by Dave Barry
BORN 10 AUG 1869—DIED 15 JAN 1901
SHE WAS THE WIFE OF W. G. SHEALY
We drive around Chokoloskee, then Everglades City, Shealy waving to people, some of whom he says he smuggled drugs with. Everybody seems to know him. Then we head back in the Preserve. We turn off the Tamiami Trail now, driving on back roads made from hardpacked sand and shell dredgings. Shealy points to places where his neighbors’ homes once stood, now wild and overgrown, taken back by the swamp.
We pass an isolated house that’s still standing but abandoned. Shealy tells me it used to be occupied by a strange man, a loner, who kept wolves as pets.
“I’d be out at night, hunting,” he says. “I could hear those wolves howling.”
The thing was, nobody could figure out what the man was feeding the wolves. But there were rumors. People said the man would drive to Miami in his van, pick up homeless people and prostitutes there. They would never be seen again.
As Shealy tells me this, I’m looking at the house. The day is sunny, the temperature is over 90, and I’m getting chills.
“There’s a lot of missing people,” says Shealy.
We turn onto Turner River Road, which is where a number of skunk ape sightings have occurred over the years. My sense is that at this point in the ritual Kabuki Theater of skunk ape journalism, we are supposed to be looking for the skunk ape. My role here is to be the skeptical but bemused reporter, asking questions; Shealy’s role is to be Mr. Skunk Ape, showing me places where this group of tourists or that group of hunters spotted the ape; where he found footprints; where he set out lima beans that were mysteriously gone the next day.
But I’m feeling too old for Kabuki Theater. I don’t ask any more questions. We ride in silence. After a while, Shealy, gamely playing his role, says, “So, I suppose you want to know if the skunk ape is real.”
“Not really,” I say.
This answer seems to surprise him. But after a second or two he plunges ahead, delivering his lines.
“The Seminoles believe the skunk ape lives inside the Earth,” he says. “You can only see it if it wants you to. Some say it’s a spirit. But what I saw is flesh and blood.”
I write that down in my notebook but ask no more questions. We drive back to Skunk-Ape Research Headquarters. We shake hands and he’s gone. I get back into my car and drive back to Miami, probably passing the snapping turtle that was also headed that way.
Two days later I get an email from Shealy:
I had a great time! nice meeting you THANKS
I email him back that I also enjoyed spending the afternoon with him. And I really did. Shealy is a smart, informed, genuinely interesting person.
For the record, I don’t believe the skunk ape is real. I believe that if there were such a thing, somebody would have taken a decent picture of it by now since everybody in the world has a phone with a pretty good camera.
Does this mean I think Dave Shealy is a hoaxer?
No, I think he’s a survivor. I actually think he’s done a pretty wonderful thing, out there in the swamp, keeping Ochopee on the map. And I don’t think he’s doing anybody any harm, especially not compared to other people making money off of things I don’t think are real. For example, I think astrology is a massive pile of bullshit. Likewise, feng shui. I don’t believe “mediums” can communicate with dead people. I don’t believe the miraculous claims made by most major religions. At funerals, when the clergyperson says the deceased has gone to a better place, I don’t believe it, and I don’t think the clergyperson always believes it either.
So I’m not going to get worked up over the skunk ape.
I’m not a scientist, and I don’t know who’s right about how the Everglades should be protected. I think it’s probably a good thing that development has been stopped out there. But I think the federal government could have done a much better job of dealing with the landowners, and especially grasping the fact that Ochopee was a real community that—like the Miccosukee and the Seminoles—deserved some protection.
It’s too late for Ochopee. But it’s not too late for Skunk-Ape Research Headquarters. I think it would be nice if the National Park Service developed a sense of humor and recognized the headquarters as some kind of official historic thing, to be preserved as a classic example of a traditional, quintessentially Florida cultural icon: The Sketchy Roadside Attraction.
I also think it would be wonderful if the government recognized that Dave Shealy is an endangered species. I think he should be protected, not unlike the way the Florida panther is protected, except that it would be a very big mistake to try to put a radio collar on Dave Shealy.
None of this will happen, of course. It’s a good bet that, sooner or later, Skunk-Ape Research Headquarters will be just another ghost attraction on the Tamiami Trail, like Frog City. So if you want to see it, I recommend you see it soon. Afterward, you can check out the Everglades, which—make no mistake—are a unique, precious, etc. Be sure to wear mosquito repellant. I’ll wave to you as I drive past.
WEEKI WACHEE AND SPONGEORAMA
For thousands of years, two legendary mythical creatures have drawn men to the sea:
Mermaids.
Sponges.
I have heard the seductive siren song of these creatures, which is all the more amazing when you consider that sponges do not have mouths. And so it is that on a bright fall Florida day I find myself driving north from the Tampa Airport, across the Pithlachascotee River, to the place where Route 50 meets Route 19. This is the town of Weeki Wachee, which has a population of four,17 and which is known as The City of Mermaids. It is the home of Weeki Wachee Springs, which, of all the classic Florida roadside tourist attractions, is one of the Florida-est.
It began as the dream of a man named Newton “Newt” Perry, who was raised in nearby Ocala. Perry was a gifted swimmer—sometimes called The Human Fish—who could hold his breath for as long as eight minutes. He put on swimming exhibitions in which he performed tricks such as eating bananas underwater, which is a handy skill because, as you can imagine, after several minutes of being submerged, a person gets hungry. Perry was a consultant on movies involving underwater scenes, including Creature from the Black Lagoon, the horror classic about a scientific expedition to the Amazon that is terrorized by a man wearing an uncomfortable rubber suit.
In the mid-forties, Perry had the idea of building an underwater theater at Weeki Wachee, which is the deepest natural spring in the United States, producing 117 million gallons of fresh water every single day. It’s almost impossible to imagine that much water gushing up out of the earth unless you have lived in a house I once owned in Pennsylvania, which had a basement that was highly susceptible to flooding. It was a nightmare. I could hear whales calling to each other down there. One difference between Newt Perry and me, aside from our relative breath-holding abilities, is that when I looked at my basement, I never thought: “Hey, that could be a tourist attraction!”
But Newt had that kind of vision, and in 1947 he opened Weeki Wachee, with its underwater theater, to the public. The audience sat on rows of benches facing a wide glass wall, on the other side of which attractive young women in bathing suits performed aquatic ballet and did tricks, including eating and drinking underwater. Instead of surfacing to breathe or wearing scuba tanks, the performers inhaled compressed air from rubber hoses, which they’d drop onto an underwater platform and pick up as needed.
According to Weeki Wachee lore, in the early days, when the performers heard a car coming, they’d run out to Route 19 in their swimsuits and try to lure the driver into the parking lot; if they got a customer—even just one—they’d put on a show. By the 1950s, more tourists were coming, and the performers—now called mermaids—were wearing tails.
Weeki Wachee hit the big time in 1959, when the American Broadcasting Company bought the spring, enlarged the theater, upgraded the facilities and began using Weeki Wachee as a filming locat
ion. It was now a major tourist attraction and it drew big-name entertainers such as Elvis, Don Knotts and Arthur Godfrey. (It seems as if every account of Weeki Wachee’s glory days mentions this trio of celebrities.) Large crowds came throughout the sixties; Weeki Wachee became known around the world; the mermaids were famous. Times were good.
And then, in the seventies (cue scary music—specifically, “It’s a Small World”), Disney came to Florida. Suddenly the Weeki Wachee mermaids, with their tails and their air hoses and their display of underwater eating, were competing with a space roller coaster, a pirate ride, a fairy-tale castle, a haunted mansion, fireworks, beloved characters walking around wearing giant heads, turkey legs and much more (including mermaids).
Florida tourism started to change. Visitors no longer meandered along the state’s byways, stopping for a few hours at whatever roadside attraction caught their eye, then moving on to the next one. Now they went straight to the Magic Kingdom, which sucked them into its powerful gravitational Fun Vortex and held them there, like a black hole with Jiminy Cricket.
Over the next few decades, attendance at Weeki Wachee declined. The park changed hands several times and fell into disrepair. By 2001, it was in danger of going out of business. It was saved by the fund-raising efforts of current and former mermaids, who got local businesses to help out. Then in 2008 the state of Florida, seeking to save an iconic part of the state’s tourism culture, stepped in and made Weeki Wachee Springs an official state park. This meant that Weeki Wachee’s future was secure. It also meant that the mermaids became state employees, which I think is wonderful. As a Florida resident, I would much rather see my tax money spent on mermaids than on, for example, the lieutenant governor.
Today Weeki Wachee is alive and well, although on the day I arrive—a Tuesday in October, not a prime time for tourism—the parking lot is mostly empty. I pay my $13 admission, go inside and look around.
Let’s get this out of the way: If you are looking for high-octane excitement, or even medium-octane excitement, Weeki Wachee is not for you. It is low-key, bordering on sleepy. It’s like the fifties never ended in there. Walking around, I almost expect to see a dad in plaid Bermudas using his Kodak Brownie to take snapshots of his wife, Betty, and their two kids, Billy and Sally, before they head home in their ’57 Chevy Bel Air to watch Elvis, Don Knotts and Arthur Godfrey on their Philco black-and-white TV.
In fact, most of the people I see at Weeki Wachee are retired couples, plus a few families with preschool children, strolling around and checking out the park. Aside from the underwater theater, there’s a water park with slides, animal exhibits, a gift shop with many mermaid-themed items, a restaurant, canoe and kayak rentals, playgrounds, etc. Weeki Wachee also has the one essential element you look for in a true classic Florida tourist attraction: a Mold-A-Matic.
A Mold-A-Matic is a machine traditionally found at older Florida tourist attractions. You feed in some money—these days, usually $2—and, thanks to the miracle of plastic injection molding, nothing happens, because traditionally the Mold-A-Matic—the one at Weeki Wachee, for example—is out of order. On those occasions when it does work, the Mold-A-Matic produces, after some chugging and hissing, a fresh-baked, still-warm little plastic souvenir related to whatever attraction you are visiting. The Weeki Wachee machine, theoretically, cranks out a mermaid.
Speaking of needing maintenance: Weeki Wachee has let itself go a little. Some of the buildings could use fresh paint and the grass needs cutting. If this were a Disney property, the head groundskeeper would be beheaded as an example to the staff. On the other hand, if this were a Disney property, they’d charge you a hell of a lot more than $13 to get in. For $13, you could maybe buy a Disney pretzel.
I pass the water park, Buccaneer Bay, and amble down to the Wilderness River Cruise. This is a pontoon-boat ride on the Weeki Wachee River, which is formed by the water gushing out of the spring and flows seven miles to the Gulf of Mexico. As I board the boat with maybe two dozen other tourists, the guide makes a few well-rehearsed jokes about feeding us to the alligators and we chuckle, because that is our role. Then we shove off for our Wilderness Cruise on the mighty Weeki Wachee.
To continue the Disney comparison: The comparable ride in the Magic Kingdom is the Jungle Cruise, where your guide emits a steady stream of glib comical patter (“I’d like to take a moment to point out some of the plants to you. There’s one, there’s one . . .”) and your boat encounters many animated wildlife units, including a python, gorillas, lions, a rhinoceros and a hippo that “charges” your boat.
The Weeki Wachee Wilderness Cruise is considerably less dramatic. We don’t encounter any alligators, although we do see some mullet, and, in their defense, they are actual, biological, non-animatronic mullet. The guide tells us that he has seen a young manatee hanging around. A few minutes later, we spot him, or possibly her, and we take numerous pictures.
The manatee is a largish animal, but, unlike the Jungle Cruise hippo, it does not attack our boat. Mainly what manatees do, in my experience,18 is eat and fart. They are the adolescent boys of the marine world. Still, this manatee, like the mullet, is real, and it is definitely the highlight of the Wilderness Cruise. We turn around and head back to the dock, having spent a total of twenty minutes in the wilderness, completely isolated from any trace of civilization except for when we passed the canoe-and-kayak rental concession.
From the Wilderness Cruise, I head to the main attraction of Weeki Wachee, the Newton Perry Underwater Mermaid Theatre.
There I meet up with John Athanson, a native Floridian who’s the public relations manager for the park. When I find him he’s talking with some movie people, who are on location filming part of a film that will be called City of Mermaids. Athanson tells me that the day before, for a different film shoot, the Travelocity Gnome was at the park, in person; other celebrities who have visited during Athanson’s tenure include Paris Hilton and Larry the Cable Guy. Perhaps these are not names of the same caliber as Elvis, Don Knotts and, of course, Arthur Godfrey, but the point is that Weeki Wachee still has some star power.
While we’re talking, an attractive blond woman approaches Athanson to discuss some mermaid-show business. This is Nikki Chickonski, who has been a mermaid for eleven years, having started as an eighteen-year-old high school student. She’s joined by another woman connected with the show, who is carrying some sequined tops, and the two of them have a brief discussion about the mermaids’ costumes. Chickonski informs me that they can choose from a variety of tails.
“Before the show,” she says, “we’ll say, Hey, what tails are we wearing?” Then they choose their tops, as certain tops go better with certain tails. “Also some tops work better on some mermaids than others,” she says. “Some girls are bustier than others.”
Mermaid Nikki Chickonski, holding a mermaid top.
Chickonski says it takes a lot of training to become a Weeki Wachee mermaid. The water is chilly—always 74.2 degrees—and the mermaids, performing fifteen to twenty feet below the surface, have to contend with the five-mile-an-hour current gushing up from the spring opening sixty-five feet below.
“We have a long training process,” she says. “At first, you don’t wear a tail. You train on the air hose with your legs together.” The next step is a training tail: “It’s different from a show tail. The training tail has a zipper, so if you need to, you can escape.”
After Chickonski leaves, Athanson walks me down into the theater, which can seat 450 people, although at the moment it’s almost empty. It’s cool down there, out of the daytime glare; the sunlight filtering through the springwater fills the room with a bluish glow.
On the other side of the glass, some trainee mermaids are practicing, without tails, on the air hoses. Also some fish are swimming around, acting like it is no big deal to be underwater. It’s a peaceful scene, and Athanson, a veteran p.r. guy, takes the opportunity to sing the praises of the
spring, and take a little shot at Disney.
“This is an iconic show,” he says. “You have this beautiful, peaceful spring. Then you throw in a pretty girl in a mermaid tail. It’s magic. We don’t need animatronics.”
Around 2:30 p.m., people start drifting into the theater for the 3 o’clock mermaid show. The glass wall is now covered by a blue curtain; calypso music is playing. By 3, there are about sixty people in the audience. To warm us up for the show, TV monitors on the side walls display a Jimmy Buffett stadium concert performance of the song “Fins” featuring a quartet of seated Weeki Wachee mermaids being wheeled onto the stage. Then the blue curtain rises and, finally, we see three of them swimming gracefully into view: Elvis, Don Knotts and Arthur Godfrey.
No, seriously, what you see is three women in mermaid tops and tails. They swim around a bit, then pick up their air hoses and begin a synchronized routine, twirling, flipping, rising, falling, taking breaths from their hoses, emitting clouds of bubbles and always—always—smiling.
They lip-sync to a mermaid song (“We’re not like other women / Fighting traffic on the shore . . .”). Then, responding to prompts from a recorded narrator, one of them drinks a beverage from a bottle while another one eats an apple. We applaud these feats (we’ve been told the performers can hear us). Several times the mermaids perform their signature move, grabbing each other’s tails and swimming in a vertical circle.
Each time, this maneuver gets a big hand. But the audience saves its most enthusiastic response for the last part of the act, “A Tribute to Our Country.” We hear Lee Greenwood singing “Proud to Be an American” as two women—without tails—swim into view wearing red-white-and-blue star-spangled swimsuits. They do some patriotic synchronized swimming maneuvers, and then, for the grand finale, a mermaid (with tail) swims up from the depths of the spring holding an American flag.
