A salute to Gasparilla and the Kumquat festivals

Posted Jan 30, 2010 by Tom McEwen

Updated Jan 30, 2010 at 09:25 PM

Well, they held the Kumquat Festival in Dade City yesterday and the Gasparilla Parade on Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa. 

The Lord showed no mercy, he sent weather as lousy in one place as the other—rain, wind, rain, more wind—but deterred neither from being held.  They got wet, they threw their beads, ate kumquats, drank their beverages, and had about as good a time as if the sun had shown as it usually has in the past. 

The Gasparilla Parade went on in the rain, the stalwart participants not discouraged in the least.  They threw their beads and the people gathered them on the sideline as if they were precious.  They were not, they were souvenirs of days gone by and of yesterday which will now be remembered as another Gasparilla in Tampa and Festival in Dade City.  Saw no one discouraged in any way by the bum weather, which blew into the bay almost precisely at parade start time and never relented. 

Saw no one complaining, saw no one leaving early. 

Now in Tampa at the Gasparilla, the viewing audience was down.  It was an uncomfortable day, though no one seemed to mind.  They got their souvenirs, the beads, and will treasure them for a couple of days, then be hung over a mirror in the bedroom.

Perhaps the best part of the Gasparilla was the forthright involvement of the marchers and hornblowers and bead throwers.  Saw no one weeping, saw no one with a bump on a head, saw no one chewing a person out.  For the cops, it was an easy day and for Tampa, well, it was a winner.  The weather threw its best shot at the parade and just lost.  The parade people won again and this celebration will be held for a long, long time.  It is harmless, it’s fun, it’s a hoot.  Even the band members carrying the tubas seemed to be sashaying with a little more style.  They seem to be determined to forget the state of this union overall.  Parades will do that.

I grew up in Wauchula.  We all in Wauchula wanted to come to the Gasparilla parade in Tampa.  My principal in high school was an Annapolis man.  He warned all if they skipped school to attend the Gasparilla parade, they would receive an unexcused absence.  My late sister, Ruth, and late brother Red, were both active in Gasparilla, they asked our family to come. Mother and Daddy drove us over in our 1938 Buick sedan and I got the promised unexcused absence.  It meant I had to take the final exam in my senior year even though grades would exempt me, but I did all right. 

Mr. Chapman did indeed keep his word - as he would if he felt it necessary to take his belt to any of us students. 

I saw one other parade as a kid, but then no more until I came to Tampa to work for the old Times and then the Tribune.  In later years, I was in the parade twice, both with George Steinbrenner, Leonard Levy and the late Ron Moore and Jim Kynes.  We came in on the pirate ship to disembark in our downtown area, walked in the parade in our Pirate outfits and then excused ourselves at Platt Street and went to have lunch at Selenas in Hyde Park with Alan Salmon.  The late Ron Moore was as upbeat a man as I ever knew. He smiled along the entire route of the parade and kept Steinbrenner and me in a good mood on a chilly day.  We all miss Ron Moore. 

But Gasparillas are like that, full of little adventures and sideshows not generally reported.  In other days, another place for that sort of misdemeanor was, as is now, the International Mall of Dick and Cornelia Corbett. Corbett was with me on many of those trips. He loved Gasparilla as much as anyone I knew other than Ron Moore and Joe Taggart.  Steinbrenner tolerated it, but did enjoy the opportunity to swagger a bit in a pirate outfit along Bayshore with the crowd cheering all. 

Yesterday’s Steinbrenner was Mike Alsott, about as popular a player as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ever had.

So Gasparilla has come and gone again, as has the Kumquat Festival. It was fun and will return next year.  I am going to bet you there will always be a Gasparilla and a Kumquat Festival.

Babaloo!