Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla builds its own wicked pirate lore while celebrating legendary pirate Jose Gaspar.
By AMY SCHERZER
Published February 6, 2004
What could be better than a cold beer and a blustering pirate tale? With 100 years of shenanigans, Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, the mother of all krewes, has a boatload of 'em.
Have you heard the one about the queen who wore red flannel longjohns underneath her ball gown? How about the pirate who shot his best friend while horsing around after the parade?
Bet a million doubloons those first pirates never thought their pranks would become Tampa legends decades later.
Open the treasure chest and share some of those memorable moments with YMKG.
Hot foot
Getting to Gasparilla has always been tricky, even for the pirates.
Between road closures, traffic and drunken pedestrians, it's no surprise some pirates might miss their cues.
About 20 years ago, Pirate John Boushall was headed to the Platt Street bridge to meet then-Mayor Bob Martinez when the Jose Gasparilla hit a logjam in the channel.
Rather than be late nabbing the keys to the city, he asked the tug pulling the boat to drop him off at shore.
The tug got as close as the Capt. Anderson, which was loaded with the royal party and docked at the Tarpon Weighing Station on Bayshore Boulevard near Publix. Boushall planned to take a shortcut through the boat, then sprint to Platt to meet the mayor.
It seemed like a good idea until he jumped through an open window and landed on top of a hot stove.
The cooks screamed. His boots sizzled. Boushall leaped to the floor and hotfooted it out of there to meet the mayor on time.
A Bud Light, please, for Trigger
It seems people will go to any length to get a drink during Gasparilla.
While riding horseback as a parade marshal sometime in the 1960s, former Pirate John McWhirter developed a powerful thirst.
He needed a beer. Badly.
Rather than wait, he and his horse took a detour to the Magnolia Tavern, a neighborhood dive now owned by the Hyde Park United Methodist Church.
There weren't any hitching posts outside, so he rode inside and placed his order. "People get out of your way when you're on a horse," he said.
Not everyone. The horse stepped on someone's foot, who later threatened to sue the krewe, McWhirter recalls.
Fortunately, McWhirter wasn't beached (piratese for being kicked out of the parade for a year) "but I should have been."
Lesson learned: pack your own beer.
Bang, bang!
No one ever said being a pirate was danger-free.
In fact, it can be downright painful.
Just ask Ted DeLaVergne.
In 1974, after finishing the parade, he and lifelong friend Jimmy Warren decided to hit a Hyde Park bar to continue the fun. On the way, DeLaVergne decided to make Warren dance. Cowboy style.
"He thought it would be entertaining to shoot at my feet," said Warren.
When DeLaVergne ran out of blanks, Warren pulled out his 38-special. DeLaVergne took off running, but Warren caught up with him.
"I stuck my gun in his right rear pocket," said Warren. "Shot him in his fat jelly ass."
Party over.
The men walked to Warren's house, a few blocks away, to inspect the damage.
"A grievous rent," said Warren. "Gruesome."
They left a message for DeLaVergne's father-in-law, Dr. Hank Wright, at the yacht club, then had another drink. To ease the pain, of course.
Wright called back laughing and said he'd better take a look. Bayshore Boulevard was still packed with parade-goers so they decided to drive to the Yacht Club on the Crosstown Expressway, which was under construction.
It was a rough ride; DeLaVergne felt every bump on the gravel road.
Wright examined the wound and called a surgeon, Pirate Leffie Carlton Jr., who met them at Tampa General Hospital.
"There was no emergency room, so they put us in the cadaver room," said Warren.
DeLaVergne's wife, Robin, was surprisingly understanding, Warren said.
"I know it was self-defense," she told him. "I'm just glad you didn't shoot him in the front."
Her attitude changed the next day, when the anesthesia wore off and she discovered the dressing on his derriere needed frequent changing.
"You shot him, you change him," she told Warren, who performed nurse duty twice a day for the next six weeks.
Through it all, the men's friendship never took a hit. In fact, DeLaVergne presented Warren with a trophy he had made of driftwood embedded with spent bullets and gold coins. On the plaque: The Gasparilla Bicentennial Marksmanship Award.
"Ted's my dearest friend - was then and still is," Warren said.
Two decades later, DeLaVergne says it's just too painful to talk about.
Parade proposal
The smell of gun powder isn't the only thing in the air on Gasparilla. Love is, too.
In 1991, Pirate Preston Farrior proposed to Queen Laura Ferman of the Ferman Motors family while she was riding on the royal float down Bayshore Boulevard.
Farrior pulled out a ring, dropped to one knee and gave his new fiancee a kiss. Then jumped off the float to rejoin his pirate pals.
Their fathers - Rex Farrior Jr., Gasparilla king in 1973, and Jim Ferman Jr., king in 1987 - congratulated them at the next intersection.
The couple married Nov. 7, 1992.
A few weeks after the parade, Cupid struck Queen Laura's sister during the Gasparilla coronation ball. As soon as Janice Ferman was crowned the 79th queen, Pirate Steve Straske proposed.
Why then? Gasparilla rules say a woman can't run for the court if she's engaged.
The Straskes married Dec. 19, 1992.
Depressed pirates
Times can get tight, even for pirates.
In 1929, about 20 dropped out because they couldn't pay the $50 annual dues.
According to Gasparilla lore, they formed a band of ex-pirates, sailed in a beat-up old boat and snatched the keys to the poorhouse.
Earl meets king
Pirates don't always steal the show.
In 1956, England's Earl of Hillsborough and his wife, the Countess, attended the Gasparilla coronation ball.
What warranted this royal visit? The local historical society had invited them to Tampa to present the deed to Hillsborough County, which was named after the Earl's great-great-grandfather. The elder Earl had received the land grant from King George III.
After presenting the deed, the Earl hit the coronation ball to crown the late King Frank Frankland and Queen Lynda Helms. The couple was reportedly the first royal pair of an American festival to be crowned by real nobility.
Red-faced and red-legged
Queen Lynda "Puddin" Helms (now Mrs. Jack Boyet) found herself on the front page of the Miami Herald on Feb. 5, 1957.
Caught red-legged in Minnesota.
There she was, in a strapless evening gown, with red flannel longjohns peeking out from the bottom.
Helms had represented Ye Mystic Krewe at a Winter Carnival in St. Paul, a city so cold she remembers an orchid pinned to her coat froze the minute she got off the plane.
That's probably why she didn't realize other participants were teasing when they told her they wore long underwear under their dresses. To this Southern girl, it made sense.
The joke came out as she lifted her skirt while approaching steps at the ball.
News photographers snapped the picture.
"They laughed at the red underwear on this Florida cracker," she said.
Silenced guns
They say the show must go on. Unless there's a war.
During its 100-year history, Gasparilla has periodically gone dark due to fighting overseas.
Pirates canceled festivities in 1918 and 1919 because of World War I and in 1942-46 because of World War II.
The last royals crowned before WWII, the late King James T. Swann Jr. and Queen Ruth Binnicker (now Mrs. Jack Eckerd), reigned from 1941 to 1947.
It seems sharing the throne for an extended time was a good thing. The king and queen married during the war and had a Gasparilla princess, Kathy Swann (Mrs. Robert) Brooks.
Drunk as a skunk
Most people know Jimmy Dean as the king of sausage.
Many pirates remember him as the guy who saved singer Robert Goulet from huge embarrassment when he got drunk at a coronation ball in the mid-70s.
Former Pirate Buddy Dean and his wife, Pauline, (no relation to Jimmy Dean) had invited the sausage maker/singer to the ball as their guest. Buddy Dean was a food distributor introducing Jimmy Dean's sausage line.
As Goulet drunkenly took to the stage, Jimmy Dean grabbed the microphone and finished the show.
The Krewe was grateful and invited Dean to be the headliner the next year. Dean agreed and brought with him his friends, the Oak Ridge Boys.
Again with the guns
Ye Mystic Krewe isn't all about Tampa. Sometimes it hits the road.
Like in 1977, when the Krewe took part in the Orange Bowl parade in Miami.
Capt. Pierce Wood recalls the float coming up short at a toll booth.
"We'd had some afternoon libations and not one of us had a cent on him," said Richard Clarke, Gasparilla king at the time.
Rather than apologize and set up a payment plan, "We fired our guns and rode right through," said Clarke.
They weren't invited back.
Say hello to Bruce
When the NFL awarded a franchise to Tampa in 1975, the late Bucs owner Hugh Culverhouse asked Pirate Lamar Sparkman to design a logo for the team.
Sparkman drew on his Gasparilla experience to create a winking, sabre-biting, orange-and-red feather-capped swashbuckler, who came to be known as "Bucco Bruce."
"They didn't want a snaggle-toothed, hairy-faced pirate," said Sparkman, a former Tampa Tribune illustrator. "They wanted a true buccaneer."
Bruce graced the Bucs' helmets until 1997. Few lamented his demise.
Many credit the new logo, a red pirate flag with a menacing skull and crossed swords, with improving the team's fortunes. At least up until this year.
Perfectly innocent, he says
News about Gasparilla debauchery travels far and wide.
Sometimes too far.
In the '60s, pirates attended a pre-parade luncheon at the former Curtis Hixon Hall on Ashley Drive. On the menu: topless dancers.
As they sat down to eat, orchestra leader Jack Golly asked unsuspecting pirate John McWhirter to come to the stage and dance with the show girls he had hired.
"They were fully clothed at the time," McWhirter swears.
Not for long.
They danced right out of their tops, he recalls, catching the eye of a newspaper reporter jotting it all down.
The story hit the news wires.
McWhirter had some explaining to do.
"My wife's relatives read about the incident in Georgia," he said.
- SOURCES: Interviews with longtime pirates, royalty and the book Gasparilla 1904-79 by Nancy Turner, a Gasparilla debutante in 1969.
Gasparilla by the digits
Number of Ye Mystic Krewe pirates aboard the Jose Gasparilla: Up to 600
Number of cans of beer on the ship: Unknown
Number of Cuban sandwiches: 700
Number of pieces of fried chicken: 700
Number of boats in the flotilla: About 3,000
Number of Port-o-lets along the parade route: 400
Number of parade units: 112
- Sources: Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla and EventMakers.
