Port Isabels Hatfields and McCoys

The City Attorney for Port Isabel owns the Queen Isabel Inn on the Bay. He’s a client of ours, and although I have a strict policy of hating attorneys, I tolerate this guy because he’s a surfer and musician. I figure he just took a wrong turn somewhere.

We recently took a trip up to Corpus Christi to a JEM meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies to discuss his plans for adding some additional docks on the bay behind the Inn. On the way up there, we talked of everything from the impending collapse of society (it’s amazing how almost everybody has this view, but still we go along, drawn in by the media into thinking everything’s swell…but that’s another story), to surfing and how Port Isabel and the Island used to be. The trip up to Corpus goes in a straight line through miles of endless King Ranch, unpunctuated by civilization, a true western vista, and it was a good place for conversation.

When I was a kid, the causeway crossed the bay further south, a small two lane bridge just over the water. Once on the island, there were few buildings and businesses. The Sea Grape motel and the Palmetto restaurant, some fishing shacks along a poorly maintained road heading an indeterminate distance north (depending on how covered by the shifting sands it was), were some of the only features of note. Where I am sitting now and typing this, there were a few cabanas facing the restless Gulf, ramshackle pastel buildings where you could get out of the incessant wind and sun.

Driving back across the bay from the island, on the right hand side was the old Queen Isabel Inn. The hotel was originally built by Robert Kleberg, another attorney from an earlier time, one who gained fame through his association with Henrietta King, widow of Richard King, all principal players in the infamous King Ranch. He built it as a getaway, at the end of the railroad line during the early twentieth century. The hotel was later managed by Doc Hockaday, the towns only doctor, pharmacist and taxidermist. A true renaissance man, Doc Hockaday founded the Tarpon Rodeo, which later became the Texas International Fishing Tournament (TIFT) one of the oldest and most prestigious saltwater fishing tournaments in the state. The hotel still has many of the good doctors mounted fish and waterfowl adorning the walls, and has been lovingly been restored by my client JH, who lives there. The grounds are immaculate, with a pool overlooking the Laguna Madre, and tropical plants and trees, perfectly manicured. Still, with all of the glitter and come on of the Island, and other more modern facilities in Port Isabel, JH says occupancy could be better. He usually only gets fans of nostalgia like myself.

So JH is trying to add a few more amenities to the old Isabel in order to attract more clientele. One of the things he wants to do is add more boat slips. He just improved his boat launch ramp, and added a fish cleaning table adjacent to it, an awesome thing to behold, first class, all brick and cement, covered and lighted with running water- a mini taj mahal. Painted white, it is an integral part of the brick barrier fence he has that insulates himself from the new establishment next door, the Pelican Station.

The Pelican Station is owned by an old nemesis of JH, Mr. Z, who made his fortune in the shrimping business, back during the time that sort of business was profitable, parleying the “brown gold” into various land holdings and subsequently power holdings within the City. Mr. Z sits on the zoning board, so when it came time to zone and tax the shrimp fleet, exemptions were granted and special dispensations were issued.

Construction started on the Pelican Station about a year ago, and the snazzy modern building went up in a hurry. During the construction a series of decorative creosote pilings went into the bay out in front of the building, along with assorted rip rap rubble in the form of large chunks of concrete. Mr. Z thinks these will attract Pelicans, thus providing authentication for his establishment.

JH moans the fact that the kitchen smells from the Pelican Station, as well as the luffing sound coming from the obscenely giant American flag that Mr. Z proudly placed adjacent to the Queen Isabel will prove annoying to his hotels clients, and states; “Can you imagine?”, “Late at night when these fuckers are drunk and stumbling out of the bar over there, they’re gonna wander over here wondering about this place, maybe urinate in my bushes while they comment about what in the hell this old building is…I can’t have that kinda shit”….

Meanwhile Mr. Z isn’t all that thrilled about the white brick fence with the fish cleaning table that separates the two buildings. The demilitarized zone. He’s especially concerned about the area of fence closest to the bay, where he’s sure seaweed will pile up during storms, creating a malodorous condition which will drive off his clientele. He was so concerned about it that he contacted the Army Corps of Engineers, with an angry letter requesting that they do something about the condition, immediately. When the Corps came down to check out JH’s proposal for new boat-slips, they obliged to look at it, even though it wasn’t in their jurisdiction. When Mr. Wong looked at it, a lightbulb went on over his head, like in the cartoons, and his normally placid expression turned into one of anger as he spied the pilings and rip rap in the Bay in front of the Pelican Station, all placed in the water without permit or sanction. A letter later came threatening a fine of up to 10,000 dollars per day if Mr. Z and Whimpy, his contractor didn’t make things right.

This really pissed off Mr. Z, who was sure that JH had turned him in. Now he’s going to really fix the old Queen Isabel, that goddamn fish cleaning table has got to go, because as everyone knows, a fish cleaning facility that might be viewed by his customers eating their seafood meals overlooking the Laguna Madre is bad for business. He checks the survey, and calculates that the fish cleaning table is maybe eighteen inches or so into the City property easement, and so at the next zoning and planning meeting, triumphantly declares that the damn thing has gotta go! By now the whole City knows that the feud is on, and the newspaper even picks up the story, page one. Somewhere JH finds a loophole. A legal loophole (after all he is the city attorney), and when I spoke with him yesterday he says the table ain’t going nowhere.

Somehow though, I don’t think this is the last that we're going to hear of this, and my guess is that some sort of midnight modification might occur in the immediate future. I’ll be standing by. I’ve been staying away from there recently though, at least until the smoke clears.