Al Qaeda T Shirt Shops

Like most Gulf Coast resort towns, the main street of South Padre Island is crammed with businesses and vendors lining the boulevard in a seemingly never-ending mass of gaudy Day-Glo facades. There’s the requisite head shop, surf shop, sandwich shop, shell shop and countless T shirt shops lining both sides of Padre Boulevard, separated by the black searing strip of asphalt that ushers the pasty white tourists in from their inland lives to frenetically spend their hard earned vacations in overpriced condominiums and hotels. They come from places like Dallas and Houston, San Antonio and Waco, leaving in a few days with souvenirs and sunburns.

T Shirt shops advertise things like “Going out for Business Sale”, “ 4- T shirts for $20”, and “Free decal with purchase”. Giant football field size edifices, they rarely have more than one or two customers at a time, you can’t help but wonder how they can afford to stay in business, how the hell can they even afford to pay the air conditioning bill?. All the same, exactly the same, only the names change, names like “Wings”, “Surf Stop” and “Jaws”

And business on the island comes in pulses. There’s the big two; Spring Break and Semana Santa, and then the weekend holidays; Forth of July, Labor day, Memorial day and a few others. Between the tourist invasions, the island is a quiescent place, lying in wait like some giant Venus flytrap until the next meal of fresh meat, borne in on Padre Boulevard on the petroleum tide.

The owner of On the Beach was wondering why his dumpster was always full, especially during that time in 2001 when the causeway was down, and there wasn’t hardly any business anywhere on the island. Curious, he checked the contents one day and found sacks and sacks of cash receipts from an adjacent T Shirt shop.

My friend George told me about fires set way out in the empty dune fields, fires set to bales and bales of T Shirts.

You see, the T shirt shops are all owned by middle eastern characters. Characters right out of a bad Hollywood conspiracy movie. Paranoid characters, speaking in hushed tones, eyes furtively plotting….plotting. Turns out these T Shirt shops are nothing more than money Laundromats. It’s common knowledge here. I have a friend who got into trouble punching out a banker during the bridge-out for putting up with this bullshit. I’m certain the government knows about this, and sometimes I wonder about how much they’re actually a part of it.

Call me paranoid.

And we’re not all Islamophobic. Far from it. But there’s too much conincidence, and too many stories

Yesterday a lawyer friend of mine (yes, I actually have a few friends who happen to be lawyers) told me a story about an incident that happened a couple of years ago. A friend of his, a federal agent about to retire was assigned Port Isabel as his final station. One dark evening, a boat came charging into the Pass between the Jetties, only to be intercepted by Customs. The boat was full of cases of automatic weapons, machine guns. The crew and cargo were transported to the Coast Guard base here on the Island until charges could be filed in Brownsville. When the agent returned to the base with the appropriate paperwork, the weapons were gone, and the crew had been released. He was told not to ask any questions.

On the evening of September 10th, 2001 my oldest daughter and I went up to the Circle Jerk to get a couple of items. While we were there, we both noticed a small compact car. Three mid eastern men got out of that car and entered the store. We both noticed their moods, moods so nervous that we were afraid that they might be thinking about jacking the place. We got out of there in a hurry.

We thought about that curious incident a lot over the course of the next few days when paranoina and speculation ran rampant. Coincidence or contrivance? You decide.