Thousands Seek America in County’s Streets

Like a page from a Simon and Garfunkel tune, they have all gone to look for America. Not in the headlines or tourist stops or history books, but in the streets and in towns across Ventura County.

Thousands of people turned out under warm sun and an occasional passing cloud for street festivals and picnics on Independence Day.

Transformed by a spirit of liberty, it was one for the books--a day of photos with grandparents and barbecues and small kids proudly waving big flags.

At a time of national peace and prosperity, residents from one end of the county to the other celebrated all that is right in their lives and in the country on the nation’s birthday Tuesday.

It was the day that 6-year-old Riki Schmitt of Ventura joined her first Fourth of July march, the 25th running of the Pushem-Pullem Parade.

She and her brothers, Keldon and Alex, brought up the rear of a festooned fleet of scooters, bicycles and wagons that descended Main Street and ended at a downtown Ventura street party.

It was better than Christmas, better than birthdays, she said.

“They gave us this town to be free,” the girl said, reflecting on Mom’s lessons and the commotion about her.

It was the day that Diane and Barry Falcon-Shapiro of Camarillo celebrated their anniversary.

They met, got engaged and married on Independence Days past, but Tuesday, they strapped a wooden patio chair atop a wheelchair so that daughter Lauren, 6, could ride the towering contraption in the parade.

Their act: Dad juggles and Lauren grins a lot.

“We like doing small-town stuff,” the father said. “We looked in the newspaper and there it was, the parade. It looked like a great family event. It’s fun to be silly.”

It was a day that former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush mingled with a big crowd in Simi Valley.

OK, not really the two presidents, but look-alikes Ron Long and Jay Koch, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Gipper.

Once on a trip abroad, Bush--errr, Long--was asked after a 2,000-word speech in Okinawa if he would throw up like the real president once did in Japan, but he declined.

The audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum had no such expectations.

And, oh, the food! Where do they put it all? Hot dogs and carne asada, cotton candy and popcorn, watermelon and pie, ice cream and tri-tip.

Robert Paredez, owner of Lucky’s Hot Dog House in Moorpark, could hardly keep up catering grilled dogs to all the hungry families at the library.

“Hot dogs, Fourth of July. It all goes together,” he said, hustling to throw more wieners on the barbecue.

In Ventura, a man in a hat and blinding display of red, white and blue bellowed: “Get your big, good, finger-licking hot tamales!”

“How long can my voice hold out? As long as I got a cold can of Pepsi in my hand, my voice can hold out all day,” said Elizeo Alamiz, the tamale man from the Apostolic Church.

For two minutes, Cal Gregory shed his life as a Thousand Oaks investor to become a pie-eating machine at the Reagan library picnic.

Dressed in a see-through blue garbage bag that fit like a straitjacket, the veteran pie-muncher described his technique moments before his face disappeared into a slurry of berry filling.

“It’s hard to eat this way. I mean, we don’t eat with our tongues like dogs,” Gregory said. ‘It’s hard to get it down. It goes up your nose and it gets real sloppy. You always hope it’s going to be apple pie, but it never is. If you’ve never done it before, you’ve got to do it.”

Uncle Sam was ubiquitous, too. He stood tall atop stilts at the library, and small children were irresistibly drawn to the figure towering above them.

Awe-struck, they squinted at his beard and top hat, some with mouths agape, some simply scratching their heads in amazement.

“Did you see that?” said Duke Blackwood, the library’s director. “That is Americana.”