PULLMAN, Wash. -- “Can you give me the eggbeater?” Debbie Hughes called down to nobody in particular from the steps of a trailer.

An eggbeater? What’s an eggbeater doing at a college-football tailgate?

Well, it was part of the ensemble last Saturday in an RV lot hard by Stadium Way in Pullman, before Washington met Washington State in an Apple Cup now positioned among the early games of September.

I’d ventured by a tailgate to check in on the temperature of some staunch WSU fans I’d met in 2021 in the process of hatching “Too Good to Be Through.” They’re died-in-the-wool crimson, as loyal to WSU as they are to each other, mostly retired farmers but also an ex-dentist and here or there, a businessman in Pullman.

Setting out for dinner along Stadium Way Thursday night, almost 48 hours before the game, we chanced to see a blue Winnebago in the choice RV lot -- the early arrivals for the big weekend against the Huskies.

“I’ll bet that’s them,” I said.

We hung an unscheduled left, and sure enough, it was them – Mike Sodorff, a fourth-generation farmer south of town on the road to Lewiston; Girard Clark, whose farm is up the road toward Albion off the road toward Colfax, and whose granddad played for the Cougars in the 1916 Rose Bowl; Bob Ransom, a potato farmer from Pasco; and Doug Hughes, another Pasco resident, a retired shop teacher and husband of the lady looking for the eggbeater.

We accepted gin and tonics and they told me a tale reflecting the shared fellowship and camaraderie and relationships around a football weekend here.

Years ago of a Friday night, the WSU band would make its way down the side street by that RV lot, and would stop and belt out the Cougar fight song for the benefit of those donors like Sodorff and his friends.

One night, they passed the hat for the band and told the band leader, “This’ll be a little drinking money for you guys.”

“Not for drinking,” they were told. “We need it for food.”

Thus was born a tradition. That pocket of RV owners would spring for, and prepare, a meal for the band. Saturday morning, that included pancakes (thus the eggbeater), Bob Ransom’s specialty of baked apples, and, courtesy of the local Marriott’s largesse, hash browns with onions smothered in melted Cougar Gold cheese.

Sodorff estimated his group has been cooking for the band maybe 15 years. It’s a cool tradition wrapped around Pac-12 football weekends, but now, only one of those two customs endures.

Cougar football is in sort of a holding pattern this year – the next home game is against Toledo, of all teams – as it transitions to a reimagined Pac-12.

The nostalgic among us can’t help but call up some of the neon moments at Martin Stadium from the genuine Pac-12 era, things that occurred just a couple of hundred yards from the Winnebago: The 17-point-underdog Cougars waylaying an otherwise-Pasadena-bound UW team in 1982; a 32-31 screamer in the 1988 Apple Cup, the Cougars winning; USC, with Junior Seau and Todd Marinovich, breaking WSU’s heart in Mike Price’s maiden year of 1989 with a field-length drive and two-point conversion to thwart the unbeaten Cougars, 18-17; Drew Bledsoe, flinging darts in the sideways snow to beat Washington, 42-23, in ‘92; the unforgettable 2002 triple-overtime howler, when the Huskies took down a No. 3-ranked WSU team, 29-26.

I asked Sodorff what will be lost with the departure of the Pac-12. All that history, he conceded. And the brilliance on the field. But the tailgating will go on, the Winnebago – shared by Sodorff, Clark and the dentist, Ken Gibson – will still be part of the landscape. The friendships aren’t diminished by the insanity of conference realignment.

He put it simply: “We’re Cougs.”

A couple of days later, Washington finished strong and won, 59-24, and it had an ominous feel to it, as if these times against the Huskies might shortly be a thing of the past.

The prevailing model among the Power Four football schools now appears to be nine-game league schedules and a non-league 10th game against a like adversary. Indeed, Washington has set up a home-and-home against Tennessee in 2029-30. Factor in the Huskies’ stated desire to play at least seven home games, and it’s impossible to accommodate WSU in a home-and-home every year.

The pact between the UW and WSU runs through 2028, but there’s chilling talk of the Huskies buying out the Cougars before it’s over. It’s not as though Washington is financially flush, but the Cougars are desperately cash-poor.

Wednesday in Seattle, Washington athletic director Pat Chun was on KJR-FM and was asked about the future of the Apple Cup beyond 2028. Not very convincingly, he said it was important to the state, and he said Washington would have to wait to see what sort of “mandate” the Big Ten wants in its members’ scheduling. His was hardly an impassioned plea to continue.

Tuesday, meanwhile, I checked in with Sodorff, and for a minute, we talked about something that often occupies farmers – the weather. Seems that the recent 80-degree-plus days gave way unexpectedly to an overnight freeze early in the week, putting a crimp in the pumpkin crop in his side lot.

Over here, the weather wins. The farmers adjust. It’s a good recipe for the Cougars.