Southland Residents Celebrate the Fourth : Independence Day: Despite gray skies, parades, barbecues and other events attract the patriotic and even the indifferent.

The spirit of 1776 was abroad in Southern California on Sunday’s Fourth of July holiday:

It lay under a red, white and blue beach umbrella, watching the Americanism parade go by in Pacific Palisades.

It stuffed its face with hamburgers in a dozen parks across Los Angeles.

It drifted in the air with the rich smell of barbecue served to 650 disabled veterans and their families at a North Hills veteran’s hospital. And it cavorted in a San Fernando park, where Mexican folk dancers proved that the tapestry of American life is stitched with thread from many cultures.

From people who were just relieved to get a holiday and didn’t care whether it was the third or the fifth to people who got misty-eyed at the sight of Old Glory, Angelenos turned out under clouds that broke into thin sun to disport themselves, eating, listening to music, watching horse shows and car shows and hayrides, playing softball and Mexican bingo, and finally settling down for fireworks.

“It never really occurred to me that today was the Fourth of July,” said Sharon Weldon, a 39-year-old computer consultant from Monrovia, who sat watching trick riders at Los Angeles Equestrian Park festivities in Burbank. “This just seemed like a fun thing to do.”

To 8-year-old Joshua Uko, of Carson, playing games with his family in Pasadena’s Brookside Park, “it’s when the presidents graduate.”

The meaning may elude some, but the pleasure of the day was unfading.

In North Hills, where the Sunland-Tujunga Elks sponsored its seventh annual barbecue meal for disabled veterans, the unwavering commitment to the nation’s veterans touched volunteers, recipients and their families.

“We have a fellowship because we are all veterans and I’ve met people from World War II to the Persian Gulf, and we still share that common bond,” said Kevin Martin of Arleta, who sought help from drug dependency at the hospital.

The Fourth spoke with many voices. Some were filled with patriotic pride, some defiantly exercising the freedom to be cynical.

At Pacific Palisades’ annual parade, where the parking lots didn’t seem as full as usual to one vendor, the Seysarths, Eric and Jennifer, drove over from Eagle Rock for their third year as spectators, because they like the Midwest feel of it.

“You can put things behind you for a day. You can be unabashedly American and not worry about it,” he said. “This is a day to wave the flag and not feel like an idiot,” a kind of pleasant escapism from the nation’s problems.

Out in Griffith Park, where the barbecue smoke seemed almost as heavy as the morning cloud cover, Walter Benoni, an Alabaman, was picknicking with the Los Angeles family he married into. Independence Day “freed this country,” he said. “But I heard Janis Joplin say, ‘As soon as we find someone to take the taxes off us, then we’ll really be free.’ ”

Up in Newhall Park, Brad Accosta, 69, liked the Cajun music they were playing well enough, listening from a lawn chair, an American flag stuck in his golf cap. But it’s just not the same. “You don’t hear patriotic music any more . . . you’re politically incorrect to show your patriotism, and I think that’s bad because other groups can show theirs.”

For Lino Soronio, 29, who was born in the Philippines and now lives in Santa Clarita, the music didn’t mean nearly as much as what the nation celebrates this day.

“It’s very impressive for me,” he said. “This is a good thing.”

Although auto mechanic Richard Horner, cooking hot links and chicken at Griffith Park, said he never thought of the Fourth as much more than a day off for barbecuing, Patricia Kennedy of Pasadena, out with her husband and business partners in the park, says she is “disappointed” when people “seem to view it as just a day off.” Just that morning she’d been listening to a John Wayne recording of what America meant to him, and “it kind of gives you goosebumps . . . to know we still have our freedom.”

Palos Verdes had no such qualms: It calls its event the Old Fashioned 4th of July Celebration, and Sunday’s was the 33rd.

The smell of cinnamon wafted up from 10 perfect apple pies, waiting to be judged. Bryan Hardwick took a thoughtful bite and jotted something on a clipboard. His white hair and navy blazer cut a striking figure, as they should: He founded the event, “because patriotism was getting to be kind of a bad word. I thought this is the one time of the year when we ought to take advantage of it.”

“Where else in the L. A. area do you see people making a big deal about baking apple pies? This whole thing is like something out of a Norman Rockwell picture,” marvels Gene Schugart, a former Palos Verdes resident. “We moved to Pasadena three years ago, but we still come back for this.”

The celebration also honors the winner of the annual Kenneth Norris Heritage of Freedom Award, comedian Red Skelton--”the Jay Leno of 50 years ago,” 16-year-old Brooke Case explained assuredly to her fellow students the night before as they lounged on the grass.

“I remember when I was a boy, 5 years old, I could recite the Gettysburg Address by heart,” said Skelton, now 79. On Sunday, he pulled out a Fourth of July poem he wrote for his wife: “ . . . We are a rainbow of colors . . . We are beautiful, not a glob . . . “

He grabbed a video camera. His wife was judging the apple pies. “I’ve gotta get a picture of Mrs. Skelton eating a pie.”

Far from the peninsula and the scent of ocean, in the heat of Skid Row, celebrities brought old clothes and more to the Fred Jordan Mission. Zsa Zsa Gabor, who worked among the homeless as part of her sentence for slapping a cop, brought homemade Hungarian goulash to feed 100, but thousands showed up.

The Skid Row homeless had to wait in long lines for hot dogs, watermelon, sparkling water and T-shirts from a tanning oil company, but few seemed to mind. The celebrities “are so nice,” said Essie Henry. “If it wasn’t for them, I couldn’t get a nice meal. I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t be happening.”

In Griffith Park, where a barbershop quartet in vivid red and white eyeballed the gray sky and sang hopefully, “Wait ‘Til the Sun Shines, Nellie,” four friends, three from Illinois, who always get together on the Fourth, joyously danced the two-step in the parking lot.

“We see each other every (Fourth of July) holiday. We will live, die, do everything for each other,” said Mary Merrill, 27.

At Brookside Park, Eddie Pacheco, 29, said he’d take the Fourth of July over Cinco de Mayo any day. “We’re more or less American-Mexican,” he said.

Independence Day was a much more solemn event in his native Nigeria, said Ekong Uko, 35, joining his family in Brookside Park on Sunday.

In Nigeria, which won its independence from Britain in 1960, there are fireworks and picnics, but “political things are brought up and discussed, (particularly) how Western civilization influences our political culture,” Uko said.

For him, the Fourth of July is “for the family to get together and barbecue, and that’s about it. But as far as all that significance (of independence), it’s a joke.”

Crowds were equally unenthusiastic about the Santa Monica beach, in part because of cool weather and in part, speculated 22-year veteran lifeguard Gabriel Campos, “because they no longer shoot fireworks from the pier.” In years past, the fireworks drew “bad elements” to the beach, and there were problems with violence, he explained. A year ago, officials tried dawn fireworks, but this year they simply scratched them.

Freedom for 43-year-old Johnny Griffin meant the obstacle-free street carnival in Long Beach, where he could go anywhere in his wheelchair--or just stay put and dance to the bands. “Being in a wheelchair you sometimes feel shut in. When they have street carnivals, there’s no barriers for my wheelchair.”

At Long Beach’s “Rock Around the Block” celebration, Al Nichols came for the ‘50s and ‘60s rock and roll bands. “I can’t really celebrate Independence Day until all men have independence. We’re enjoying the festivities, but the Fourth of July is just a date.”

And his son, Isamu, 14, couldn’t even enjoy the music much: “I’m not old enough for this music. But being with my dad is great.”

The spoilsports of the day: Those who would rather run than eat, the competitors in the Pacific Palisades’ 5- and 10-K runs. “This is healthy and fun and better than eating fatty chocolates and barbecued meats,” said Darren Statt, from Scotland. Adults and kids in Santa Clarita also competed in 1- and 5-K runs.

And in Monterey Park, 23-year-old Matthew Tran, who came here from Vietnam nine years ago and just graduated from Cal Poly Pomona, was leading a group of chlidren in their weekly Buddhist training classes.

“The only reason I am here,” he said, “is because of freedom . . . it’s a very important day to me.”

Contributing to this story were Carla Hall, Kenneth Reich, Aileen Cho, Jeanette Regalado, Theresa Willis, Miguel Bustillo, Christina Lima, Chau Lam, Brian Ballou, Elaine Tassy, and E. J. Gong Jr.