It's Friday night in Zephyrhills — football night — and it's homecoming to boot. The bleachers are packed and waves of thick barbecue smoke waft across the field. Palmetto bugs the size of small children flap around on the concrete. The pep band is playing the fight song, the cheerleaders are doing back-flips and the Zephyrhills High Bulldogs are playing their hearts out.
Zephyrhills is alive.
I'm sitting in the front row next to Karen Gildemeyer, who's commuted to Tampa for 18 years so her family can stay in Zephyrhills. "It kinda reminds me of those movies, like Varsity Blues," she says. "You know, those small towns where everybody comes to the game." Gildemeyer, whose daughter Ann Marie is a senior at Zephyrhills High, guesses that 60 percent of the town's 10,000 people are here. "It's a wonderful place," she says, her attention split between my questions and the action on the field. "It's a place you want to raise your kids."
On cue, Ann Marie walks past us as she heads up the bleachers to sit with her friends. "What do you think of Zephyrhills?" Gildemeyer asks her daughter. Without the slightest hesitation, without so much as a glance in our direction, Ann Marie answers.
"It sucks."
I'd been in Zephyrhills for eight hours already; Ann Marie wasn't the only person to express some displeasure with the place. The first dose came less than five minutes after I arrived, in the waiting area of the Village Inn downtown.
"So, what is there to do in Zephyrhills?" I asked the manager after using the bathroom (it was a 60-mile trip from my house in St. Pete).
"Oh, honey," Cindy said between chuckles. "Let's see… There's a park about a quarter mile down the road — you could feed the ducks." The chuckles stopped. "That's about it."
On some level, of course, Ann Marie and Cindy were right. Zephyrhills is a quiet place. One movie theater (which is under renovation), a few bars and a slew of fast food joints serve as the town's hot spots. But if you look a little closer — and there's really no other option when you've decided to spend the day in Zephyrhills — you'll find the ducks aren't the only show in town.
You could, for example, step into Dick's Pawn Shop on Route 301, where Dick and Terri Paxton are sitting behind the counter. Three TVs, tuned to three different stations, line a shelf across the store. "We don't miss nothing," Dick says.
His musty shop is filled with the random items you'd expect — industrial-strength scrubbers, solid gold Playboy Bunny pendants, mint-condition guitars. He's also got an array of $300 handguns, but you'll have to wait three days for a background check before you can get your hands on one of those. Paxton says he sets prices low to keep things moving — merchandise shouldn't sit on the shelves for too long.
He's got another philosophy, this one framed and tacked up behind him in the shop. "This is not Burger King," the sign reads. "You don't get it your way. You take it my way or you don't get the son-of-a-bitch at all!"
Tell me that doesn't beat a few ducks and some stale bread.
You could also drive into the Oak Side mobile home park — a 55-and-over community just east of the high school. Oak Side is home almost exclusively to snowbirds, but Don and Dolores Horney stopped going back to Wilmington, Del., eight years ago.
"We like it when nobody's around," says Don, 79, after he finishes watering the lawn. Every mobile home on his street sits next to an empty driveway — the Horneys haven't had neighbors in a while. And Don is excited to show a stranger around — he and Dolores are selling a friend's small yellow house down the block. The asking price is $6,000.
I tell Don I'm not interested, that I'm 31 years shy of Oak Side's age requirement. But he's determined.
"Let's go take a look," he says, then turns to his wife. Dolores has the keys, and she doesn't seem too interested in giving them up. "He's not going to buy it, Don!" she tells her husband of 59 years. "Why do we have to show it?" Eventually, Dolores hands them over, but not before getting in the last word.
"We got married on Thanksgiving Day," she says. "I like to tell people I married a turkey."
The trailer was nice — spacious, yet cozy — but it didn't seem like the right fit for me.
Zephyrhills isn't all pawnshops and mobile home parks, though. You can bowl with the senior citizens at Unity Lanes (the group from Sundance Development has been rolling on Friday afternoons for 19 years). Or you can try to take a tour of the Zephyrhills Correctional Institute, a maximum-security prison on the outskirts of town (you'll be the first visitor in five days, and tours have to be arranged in advance).
But if you've gotta spend some time in Zephyrhills, be there on a Friday night when the Bulldogs have a home game. And, if you can, make it homecoming.
Because that's when Zephyrhills becomes that small town from the movies. The cheerleaders kneeling, heads bowed and fingers crossed solemnly in the air after a player goes down. Star wide receiver Brian Thomas scampering 70 yards for a touchdown. Senior Taylor Will, in a black dress and a crown that sparkles under the lights, breaking into tears when she's named homecoming queen at halftime.
And as soon as you see that, head back to the city — unless duck-feeding is your idea of a big night out.
This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2005.