Seafest: country and an orchestra Classic(al) country

Hudson's Seafest makes no excuses for its down-to-earth roots, but there's an orchestra, too.

By ERIN SULLIVAN, Times Staff Writer
Published November 12, 2007

Luke's all set for the dog costume contest Saturday at the Seafest. He lost to a dog dressed as a pumpkin. The Marlboros? "He's trying to quit," his owner, Suzanne Sweeten, said. Steamed crawdads, below, were among the many food items offered.
	[Zach Boyden-Holmes | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Zach Boyden-Holmes | Times] Steamed crawdads were among the many food items offered.

HUDSON - The tent is next to a row of food vendors - chicken on a stick, fried gator tails, fried fish, fried shrimp, seafood quesadillas, turkey legs - and you slip in a small opening in the back and find yourself swaying with an orchestra - an orchestra! - here, in the middle of a flea market festival where big sellers of the day are $12 tank tops reading: "Hell yeah I'm a redneck woman" and "Check me for ticks."

It's Saturday afternoon at the Hudson Seafest, a three-day event created by volunteers in 1984 to raise money for local projects and charities. It really is on the grounds of a flea market and, other than hosting the Richey Community Orchestra, doesn't try to lie about its roots. The beer is domestic. The food is fried and piled high, with a few oddities like a booth that sells just pickles and another that sells only tiny hot dogs.

The Cub Scouts have a booth with little boys in uniform mumbling, "Would you like to buy a soda ... ?" to people who, for the most part, just keep on walking. For $1, people can see Sampson The Giant Horse Taller than Bigfoot! A Gentle Giant! who allegedly weighs 2,850 pounds, scarfs 150 pounds of food a day and drinks 25 gallons of water. Sampson, a Belgian horse that loves apples, is 20 hands tall. He is really big.

"Dog, dog," says Allysen Butler, 1, to her mother, Tina.

"No, not a dog. A horse," says Tina, 25, who came to the festival with her husband and two children. She is due with her third child any moment, another girl to be named Chelsey, and hoped that walking around might get her labor going.

"I'm dilated," she says. "And in pain."

They live in Spring Hill. This is their first time to Seafest.

"It's ..." Tina says, searching for words. "It's okay."

The vendors sell pink cowboy hats, some kind of cure-all Emu oil, lamps made of glued glittered sand and shirts with sayings like, "I'm rude, crude and often lewd. Yet, oddly enough, I'm available." The games are predictable, run by guys who lure wallets (um, parents) near for kids to toss an object here or there and get a stuffed toy.

But in the shade of the main tent, for a little while, it is a different world. In the back, volunteers serve up fried fish, hushpuppies, coleslaw and beans in a sweet, church-dinner kind of manner.

A few hundred people sit quietly at tables, listening; violins, cellos, tubas, flutes, french horns; men and women in white shirts and black slacks, shined shoes tapping to the beat, up on a stage, above the sandy dirt.

An older couple sits in front, meals finished, both in sneakers and slacks, he with silver and charcoal hair and she with short ginger curls, and he wraps his arms around her, resting his chin on her shoulder, as they both face the music. He whispers something in her ear and she laughs, head tilting back to his, and he hugs her tighter.

Erin Sullivan can be reached at esullivan@sptimes.com or (813) 909-4609.

[Last modified November 11, 2007, 21:33:51]