Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles (25 page)

I hold onto my hat with one hand and grip the rail with the other. The

buggy is only going about 20 miles per hour, but with no windshield it

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proof

Redneck
Royalty
owners Tony and Lacee Barnes. Note the Florida Gator garb.

Photo by James Harvey.

feels more like 50 mph. Tony shouts that the buggy will go up to 60 and

jokingly asks if I want to experience it.

I laugh, half-hoping that he will take it to the max.

It’s a short ride to the heart of the action. Tony points out a family

campground along the way. Yes, some bring their children along for the

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weekend. Since the partying goes on all night, there’s a small wooded

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area for those who want to spare their kids the mayhem, which is a

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little strange considering there’s no shortage of it in the light of day.

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Tony whips into a watered-down field named Pine Island Sound, a

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mudder’s replica of the estuary and islands off the coast of Fort Myers.

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The open, 40-acre field is pocked with deep mud holes and mounds of

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mud named after real islands. Most are identified with metal signs,

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but a few markers are missing. Danny told me earlier that revelers con-

stantly uproot them for souvenirs.

Considering all the vehicles barreling this way and that across the

field, there’s a good chance that many just disappear in the mud.

Tony slowly circles the field to give us a panoramic view of the mud

mayhem;
Mad
Max
meets redneck spring break.

ATVs whiz in all directions like panicked ants. Huge fancy buggies

with names like
Southern
Swagger
and hunting buggies with built-in

cages for dogs up top and kill below tour the perimeter. Others con-

gregate by mud holes that are like small ponds. Lurking in the midst

are amalgamations of metal, rubber, and flesh that defy a sober city

slicker’s imagination.

One buggy topped with a loveseat moves on rolling track like an

army tank. A decommissioned U.S. Army truck has “Show me your

tits,” painted on the door and a plywood bar and bench car seats in the

back. Stuffed pig toys decorate one Jeep’s hood. An old yellow bus with

monster tires and the name “School Trip” in multicolor looks like the

result of a mudder’s acid trip.

Two white guys cruise the field in a rusty, baby-blue Cadillac with

tractor tires and a tag that says “White City Boys.” Their windshield is

emblazoned with “H.N.I.C.” which stands for “Head Nigger in Charge,”

proof

a racial slur that dates back to the days of cotton plantations. A George

W. Bush bumper sticker is plastered on the rear: “Miss me yet?”

Orange-and-blue Florida Gator flags hang from buggy rails, truck

antennas, ATV safety arms. The team pride is so overwhelming that

I momentarily think a pickup spray-painted with the message “NO-

BAMA” is a knock against my alma mater, rather than the current

president.

Most of the crowd is under thirty-five and drunk, or on their way to

it. Men wear T-shirts with messages like “Titties & Beer” and “I Love

Boobs.” Women wear string bikinis and tall rubber boots. No inhibi-

tions. No shame. They party standing-room-only on swamp buggies.

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They sit on buggy steps and hang their legs off the side. They ride on

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toolboxes in the back of pickups. They take in the scene from living

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room couches squeezed into truck beds.

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A group of teens ride in a makeshift tall, narrow cart with small

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wheels and bench seats from an old car. A chubby boy standing on the

back repeatedly shifts his weight, causing the buggy to pop wheelies

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like a Shriners’ parade car. Riders nearly slide out the back, but they

beg for more.

Parents zoom around on ATVs with kids loosely clutched in their

laps. One family in a show buggy rests their infant in a car seat on the

steel floor.

Two rectangular parachutes eyebrow the sky. Ultra-light fliers are

taking in the scene. No one on wheels seems to notice them. Perhaps

it’s sensory overload, drunkenness, or just part of survival.

Mud boggers are exhibitionists and bragging rights aren’t worth

anything if no one can see you conquer. So, mudders tend to congregate

around the field’s deepest holes and watch one another slog through,

or at least attempt to.

Beside the largest hole, a toddler pats muck around a parked truck

tire four times her height. Her siblings wade along the edge of the

murky water.

The mud isn’t black from decayed foliage like in the Glades. It’s not

even tawny like the farm’s natural wetlands. Those are off-limits, en-

vironmentally protected. Danny created these bogs, and they are the

color of a pig’s sty.

Danny bedded the mud holes with silt he’d dredged from the Caloo-

sahatchee River. Getting mud the consistency of cake batter isn’t easy,

proof

he says. He mixes clay, river silt, sand, and well water. “Some people

come out there and complain it’s too thick; others fuss it’s too thin.

They’re like a bunch of old women trying to please,” Danny said. “Peo-

ple get very anal about mud and if there’s too much water there’s not

enough challenge, but if it’s too thick it slows them down too much. It’s

not fun if you don’t have a risk of getting stuck.”

There’s no shortage of people willing to take that chance.

Saying the
Royalty
’s engine needs a rest, Tony parks alongside one

of his friends at the deepest hole. We get to watch the action up close.

That goes as much for the people as the vehicles taking on the mud

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hole. Each buggy has its own little redneck drama.

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Tony’s friend in the smaller hunting buggy brought along his fe-

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male roommate. Despite having a girlfriend on a buggy elsewhere in

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the park, the female roommate is getting cozy with a young woman in

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cowboy boots and tiny cut-offs that show off her belly-ring and tattoos.

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Tony’s friend laughs that they don’t know who the cowgirl is. She

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just climbed aboard after they arrived at the park.

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Someone cranks up rap music and the two women start dancing

suggestively. They grind front to back, wave their arms in the air while

holding onto their beers. Guys in buggies and trucks across the mud

hole cheer them on. Mystery Girl gets so amped that she climbs up on

the steering console and thrusts her pelvis a little too enthusiastically.

Losing her balance, she takes a tumble back into the front seat. Pickled

to the pain, she merely laughs, gets up, and dances more, though avoid-

ing the buggy’s edge.

Meanwhile, the testosterone show carries on in the mud pit. By ne-

cessity, the chaos is more organized. Drivers wait their turn to pass

through the murky water. Most are in trucks and Jeeps. Tony tells me

he wouldn’t dare try to go through the deep hole in a swamp buggy.

They are too top-heavy, he says.

I’m a little disappointed. Maybe it’s my roots, or perhaps the beer,

but I’m itching to ride through a mud hole.

A few swamp buggies dare to try the hole anyway and teeter dan-

gerously close to flipping over. Inevitably it happens. A packed buggy

takes the water at an angle, tilting to one side along the slope. As if in

slow motion, the tall vehicle topples over, and riders fly through the air.

The buggy slams on its side in the mud. The occupants plop into the

cloudy muck. Rather than wading to rescue the female passengers, one

proof

man rushes to salvage the cooler.

Having seen enough for the moment, Tony backs
Redneck
Royalty

away from the hole. Clay watches out for any ATVs or smaller vehicles

behind. There are no rearview mirrors.

As we move through the horde of vehicles, people stop, point, and

snap pictures of us, or rather the buggy. It’s like being on a parade

float, and we are the royalty of the redneck kingdom. Of course, the

Florida Gators flag on the roof heightens the adoration. As we pass,

other buggy riders salute us with arm-scissoring Gator chomps. The

only Roll Tide! shout-out would come from a guy wearing a red Teletub-

bie™ costume.

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Tony bypasses the drive-thru truck wash on the way out of Pine Is-

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land Sound. A well feeds the continuous vehicle shower and the over-

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flow keeps the field flooded. Tony notes that everyone on a buggy gets

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wet, and that sometimes it’s a welcomed bath.

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Redneck
Royalty
doesn’t need a wash at this point. Tony has been

light on the pedal since we entered the mud field. Lacee says he hates

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getting the vehicle dirty, even though it is, after all, a swamp buggy. “I

proof

Mystery Girl, pre-fall.

Photo by James Harvey.

thought he was going to kill his brother for bringing it back dirty last

time,” she says.

Tony didn’t own a swamp buggy until 2009. Now he has six, all for

sale.

Unlike most of the guys he grew up with in LaBelle, Tony’s not a

hunter. He never needed a buggy for sport or even joyriding since his

friends owned them. But when mud parks began opening around 2004,

demand for buggies grew. Tony, like a lot of other Floridians, recog-

nized there was money to be made in mud.

“I bought one and turned around and sold it in three days and made

$13,000,” he says.

Tony credits the parks for growing the market of the party buggies.

Since the mud attractions started opening, builders have gotten orders

for swanky $75,000 to $150,000 buggies that rarely roll through any-

thing deeper than a mud puddle.

Commerce, obviously, played a role in the rise of parks, too. Most

park owners’ families have owned the land for generations, but for one

reason or another have found the mud attractions more profitable than

farming.

Plant Bamboo in Okeechobee started the trend in 2004 when owner

Ed Underhill opened up his struggling dairy and bamboo farm to more

proof

than eight thousand mud boggers. The farm has been in Underhill’s

family for six generations, but encroaching development was making it

harder to operate. His first mudding weekend was considered to be the

largest on the East Coast, but Ed admits the crowds had a lot to do with

unwanted publicity stemming from a lawsuit his mother filed against

him to try to prevent it.

Many of the mud boggers’ families also go back generations in Flor-

ida. But the younger set hunts for sport, not out of necessity, and they

like a little P. Diddy mixed with their Lester Flats. Some live in urban

subdivisions and big-city condos. Others live in farm towns where hoes

and shovels were long ago replaced by air-conditioned tractors and har-

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vesters that dwarf any swamp buggy.

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Parkgoers get in touch with their roots even if they are fabled. That

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goes for the Confederacy as well. Florida is part of the South despite

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how many northerners make it their retirement home. Many Florida