Bringing back our old fashioned 4th of July

In 2009, 2010, 2011, around that time, we had a Coconut Hunt here in Coconut Grove. For a few weeks maybe months before, we would meet on Friday nights at the Windisch-Hunt Gallery and we would paint the Coconuts. We had pizza and wine and it was a big thing. People would come out and participate each week, it was fun and well thought out and planned.

The big thing at first was getting the coconuts. I believe we painted 400 more or less. The City was a big help, when their trees were being trimmed around City Hall and South Bayshore Drive, they would save us the coconuts and we would get them and bring them over to gallery.

Kids came, parents came, a few of the local news reporters came on various Friday nights and we painted coconuts. Some were too nice to use in the hunt, they were real works of art, so we held them back.

Anyway, I usually went out early on the 4th of July and spread them around town. I would go with a friend or two and we would try to disguise them so people didn't know what was going on. We would put them in piles of trash and wheel them from place to place making believe were were going to the dump or something. People would want to know why we were wheeling trash around the village so early in the morning.

The hunt fit in around the CocoWalk hot dog eating contest after the Barnacle picnic but before the fireworks. We even had Lucie and Desi one year, too. We had Cirque du Grove on our streets for a couple of years.  It was a full day in the Grove then. We had lots of great prizes, too - hotel stays, bicycles, Grove Bucks and so many more great things.

I was thinking we should bring it back this 4th of July, with all the new construction going on in the Grove we would have so many new hiding places. In the past it was just stores and restaurants, now we can go up 20 or 30 stories and hide coconuts in penthouses or in the round windows of the new hotel going up or in the many construction cranes up all over the village. We can tuck some behind the boots on car tires or maybe on the chains between the tow trucks and the cars they are towing.