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A fun, four-wheelin', gun-firin'Fourth

Where else but here does Independence Day mean a golf cart and pickup parade, mermaids and a machine gun shoot?

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published July 5, 2006

SPRING HILL - The sun didn't take the day off for the Fourth of July holiday. It blazed and it baked Hernando County, even as people tried to celebrate Independence Day.

The day's festivities began at 9 a.m. with High Point's annual parade.

A procession of pickups, golf carts and horses set off from the gate of the retirement development to the community center, some three quarters of a mile away.

Ed Hubbard, 64, watched the parade with sweat beading on his scalp.

"We're all crazy - otherwise we wouldn't be in Florida," he said with a wink.

Anna Willemsen, 68, puttered by in a golf cart decorated red, white and blue. An immigrant from Holland, she cries every time she goes to a flag-raising ceremony.

"There's not a Fourth of July I don't go," Willemsen said, as she tried to coax a smile from her friend's 4- and 5-year-old granddaughters riding next to her. "I'll keep doing it until I keel over."

Further back in the parade, Sam Frontera, 66, declared that next year she would add flowers and other accoutrements to the ribbons on her golf cart; the United States deserves it. "It's a great country, but some people don't think so."

The parade, which included deputies and firefighters, ended with the American Legion raising the flag and the whole crowd singing God Bless America.

Meanwhile, at the Hernando Sportsman's Club off U.S. 19, about 15 miles away, there were no golf carts in sight.

The patriotism was billowing like gun smoke.

Every Fourth of July, the club holds a "machine gun shoot" at its open-air range. About 120 shooters brought expensive machine guns. They fired on five used cars, as well as life-sized targets of Osama bin Laden and Hulk Hogan.

Nearly 1,500 spectators came out Tuesday, according to organizers.

"This is the one day the press can't say anything bad about guns," said Randie Rickert, 57, the club's president. "It's fun celebrating the Second Amendment."

On the sandy range, a bulldozer pushed the cars into position. Then the range officers gave instructions to fire.

A buzz of bullets, like the sound of a loud electric razor, echoed around the compound.

The car windows shattered. Then the cars caught fire. And still the shooting continued.

After an hour, everyone took a short break to walk up to the targets and admire the damage, with the loudspeaker issuing a peremptory warning: "Don't touch anything sharp or hot."

Rickert estimates that each participant spent between $1,000 and $5,000 in ammunition for the few hours of shooting.

The crowd favorite was a mini-gun mounted on a Humvee. The Humvee, in turn, was planted underneath a tent for shade. The gun's owner sipped from his Coke bottle, then sent a barrage of bullets toward a Ford Taurus. The crowd clapped.

"Every once in a while there are things that are unique to Hernando County," said Ron Peters, 47, of Spring Hill. "We don't have a lot to choose from, but we do have some unique things."

Some people looking for a uniquely Hernando activity without all the firepower headed off to see the mermaids at the Weeki Wachee Springs and Buccaneer Bay water park.

The park gets as many as 800 visitors during its extended hours each Fourth of July. And Tuesday afternoon it was packed with bathers.

"We were on our way to Chassahowitzka to go canoeing and noticed that Weeki Wachee was staying open later," said Jack Vines, 37, of St. Petersburg as he stood watching his 5-year-old daughter play in the sand.

Beach time seemed like as good a way as any to pass the Fourth of July and besides, he said, his daughter got to see the mermaids put on a special, patriotic show.

Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or 352 754-6114.

[Last modified July 4, 2006, 23:13:32]