Patriotism on Parade in O.C.

Elaborate floats, a big crowd and marching bands aren’t always essential for a grand Fourth of July parade. With tradition as a guide, you can get the same effect with a little greasepaint, costumed youngsters, and hand-pulled vessels covered with aluminum foil and built in the family garage.

For 36 years, Los Alamitos’ five-block Suburbia Estates has put on its own Independence Day parade that is the neighborhood event. It runs just 10 minutes down Denwood Avenue, but the whoops and hollers from the sidelines tell you this one is something special.

“The charm of our parade is that it’s homespun,” said Robi Welch, a longtime participant.

It was a day of celebration throughout Orange County as nearly a dozen cities held fireworks displays or parades under occasionally overcast skies that helped keep the heat down. Newport Beach hosted a boat parade along Lido Isle. And Huntington Beach held its 97th annual parade, drawing close to 100,000 spectators.

Scott McClintock, who lives along the Huntington Beach parade route and hosts a huge party each Fourth, calls the parade a great tradition.

“It’s a crush of cultures. Americana meets Surf City,” McClintock said.

Revelers heading to Huntington Beach and other beach cities faced heavy traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, but authorities reported no major problems. By late afternoon, lifeguards along the county’s coast had plucked more than 200 wayward swimmers from the water.

The most serious injury appeared to have occurred at Doheny State Beach, where lifeguards said one swimmer was taken to a hospital with a neck injury after diving into shallow water.

In Laguna Beach, a team of divers spent the last hours of daylight searching for a 32-year-old Costa Mesa man reported missing about 3:10 p.m. by friends with whom he was swimming from a boat 200 yards off Emerald Bay. Authorities stopped searching about 7:45 p.m. They declined to identify the swimmer.

For Suburbia Estates in Los Alamitos, it was just being together that made the day so appealing. And for the Welch family, this parade was like no other.

One large bright red banner carried by children declared, “Born on the Fourth of July” as well as “Happy Birthday Lois”--for Lois Little, Welch’s mother, who turned 70 on Wednesday.

All five of Little’s children, and all 10 of her grandchildren, have been in the Fourth of July parade over the years.

“You didn’t even think about not doing a costume for the parade,” Welch said with a soft laugh. “It’s what we do here.”

Each year, a different street sponsors the Suburbia parade. This year, it was Linda Street, which chose the theme “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Renald Lapierre walked backward with a chain across his shoulders as he pulled his children’s “Mars Rover” float. He chuckled when he heard his friend Bill Bolton yelling from the side: “Now that’s above and beyond the call of duty.”

Not really, Lapierre knows. It’s something he wouldn’t ever want to miss.

The tradition doesn’t end with the last float. The parade adjourned to Linda Street for an outdoor pancake breakfast. But before the first sausage link was served, a flowing banner of red, white and blue streamers was raised and neighbor Walter Cruz led the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” with his rich, baritone voice.

Cruz has led that singing for 35 years. “When our family moved here, we were looking for a piece of Americana,” Cruz said. “We found it.”

Los Alamitos Mayor Alice Jempsa knew nothing about the parade when she moved into Suburbia Estates 35 years ago.

“I saw a little Minute Man and a Davy Crockett crossing my yard on the Fourth of July and wondered, ‘What have I gotten into?’ ” she said, adding that she has made every parade since.

In Huntington Beach, the parade is grander and gaudier, marked by floats such as the Boeing Co. entry with a woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty on a surfboard, and the float of ocean waves, inflated dolphins and a bubble machine produced by the Huntington Beach Hospital.

There are traditions in this parade too. Each year, for example, members of the Great Coastal Nation, a YMCA Indian Guide’s group, dart among the parade watchers, painting faces red, white and blue.

Mike Harms, one of the group fathers, painted the face of Esperanza Galindo, 62, of Santa Ana while she sat in a lawn chair. When someone asked her what she thought, she shrugged.

“It’s beautiful,” Harms told her.

Harms calls the Huntington Beach parade “kind of a Mayberry RFD thing. It is a really community-based parade. To me, the better floats are the red wagons with root beer cans behind them.”

In Huntington Beach, four black Army helicopters flew over the parade, which included mariachi bands, equestrian troops, high school marching bands and a clown on a tricycle, as well as dragons and drummers from the Chinese Assn. of Orange County.

City spokesman Richard Barnard said this is first time since the 1930s that parade began on Pacific Coast Highway. The parade was also half a mile longer than in the past. As fathers swung daughters in circles, and little girls walked puppies down Main Street, the parade unfurled like a 2-mile-long red, white and blue flag.

Homeira Mehrabian, 35, of Huntington Beach brought two nieces and some friends to watch the parade, each of them wearing a tall, American flag-patterned cloth hat.

“The parade is a big deal, especially for Huntington Beach,” Mehrabian said. “It’s just a reason for the city to have a big community party. It’s really funny that people are so into it. It’s really such a goofy parade.”

The crowd roared when Christopher Knight, who played Peter Brady on TV’s “The Brady Bunch,” rolled by in a gray Chrysler Sebring. But the biggest cheers of the day came for surviving Pearl Harbor veterans, in uniform, who exchanged “hang ten” signs and “Alohas” with the crowd.

Holly Salem, wearing a USA necklace and a flag hat, was co-hosting a party at her boyfriend McClintock’s house, which he bought because it was along the parade route.

For three years, they’ve thrown a huge holiday bash, this year spending about $2,000.

“This is our party of the year,” she said. “We save up all year for this.”