 2007. Buckeye, Ariz.” Or, the more caustic can get one reading “Ohiozona: Where Gators go to die.” Without proof of statehood, they were $5.
Consequently, the main drag of Monroe Street outside Beard’s was packed with a sea of crimson – men, women, children, dogs – all lined up in a fashion show of Ohio State garb. Buckeyes T-shirts. Buckeyes sweat shirts. Buckeyes ball caps. Of course, also prevalent were those godforsaken necklaces made up of real buckeyes, the poisonous nuts that no fashion-challenged Buckeyes fan can live without.
(Psst! Memo to Buckeyes fans: Buckeye isn’t a fan of the Buckeyes.)
“I am now,” conceded Levi Beard, owner of Beard’s and Buckeye’s vice mayor. This is Buckeye’s second Buckeye Days, inspired by Ohio State’s four appearances in the Fiesta Bowl and the BCS championship game here in five years. Ohio State has spent so much time in Arizona, coach Jim Tressel is developing an accent.
In actuality, however, Buckeye’s 35,000 residents don’t know Buckeyes stars Troy Smith from Antonio Smith. The residents are more concerned with the cotton harvest they just completed and the migration of Californians and Phoenicians pouring into town for the cheaper housing 35 miles west of downtown Phoenix.
But if Ohio tourists want to hit the stores, eat at The Flat Tortilla and pose for pictures next to the Buckeye police car and Welcome to Buckeye sign, that’s fine with them.
“They’re the same exact people who live right here in Buckeye,” said Beard, a jolly, boyish-faced 50-year-old who has lived his whole life in Buckeye. “Friendly. Easy going. Well, my gosh, they’re waiting in line a half an hour for a free T-shirt and no one’s hung me yet.”
Not all of the Buckeyes fans arrived with Ohio license plates. Many are Ohio transplants living in Arizona, for obvious reasons.
“Arizona’s population has way more people from Ohio,” said Jennifer Ensign, an Olmsted Falls, Ohio, native now living in suburban Gilbert. “I meet people from Ohio daily. People from Ohio retire here; people from Florida stay in Florida.”
That explains how Buckeye became Buckeye. In 1885 Malin Jackson, a transplant from Sidney, Ohio, named the unincorporated town’s canal Buckeye after his home state and changed the town’s name from Sidney to Buckeye in 1910. It remained a sleepy farm town with tired cactus gardens and adobe architecture with only 6,000- 7,000 people in 2000. Its one claim to fame – until Ohio State made its first Fiesta Bowl – was being the home of novelist Upton Sinclair.
Then a white-collar force fleeing inflated real estate discovered the wide-open spaces and stormed here like an Ohio State sweep into the end zone. Locals estimate Buckeye will have 100,000 people by 2010.
“Growing up, everyone here knew you,” Beard said. “It’s been like that up to the last couple, three years. It was extremely quiet, and now we’re starting to see people move here from all over the country. It’s a different feel.”
That includes at least four Buckeyes fans Beard knows who became Buckeye fans and bought homes here after visiting during a Fiesta Bowl.
One person who won’t be moving here is Scott Van Vleet. He was the lone human in Buckeye on Saturday wearing a blue Florida Gators shirt. A 1996 Florida graduate living in nearby Goodyear, he decided to travel the 10 miles to Buckeye for the festivities instead of attending a Desert Gators function in suburban Scottsdale.
And to experience, um, Ohio State fans’ hospitality.
“One of them gave me an actual buckeye,” Van Vleet said from a vacant lot where an eight-piece band played the Ohio State fight song. “He did tell me it was poisonous. He said, ‘Ah, you’re probably OK if you want to eat it.”‘
In the distance, scarlet-clad fans young and old were screaming “O-HI-O!” while toting free T-shirts around town. Then one startled the masses. “Go Gators!” he screamed. “And take Michigan with you!”
