Learning to Fly

When I was little we lived in southern California, Chula Vista, just south of San Diego. We lived in a ranch style house in a new development along with many other newly affluent middle class. My father was an aeronautical engineer working for Rhor Aircraft. He owned a white 1964 Chevy Corvair Monza, before Ralph Nader made it a crusade to stomp the thing out of existence in order to keep us all safe at any speed. What a crock of shit. I don’t need any goddamn crackpot lawyer setting the ground rules for safety for me. But that’s another story.

We would drive the thing across the border to Tijuana Mexico at least once a month to get haircuts at the old fashioned barber shop that smelled of brilliantine and talcum powder. I’d wait for my turn looking at cheap Mexican crime magazines complete with gory photos, trying to understand the language on the pages, understanding a few words here and there before the barber with the Yosemite-Sam moustache would beckon me up into the red naugahyde covered board that lifted me high enough for the barber to shear off whatever hair I had down to the number 4 or 6 blade length. The whole experience took the better part of a Saturday morning and was one I dreaded, and is probably the reason I no longer cut my hair.

My best friend Steve Warren lived across the gully and we’d made the fields and ditch our domain. On the west side, we dug subterranean forts beneath the old abandoned melon fields that Mr. Iwashita once cultivated, covering them over with discarded two by fours, burlap bags and dirt, leaving a shelf at one end where we’d make a fire over which we’d cook cans of pork and beans, pretending to be warriors. During one particularly dry Santa Ana day, around the time that Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedys’ head off a spark from our fire caught the adjacent dry vines and grass on fire. We tried to put it out, Steve and I frantically beating it with an old mildewed piece of carpet we kept inside our lair for creature comfort, stomping and pounding. Steve ran over to their property and turned on a long water hose, but it was too short, and the water just dribbled out of the end anyhow, there was no pressure, as the flames quickly spread across the field resulting in the Chula Vista fire departments response, and a general neighborhood scene. That was the end of our fort days, and our network of hideouts were filled in, never to be used again.

We were good at causing the trouble that only ten year olds can.

Seems like we were always setting things on fire. Fireworks were illegal there in southern California, but we seemed to manage to procure them, usually from Steve’s older brother. We’d pop black cats and lady fingers over by the bamboo stand that grew along the eastern margin of the gully, taking refuge in the drain pipe, where Steve had stashed some old copies of his dads Playboy magazines. I saw my first breasts on the waterlogged pages of those Playboys, wondering what it would be like to actually touch, smell, taste those wonderful appendages on a real life woman. Just the thought made me dizzy with lust.

Sometimes we’d accidentally set this domain on fire, but we always managed to quell it before it got out of control, but not before it left a tell tale smoke column. One day the smoke signal caught the attention of a cop passing by, who immediately investigated and caught us in the drain pipe, loaded us into the back seat of his patrol car and drove us to our houses, which caused another neighborhood uproar, all of the middle class housewives seeing the commotion, coming out into their yards to gawk as the blue clad cop marched us up to our respective parent unit much to our humiliation and their embarrassment.

Damn was I in trouble.

I spent the next several weeks on restriction, but that was OK because I had a balsa wood flying model of a world war one SPAD airplane that I needed to build anyway.

During those years I was a lonely only child, and I spent a great deal of time at the public library there in Chula Vista reading everything from ancient Egyptian history to the history of flight. My hero’s were the early aviators, people like Octave Chanute, Otto Lillienthal, Samual Langely and the Wright Brothers. I dreamed of flying.

Deciding to do just that, I designed rudimentary gliders after the designs of these early pioneers harvesting bamboo from the gully where we once popped fireworks, cutting it into sections with my dads coping saws, bending wing ribs and covering my big flying models with my mothers good linens, starching them to stretch them tight over their gossamer frameworks. Some of the designs flew, some didn’t. Some were wild designs, like the one I attached to my bicycle pedaling wildly down the nearby hill at Sierra Way, crashing before any sort of airborne takeoff could be achieved, smashing the wing and myself in the process much to the amusement of any onlookers.

I was the oddity of the neighborhood, and the other kids mostly thought I was completely stupid, crazy or both. They took to calling me Peter Pan, taunting me every time they saw me, so I began to conduct my experiments in secret in the gully on the hill that ended at the ditch where the bamboo grew. My friend Steve Warren remained faithful, often acting as my assistant, steadying the wing as I’d charge down the slope, trying to get the glider to lift it and myself into the air.

One day we succeeded, but I had no way to control the thing, and apparently the center of gravity was way out of whack, and the thing lifted me up, up into the air, nosing sharply upward in a profound stall, and like Icarus, I plunged back downward, except instead of crashing into the sea, I slammed into the hard ground, severely spraining both ankles, and splintering the glider into a pile of bamboo shards, twisted cloth and wire rigging. Steve was seriously worried as I lay there screaming and writhing, clutching at my swollen ankles which were beginning to take on a life all their own. I finally managed to hobble home, hiding my injuries from my parents and every one else, despite the pain, filled with wonder and awe that I’d actually flown aboard a contraption of my own design and manufacture.

It wasn’t long afterward that some of the older neighborhood kids caught me behind the oleanders separating our house from the neighbors, pinned me to the ground and proceeded to endow me with a “pink belly”, slapping and pounding my bare stomach as I lay there screaming, crying, taunting “Peter Pan, Peter Pan”, in a cruel manner that only children know. When it was over, I composed myself and went home, not mentioning that either, just figuring it was my fate for being different.

But, I never built another glider after that, and it wasn’t long before my father was out of work as the aviation boom of the sixties came to an end, and we moved from southern California.

I gave up my childhood fascination with flying things for many years, until much later when I became an aircraft mechanic, specializing in what else? Structural repairs and airframe fabrication.

Jokes on You

Last night I stopped over at one of my favorite eateries to catch a quick bite to eat. I’ve been way busy lately, and dinner has been an afterthought.

So, we were enjoying a quiet beer and a pizza when some folks I know walked in and the husband immediately said to me; “well looks like we have a new County Judge…..”, “He’ll sure be better than what we’ve got!”

“Oh yea” I said to him. “Well tell me about this guys record, what has he done?”

The guy admitted that he didn’t know.

“Well” he said “he’s gotta be better than what we’ve got” and his voice trailed off.

By this time I was getting irritated. “Just how in the hell can you vote for a person and not know his qualifications, his record?”. “Jeezus H. that’s about as fucking stupid as you can get, are you on drugs or something?”. “I mean, just to get somebody OUT of office?”…”How do you know your guy will be any better, he might be worse.”

“That’s irresponsible”.

I could see the guy shrinking, his wife grimacing. I guess they hadn’t thought of it that way.

Yesterday the fiends of Isla Blanca held a 5th grade like pep rally at the park. “Go Cascos go” they chanted in unison.

Fucking rah, rah, rah.

Well folks, the truth of the matter is that you elected an (as Teddy Kennedy says) unelectable abomination. You didn’t bother to check out the mans credentials, you voted for him just to get your hated opponent out of office.

There was no mandate for Carlos Cascos. No, the mandate was against Gilbert Hinojosa. Because of this you have opened a pandoras box.

You were more concerned with preserving your pot smoking parking lot than the good of Cameron County. You don’t care if this guy is good, bad or ugly…..and as a result of your selfish selfcenteredness, Cameron County will probably suffer a period of chaos and disorganization as the faithful and the faithless battle it out. And there are a lot of innocent folks caught in the middle.

You didn’t give a goddamn about the welfare of this County. Hell, a lot of you only voted here under technicalities, establishing residences in Isla Blanca from Hidalgo County and even other states just so you could protect your vested interest, cheap rent, a good place to smoke dope, your hallowed surf break.

Pathetic bastards.

Do you really believe that this guy will take care of you now that he’s in office? Do you know his track record?

I thought not.

Keep smiling motherfuckers. The joke's on you.

Tom Bell

Obituary here

A glowing testimony to a worthless piece of shit.

What they failed to mention was that he was a white trash, perverted, evil son of a bitch with a hair triggered temper who had no compunction against destroying relationships between fathers and children, eliciting violence, and pounding people in the face with coke bottles….

None the less, I feel strangely connected to this death as he violated me in a way I don’t think anyone ever has. In a rednecked rage, the man took me to the brink of my own death, and it was only by the intervention of God himself that I survived. It is a frightening and fragile part of my own psyche that I only take out on occasion to examine.

I have forgiven him, and tried (and try) to expunge the venom from my own life lest it consume me. My heart holds compassion for his children (daughters), and even his fucked up son who is a one balled, crack cocaine addict with the same penchant for violence as his father had.

I have a harder time feeling sorrow for his wife, who is a manipulative evil cunt, holding the same lack of values and honor as he had. They belonged together.

We all have to answer for the things we do in this life.

A dreadful chapter of this book is closed.

Coca Cola

The trauma shrink said that peoples' minds are like mailboxes; someday I'd fill the mailbox with other mail that could be taken out and examined at my discretion. That this incident would fade like newsprint on an old paper.

It was a sunny Sunday day in February, I had returned the previous evening from a five or six day trip to southern Mexico, Colima and Michoacan doing some undergrad work in petrology, vulcanology, some required classwork for a degree in geology. I returned to find my world turned and twisted like the broiling lava flows that I had been mapping for a week.

When a child smiles at you for the first time, when you see their newborn face, the whole world is right, the awesome responsibility is worth it. You are complete as an adult.

This child would never see the world. It ended it's life as a 12 week old fetus, sucked down some ungodly drain in some unholy charnel house while I was gone. Neat and tidy, the entire cost paid for by plastic credit card, provided by caring Christian neighbors.

I did not understand.

We argued.

She left, went down the street to those caring Christian neighbors.

I needed to know.

I drove down to the end of the street where they lived, knocked on the screen door which was open.

No answer.

Like a fool I stepped inside and called her name. No answer.

Then like a whirlwind, big, fat four hundred and fifty pound Tom Bell flew down the stairs as if jet propelled.

I tried to ask him where she was, but before I could get a word, maybe two out, he sucker punched me, and I crumpled to the wooden kitchen floor on my back.

Equally as fast, he was suddenly sitting on top of me, pounding my head into the dirty floor, as if hammering a nail. He was cursing at me and spitting in my face. I did not understand.

I was clawing and scratching, trying to breathe as the weight of his grossly obese body pinned me to the floor.

With uncontrolled rage in his eyes he screamed at me, fleshy contorted face inches from mine; "Why did you have to bring up the abortion?"

We struggled as I tried to break free.

Somehow, he managed to turn me over. I saw his thick arm snake out, near the base of the water cooler, where a stack of glass coca-cola bottles were. He grabbed a bottle, and as if in slow motion, closer and closer to my face it came.

I could read the logo.

I knew I was going to die.

The bottle hit me square between the eyes, and it was as if someone had turned on a faucet of red. Blood poured from my nose in a frightening stream.

Then the bottle came again, only this time I did not feel the whack, I only heard it, a squishing, wet sound of cartilage and bone shattering.

Oddly, I felt myself being handcuffed, but there were no police?

The bottle came one more time, and I disappeared into a netherworld of crimson, drifting vaguely away, detached and musing that if this really were the end, than there truly was an oxymoronic state between violence and the peace.

Then I saw other people standing there, I heard my oldest daughter screaming hysterically: "leave my Daddy alone!".

And someone else was there too, I recognized her.

And then I heard her say, emotionless: "That's enough Tom…."

I could sense the handcuffs being taken off, and I was pulled roughly by the hair to my feet, shoved toward the door.

All I could think to say, to tell him was; "I'm going to kill you".

Somehow, I managed to leave, get in my car, and drive home, knowing that this was the end. I tried to clean myself up best I could. I held my young son in my arms, tried to comfort my little daughters who had been at the house alone.

Soon the police arrived, and took the kids. I could not understand why, but did not argue.

I knew this was the end.

Tom Bell went to church that Sunday morning along with his family, even sang in the choir.

I went to the hospital.

There's a lot more to the story, hell, I even ended up victorious winning court battles, winning damage money from the fat fucker, but to what end?

Needless to say, I never did kill him, in fact I forgave him (in my heart), sent him on his proverbial way. Doesn't mean that I'd eat dinner with him, or even acknowledge his life or death, just that I'd no longer destroy myself with the awful burden of that day.

The trauma shrink was right, I eventually replaced the images, filled the mailbox with other, happier mail. But not before several years of flashbacks to that awful day, which robbed me of time and space as I tried to finish struggling through college (I eventually did).

So when I hear that abortion is simply a private matter for the woman involved, I think back to that day and want to tell them that it's bullshit.

Trans Fat Free Island

Well those jokers who identify themselves as the South Padre Island Board of Aldermen (and gals) are at it again according to inside information.

On Wednesday night the hot topic of discussion was whether to designate the Island a “Trans Fat Free” borough. Extraordinarily pressing issue.

I don’t know what the motive is behind this ridiculous waste of time, but I can just see it now, undercover City investigators showing up at the Palmetto, Jesses, the Seraton with sample kits….maybe a SWAT team, headed up by Dewey Dickwell busting into kitchens to make sure they only use cholesterol free oil. No manteca here folks.

Talk about micro-managerial. These guys really crack me up....

But wait....maybe I got it wrong, maybe they mean fat free transients? What are they gonna do, weigh everyone coming over the bridge? Pepper them with 20 questions "excuse me sir, but do you live on the island?", "when was the last time you consumed Mexican food?".....

Or perhaps they mean endomorphic transvestites? Seems a little more plausible, keeping in line with the Islands sense of tolerence for "alternative" lifestyles. Maybe they need to check each and every cross dresser for the proper amount of body fat? Don't want any fat queens ugly-fying the landscape.

.....OK so here's what I'm gonna do littleman. I'm gonna head over to the Radisson and start out with a couple of king sized shrimp cocktails, followed up by a great big goddamn 48 ounce porterhouse steak fer Chrissake, never mind the friggin shrubbery, just bring me some greasy onion rings, that'll suffice for veggies. I'm gonna tell the management that I'm doing it to honor these jerkoffs new silly assed resolution.

Hell, if they really wanted to trim the fat they'd get rid of do nothing douchebags like Dewey Dickweed and Cate Ballsack....

The Season of Our Torment

The Winter Texans are back. We have entered the season of our torment.

Lord, it seems like they just left, migrating North late last spring in a drove of aluminum RV’s and shiny trucks.

Farmers on subsidies, milking the great American tit……

And now they’re back, with their cheesy jokes, and mid-western farm field bullshit. If I hear jalapeño pronounced jal-ap-ano one more time, I may have serious issues with the Oshkosh-overall clad fucker. They can get the silly umlaut right, but give them an enyay….

No, I don’t like lutefisk. Can’t even stand the smell of the stuff. Give me menudo any day.

How long Lord, oh how long must we suffer the bastards?

My friend Don thinks they snuck in on the heels of the Bikefest crowd, unnoticed among all of the motorcycle trailers. I think he’s right. And, now they’re here; doing whatever they do, driving slowly, like they’re still out in the fields on their subsidized John Deere tractors, lost to oblivion, why oh why can’t they just stay up North and drive badly on their tractors? And they're out on the bay in their walleye boats tossing shrimp and great chunks of squid at hapless hardheads and whiting, or crowding the streets of Nuevo Progreso looking to “jew down” the locals. Winter Texans are everywhere en todos lugares.

Everywhere you go, you can overhear them talking about how things are so much cheaper back home, how they do things different back home, how things are so much better back home. Hell, why don’t they just go back home then? Get out of our hair.

Friends of Isla Blanca?

I was just made aware of the "friends of Isla Blanca" website. Apparently their message board has been rather active lately, and not all entries in favor of their cause either. Here is the link for your viewing pleasure. Let em know what you think (either for or against....Le Menagerie don't give a fuck).

Perspective

The older I get.....the better I was.
-Overheard at the Leo Najo oldtimers baseball hall of fame celebration

Billy K.

The third coast and its inhabitants gauge their existences by hurricane season, by hot and hotter by the tides rising and falling around oyster encrusted pilings holding up forlorn and ancient docks reticent with neglect, against which rusting shrimp boats lay, relics of another more prosperous era. They lay tied to the dock with umbilical cords of bleached and frayed three strand line wound in neglected figure eights around cleats thick with powdery corrosion, and no life pulses through the processing plants or the umbilical cords connected to boats and docks. The people of the third coast hurry and scurry like the Sally-lightfoot crabs that live under the ancient docks reticent with neglect, hurrying and scurrying to the shade, from piling to piling.

The people and the tourists on the third coast seek refuge from the relentless sun, ducking into ancient seafood and ancient Mexican food restaurants where humid air conditioning belches out of veiled vents, condensing the vapid air on windowpanes and the sunglasses of the tourists who scurry back outside to another destination of artificial shade and comfort, to palapa bars or bayside bars where they drink Corona beers and piss away their vacations on the third coast, or to the white sand beach where Gulf waters lap the shoreline and mullet swim in great schools between the legs of surf fishermen and children playing with bright plastic toys in the calm of the first sandbar.

There are no trees on the third coast capable of providing any respite from the relentless sun except for a few scraggly mesquite and tepegujues, and the omnipresent nopal which provides only enough shade for the rattlesnakes and tarantulas to escape the relentless sun, concealed in near lifeless torpor, until the relentless sun finally gives up her stranglehold on the third coasts’ southern latitude and the night wind begins to pick up, signaling the time to slither and crawl from ectothermic reptile and insect siestas in search of a midnight snack before the relentless sun makes its appearance again in a hurrying and scurrying few hours, in a unisonous and endless cycle like the tides, like hot and hotter, like the annual ebb and flow of hurricane season.

The National Weather Service calls it tropical cyclone development and they send in airplanes and instruments to measure, predict and verify, but the people of the third coast know it in their bones, in their psyches, and they suffer from June through October when the Gulf heats up like a bowl of Caldo Mariscos, and swirling bands of clouds converge to rotate in a counterclockwise dervish of convection, traveling over open ocean till for reasons that may never be understood by mere mortal, they join the shoreline in a rush of energy that the Mexicans call Chubaso, La tormenta, pounding la tierra with powerful winds and torrential rains before exhausting themselves over perennial coastal desert and monte ruled by the relentless sun, leaving behind a wake of carnage and cleansing.

Billy K. is a tall stooped man about sixty five years old with the countenance of forlorn beagle. The entire world is out to get him.

Perennial residents like Billy K. become the human counterpart to the perennial hurricane. Billy has lived in Port Isabel all of his adult life, working first as a commercial diver, salvaging valuables from the myriad of shipwrecks from the past, recovering gold, silver and other treasures, only to have the State of Texas claim their rightful share of the plunder, which Billy doesn’t think they have any right to. So he tried to hide the bulk of the take from one particularly well endowed Spanish galleon, but the State found out, and took the whole thing plus more since Billy tried to keep it all. They never did found the remainder of the stash though, and Billy invested a good deal of that into a Marine Salvage operation, where he has made a fortune over the years recovering the largesse from named and unnamed tropical tormentas and hurricanes.

He has a salvage yard full of treasures that savvy wharf-rats know are worth as much as their weight in the gold and silver salvaged from long sunken Spanish galleons. Brass portlights, lifeboats, life preservers, engines and deck machinery, everything from sailboat rigging, blocks and fairleads to fishing winches, trawl doors and nets.

Billy K. owns a giant rusting hulk, bleeding long trails of iron oxide down it’s sides to its barnacle encrusted waterline, a British built ferry boat he obtained through some back alley deal, lying against one of his docks, tucked in there between filthy tugs and abandoned shrimpers.

Billy contracted a couple of guys from up the valley, out west in the desert area to sandblast the hull, get it ready to paint so that he could sell it to some unsuspecting soul.

So they hauled and drydocked the boat there on his property, and began to sandblast it, letting the paint, rust and sand fall into the open channel, and onto the drydock where it could be washed into the channel at the end of the day with high pressure washers.

…..But since this ain’t the wild west nomore, pretty soon his jerry-rigged operation came up on the feds radar screen……The Coast Guard, and the environmental police showed up and shut Billy K. down. “Hell” he claimed, “It’s not my fault, they’re just picking on me”. “If I hire a company to do work for me, than how could it be my fault”? “If you hire somebody to paint your car, and they wash the unused paint down the drain, would it be your fault that they violated the law?”

Later Billy K. got a contract from Mr. Z who owns about half of the town, to put in some decorative pilings and cement rip-rap out in front of Mr. Z’s’ new waterfront eatery, the Pelican Station. Give it a real rundown coastal look. A perfect opportunity to use up some of that old trash lying around the salvage yard, out of sight, out of mind. When the feds caught up with him again, for not having the proper permits to place fill in the water, threatening to fine him fifty thousand dollars a day for illegally filling coastal waters, Billy moaned; “they’re just picking on me, they’re always picking on me, why me?”….”how was I supposed to know that there weren’t any permits to do that?”…. “I can’t be responsible for this!”….

Billy K. owns a restaurant over on the island, the Palm Street Pier. An open air joint on the bay, the Palm Street pier is classically furnished with salvaged bits and pieces from Billy K’s. Marine Salvage Yard. Fresnel lights and ships’ wheels, cabin furnishings dating back to the 1950’s all held together by turquoise paint over its weathered lumber.

Billy K’s. neighbor to the South, Tequila Frogs, own the property that Billy uses for a parking lot out in front of Palm Street Pier, and recently decided for reasons not clear to anyone except he and Billy K. that the parking lot property was now off-limits to customers of the Palm Street Pier, so in the middle of a busy Saturday night crowd, the island constabulary came bursting in (well, came bursting on to palapa covered restaurant and grill), announcing that the patrons would immediately have to move their cars to the parking lot that was included in the lease when Billy K. originally leased the property several years prior, a parking lot located two blocks distant.

There hasn’t been much business at the Palm Street Pier since that happened. Billy K. swears it isn’t his fault. Hell, everyone’s always picking on him.

Another Public Service message

Well folks....it's time to call a spade a spade. The Isla Blanca controversy has turned into a strictly political battlefield. In this case, the candidate who portrays himself as the knight in shining armor is in reality, the wolf in sheeps clothing.

Come on Mr. Cascos, tell your loyal minions how you:

1.) As County Commissioner voted in favor of each and every rate hike increase for the park,

and

2.) campaigned to demolish a pefecty sound Convention Center structure within the park, so that the City of SPI could have a monopoly on a new, better structure (constructed in a hurricane washover no less).

Does this sound like the track record of someone with the best interests of a park in mind?

What makes folks think that if they succeed in getting this guy elected that he won't just sell out the park anyway? He's already proved willing to do that on numerous occassions.

Don't be ignorant folks. Question ALL motives....

(Not paid for or endosed by ANY political candidate, just common sense questions and observations)

Happy Trail(er)s

The seasons spin by the older I get.

Sometimes I feel like the disappearing man.

It's the annual "bike fest" here on the island again, and the fuckers are showing up en masse. High dollar RV's and trucks, pulling trailers loaded with high end Harleys that only get ridden a couple of times a year.

Some of these people tow their two wheelers hundreds, maybe thousands of miles to their destination here at the "roar by the shore" so that they can ride up and down Padre Boulevard, a total distance of something like 6 miles. Real easy riders.

On Saturday they have a bike parade scheduled. They all act naughty, blasting over the causeway, and up the street to climax over at the convention center.

I have a novel idea for them this year.

Why not have a trailer parade? Cut through the crap. Their trailers get a lot more highway miles than their bikes anyway.

SPI makes a splash....

Last week the wonderful berg of South Padre Island hosted “splash”, a homosexual debauchery on the sandspit, celebrating the cuteness of “being gay”

And what the fuck is “being gay”? I’m not the first to pen that the word “gay” used to have a totally innocuous meaning in more innocent times. Gay meant “happy”. Hell, I even had a “Gay Yellow Schoolbus”. Created when we were more innocent, and perverts stayed in the closet. It pains me to think of what that little toy would be today, or what the jokes surrounding it would be.

It pains me to see us having taken a giant step toward Gomorrah . Never mind Sodom .

Call me a homophobe if you like. I don’t give a shit.

To legitimize abhorrent behavior is to give the devil his due. Have we become a society so tolerant of deviancy that we will legitimize anything between two individuals, even at the expense of our own freedom, and the country in which we live?

Christ, I even saw a banner across the road welcoming participants of “splash” to the island. Real savory for families and children. What’s next? Hosting an annual convention of NAMBLA? It’s just a little further down the old (dirt) road. Thanks a lot SPI

I thought that Republicans were against this sort of thing? Seems like the political infrastructure of SPI is mostly the “R word though…..

So what gives? Could the town be so money hungry that it would sell its soul for a few lousy silver shekels? Could the City Manager (and I use that term loosely), Mr. Dewey Cashwell (you know him… of Hughy, Dewey and Louie fame) be persuaded to put aside principal for hotel occupancy? I tell you, I feel sorry for the hotel and condo cleanup crews after an event like this. Better wear full body protection, face masks and keep the industrial disinfectant nearby!

Ah well, what can we expect?

This type of behavior is totally in line with a place whose citizens are more concerned with building sand castles, putting on parties and catering to ill behaved annual spring break children, than with issues of morality, global crisis or the impending implosion of western civilization. I say keep fiddling while Rome burns ya’ll, it’s easy when you’re insulated from the real world.

Maybe too much THC and LSD during the ‘60’s?

Any town that bases it’s entire economy on this type of thing is only a shove from total economic and moral collapse. Better keep whistling past the graveyard.

Peace and love ya’ll

Isla Blanca Park is Never Safe?

Surfrider Mission Statement:
-The Surfrider Foundation is a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world's oceans, waves and beaches through conservation, activism, research and education.

Isla Blanca Is Never Safe!

That’s the rhetoric I spotted on the Marquis at “On the Beach” the other day when I drove past. It’s also bullshit. So is the above mission statement for “surfrider”.

Let me ‘splain again. This is getting to be a tiring topic, but one that is so deeply mired in politics that it probably deserves the weight of truth.

As you know, Isla Blanca County Park had been given a contract by the County Commission for development by a group called the Laguna Madre Enhancement Group. The park itself is located on the extreme south tip of South Padre Island, adjacent to the north Brazos Santiago Jetty. Because of it’s geologic setting, there is a net loss of property due to erosion produced by the inhibition of sediment transport by the northbound longshore current as a result of the granite jetties which were built in the early part of the 20th century. Bottom line, nature, and the acts of man are causing this small tip of the barrier island to disappear.

As a side product though, it is perhaps the most excellent wave riding spot on the Gulf of Mexico. Here the continental shelf is at its narrowest point, allowing deep water swells to roll all the way to the beach, which themselves play a role in the exaggerated rate of erosion. The same waves that “surfrider” is so concerned with preserving access to, are also relentlessly wearing down the beach front, and sweeping the park away.

On Tuesday I took my little ketch offshore, out the jetties, which are a great place to drill home the effects of nature and man by observation. When I was just about in line with the south beach, Boca Chica, I was able to turn around, and look west at the North beach (Isla Blanca Park), almost a half mile further west, a result of erosion and shoreward transport of this part of the island.

So there’s not much we can do about it. Nature will eventually have her way, always has. The island will continue its relentless march shoreward, eventually accreting with the western shoreline, subside and disappear in a process that will be repeated during the next regression-transgression of sea level.

I don’t think surfrider understands this, or if they do they certainly aren’t making their members aware of it, members who consist mainly of aging affluent still pot smoking yuppies, who only see a threat to their parking lot where they can conduct unrestricted hedonism. What else could it be?

Certainly, a development in Isla Blanca Park of the sort that the “enhancement group” proposes would have little, if any impact on the ultimate geomorphic process that I’ve attempted to describe. And in reality, as the plans showed, fewer inhabitants than currently utilize the RV park would be present at any given time, probably reducing “ecological impact”.

Wouldn’t this fit in with surfriders mission? Judicious development can produce beneficial results. Furthermore, in Texas, public beach access cannot be restricted, and the surf break that these former 60’s hippies are so adamant about is really a non-issue. So where is the problem?

Cameron Counties political infrastructure even negated the lease in order to placate these bastards, who, selfishly don‘t even realize that the income would’ve funded other low income facilities for the benefit of the rest of the counties population. Hell, I had one even tell me, when I asked him about what the underprivileged kids would do for recreational facilities, kids who don’t even have an opportunity to travel from their colonias to the beach; “let ‘em play at school”.

Real caring individual, unfortunately reflective of the majority of self centered surfers, who drive their high end SUV’s down to the park to “catch a wave”……These folks are isolated from the rest of their community, choosing to live here in the affluence of the island and coast, insulating themselves from the true reality of where they live, the same as they choose to insulate themselves from the reality of what really is happening at Isla Blanca Park. Wake up and smell the Sargassum folks, it’s really all about erosion.

I heard one of these assholes remark the other day about their petition with “over three thousand signatures”, but what they failed to mention was the percentage of signatures by folks outside of this area, this county, even this state. Can’t forget the almighty “Winter Texans” either (and yes Virgina….these bastards are returning again, all too early!), folks only concerned with their own ability to stay on the beach all winter cheap. They don’t give a flying fuck about this place either. Just what’s in it for them. What’s free. And that’s the sad reality.

It appears to me that from the beginning this has been a political issue, dominated by a single individuals quest for County-judgedom. The way I see it, this Cascos character has been in the fracas from the beginning, using the naiveté of the cannabis consumers as a forum, a moving billboard. Next to damn near every “Save Isla Blanca” sticker is a “Carlos Cascos” sticker…….Do people really believe that this man won’t parlay an opportunity into gain? Damn near every “rally” put on by surfrider et al has involved a political rally for this guy.

Now they’re at it again, over some perceived intricacy within the vestigial remnants of “the lease”, but this time there’s a problem. It’s blatant bullshit, and they’re caught, pants down. However, this doesn’t seem to make a difference. These people will not stop until they finally implode like the draft card burning jerks they once were. It’s like a Phoenix rising from the flames in reverse. I smell a rat, the unholy triad between Cascos (the father), Surfrider (the son), and the chosen few (the un-holy ghost).

I really don’t much care about political alliances, but what I do care about is this place, and that’s what’s got me so red-assed. All of this misplaced energy.

There are true ecological problems that should be addressed. For example, how can we mitigate the effects of erosion in a common sense way? What do we do about the denigration of water quality from an ever expanding population? How do we deal with the siltation of the navigable passes and channels? Limit trash on beaches?

I don’t hear these concerns voiced by Cascos/surfrider/the privileged few. They instead, have chosen to target a totally banal and political cause for their own selfish gain. In that, there is no difference between them and their enemy, the Laguna Madre Enhancement Group

The Great Midnight Procession

I’m gonna get in trouble with someone sure as hell for blogging this one…

Back in the 80’s I had a couple of crazy friends who I used to hang out with quite a bit. RBY and Hunter. Now understand before I begin the story, we were fully grown adults.

RBY had gotten in trouble with us when we went to Pepes on the River following a three day road trip to North Texas. We had inadvertently left him there, and he had to catch a ride home with some old wrinkle-neck, and when he walked into his house, his wife noticed that he had his shirt zipped through his pants zipper. She suspected something.

So RBY got put on restriction. We tried to get him exonerated, even sent his then-wife a “Honey-do” basket, complete with flowers, toilet scrubber and paintbrushes. This resulted in an even tougher sentence.

After sitting around one night with Hunter drinking Cuba Libres, we decided we’d extract our own form of punishment on RBY for being such a pussy and not standing up to the old ball and chain. Show her who’s boss.

We jumped into Hunters mothers big black Lincoln Continental (he was babysitting the thing for her while she was out of town) and throwing a great fishtail, lunged off towards RBY’s house on the golf course with no real plan in mind. Once we got there though, we knew what we had to do.

Near the curb, Hunter gave the big old black boat the gas, and we hopped the curb into the finely manicured St. Augustine lawn, spinning the tires and digging a trench at least 6” deep the length of the front yard. We sideswiped the big green plastic trashcan, as Hunter looked in the review mirror and declared that he was going back for the two plump black trashbags laying alongside, so we repeated the offense in reverse…..

We decided that that’d show the bastard.

Well, this started years of payback. No sooner had one lawn recovered, than another one fell victim. First Hunter, the RBY then myself, in a revolving cycle of retribution, someone always had the handiwork of the midnight burnout in their front yard.

As the game escalated, we found new and creative ways to torment one another. One creative method was to stuff the head of a recently slaughtered deer (does only) into someones mailbox as a sort of scaled down version of the “Godfather”. This however came to an end, when one of RBY’s boys decided to copy the trick and try this on an ex-girlfriend. Her father however, failed to see the humor in this, and called the local sheriff, who, thinking it was an infestation of the mailbox by a rabid bat, shot the damn thing with his .357, and realizing his error, hauled the errant head away in a big ziplock bag labeled “exhibit A”. This ended the head incidents.

RBY got remarried, Hunter was trying to settle down (unsuccessfully), and I was an “older student” in college living out in the country, in a groovy little place I called “the nest”.

We used to have some insane parties out there.

It was my birthday in 1993, and there were about twenty five people out there, seven or eight cars. We had spent the evening barbequing, indulging in copious quantities of alcohol, and around midnight, in a fungal inspired haze decided to burn through Hunters lawn. It was something we hadn’t done in a long time.

Assembling in a procession of cars in the dark near the canal that bordered Hunters house, with me in the lead in my topless little Suzuki Samurai, we lined up. As if on cue, and with a sudden collective lurch, we each ground through his perfectly manicured grass, throwing great hunks of sod on the cars behind us, on the walls of his house, and into the street. Little man, at the tail of the procession said that he saw Hunter peeking out from behind the curtains. We dug a virtual Grand Canyon that night in Hunters lawn. Later we wound down by driving the unholy procession through about four or five other lawns of people we didn’t even know, unleashing all of the fury that Detroit and Tokyo could muster…..

I guess that was the last time I ever extracted the revenge of the lawn burnout on anybody. It was a wonder we never got caught anyway. As with all things in life, that which doesn’t kill me (or sends me to jail) makes me stronger.

Every now and then though, I get the notion to hop a curb, and leave my calling card across a well manicured front lawn in some quiet neighborhood….

Fences

D wrote this as a letter to the editor. I am happy to pass it along:

I’ve just seen a new use for shrimp doors that I would have never thought of. Residential fencing, boy does it look tawdry. I was driving down to South Point Marina when I noticed the shrimp door fence adjoining a tastefully created southwestern style stucco fence belonging to the soon to be new Pirates Cove Subdivision that some are talking about. The owner for that subdivision has done a superb job in providing PI a badly needed facelift to a former industrial area, otherwise known by the old timers as “la palengana.”

In comparison, the trailer park on the North side that has provided “the shrimp door fence” is complete with requisite trash pile that the city of PI seems to ignore for mysterious reasons. Is this due to apathy, or deference to the property owner on the part of PI? Perhaps there are no enforceable codes?

This is the conundrum I pondered as I drove passed these two edifices which seem to represent PI as it is (status quo) and the potential of what PI could be.

I would hope that the future of Port Isabel is as it could be.

90 or 180 days

We had lunch with my friend George the other day.

We decided to eat at Marchans, the all you can eat fish plate. It's pretty good, in my opinion the best all you can eat fish in Puerto Isabel. The tourists don't really know about it (yet), maybe the Winter Texan crowd does, but we don't eat there a lot in the winter time. The fish is light and flakey, with a killer potato salad (or fries), cole slaw and roll. Washed down with a giant glass of ice cold iced tea, well, it's one of the things that make living here in the summer time bearable. We usually sit by the window which overlooks the harbor so that I can admire all of the boats, especially one lovely little ketch on the middle finger.

The tourists stick to the glitzy places like Pirates Landing and The Lost Galleon, and that's fine with me.

Anyway, we noticed George and Scarlets van parked out front as we were going in. It had the utility trailer attached, with a freezer strapped down, and I wondered if they were doing a little free lance hauling along with eco tours and the nature center.....

Marchans was pretty crowded, the waitress told us we could eat over in the far room, where there was only one other family. On the way over there, we passed George and his friend Sam, getting ready to have the famous all you can eat fish. We stopped along their small table, and they invited us to sit, but being as we're all sort of big, we invited them to our table, which was much larger. George said they'd be over as soon as they got served as things were moving pretty slowly what with the rush, and they wanted to get their food first.

After a bit they came over and sat down, and we started catching up on things. George comes from a pioneer family in Port Isabel, his father ran one of the early ferry boat services to the island, long before the first causeway was even built. George has carried on in the tradition as a boat captain.

So naturally, a good deal of the conversation had to do with boats and the seafaring business. Most of the non-commercial work here revolves around the tourist trade, things like eco-tours, para-sailing, fishing, dolphin watching and party cruises. George has seen and done it all.

He chartered out to a bunch of McDonalds executives who were in town to celebrate the opening of the new McDonalds on the island, when it was first built years ago. He took them out, and they caught fish, they caught a buzz and in general they caught a good time. Afterward, they asked him; "90 or 180 days?".

George was bewildered. "90 or 180 days, what?"

"90 or 180 days terms for payment, that's the way it works, and by the way, where do we mail the check?".

George thought about it for a minute and replied. "Oh, I see....so that means that every time I want an order from McDonalds, I can just drive through, pick it up and ask the person behind the window...90 or 180 days?".

"That's how it works right?"

The Sailing Kabala of Doctor David

On the ancient wall of China, where a brooding Buddha blinks, deeply graven is the message, ‘It’s later than you think.’

The clock of life is wound but once, and no man has the power, to tell just where the hands will stop, at late or early hour.

Now is all the time you own, the past a golden link, go cruising now my brothers, it’s later than you think.


All I want to do any more is sail.

Find a way to finance my habit. From the minute that I light the first piece of canvas, till the boat is washed and the sails bagged, I want to explore distant tropical islands and seas, maybe finding a homeport far from the chaos that is rapidly spinning out of control before us. I'll admit it. I spend countless hours in nautical catalogs, and have pushed google pretty much to the limit purusing infinite links to sailing sites. I am presently at work, outfitting Olivia in spartan, utilitarian splendor, provisioning her for the series of passages to the hinter world of the sailing promised land. My dreams are filled with azure water, warm trade winds and coconut palm covered islands.

I know the reality. Sailing is mostly work, hard work, with contrary winds, currents and seas. It is living in shoebox sized spaces often wet tired and dirty. It is worry about your anchor holding in some shitty rough bay, or the possibility that the dreaded H word will fuck up your day. It is also magical work, transported by the wind to destinations that otherwise normal people, in all reality, will never see.

My friend Jim, from Island Time says that they don't subtract the days you sail from your existance. This might be true. Better yet, I think that one day on the sea, under canvas equals twenty two point five days ashore, doing things you don't want to.

Like all addicts, I thought I might be alone in my illness, this obsession with the sea. The other night I was sitting on the back deck with my good friend Doctor David, an equally addicted sailor. We were drinking a couple of cold Spaten Optimator dopplebocks, watching late night fishermen coming in trying to trailer their boats in semi drunken stupors, and talking about all things nautical. I mentioned that I detest yard work, hate it, hate anything that has to do with lawn maintenance. For years I have wrestled with this apparent abnormal, deviant and antisocial behavior. I would rather be working on a boat, down in the engine room, covered in oil and diesel, or sweating in some closed compartment painting areas that require the contortions of a carnival rubber man.

I told David about this, said I didn't even want a yard and he laughed, said he hated yard work too....didn't want one either. I mentioned to him that every time I drive down the street and see some guy slaving in a yard that looks just like it came out of the goddamn Sunset Magazine, I wonder to myself "what's wrong with me?". He snickered and replied: "I wonder....what's wrong with them?".

So I have now decided that I will surrender to the sailing kabala, and consider all who don't understand, outsiders.

I won't be much of a party conversaionalist if you want to talk about varieties of roses, or mulch, or weed eaters, or sprinkler systems. I'll probably be over in the corner dozing off.

But if you want to talk about raritan heads, norseman fittings and Micron 33, things like that, you just might get a response.....

Whale Passage

I had gone back to Kodiak in the Spring of 1980 for reasons that I don’t remember now. Most of my life following the military, I had spent running from one thing or the other. I had freedom, and no one could tell me when or where to go.

I probably was running from something, more than likely myself.

It was a rainy spring, as most springs on Kodiak are. I spent a great deal of time in the little bar adjacent to the bowling alley, drinking Christian Brothers Brandy (“someday I’m gonna make a pilgrimage to Reedly California where the good monks produce their fine elixir”), playing music and in general neglecting responsibility which was better attended to. Somewhere along the way I scored a term aboard the Bold Lady, a refit ugly old gulf coast, Benders shrimper that had been tanked and converted for multi use fishing in the Alaskan Waters. On April fools someone had left a seacock open, and the big white boat sank at the moorings. Flooding the engine room before being able to be raised, the main engine underwater, a major rebuild was now in order. The crew which consisted of the Chuck the skipper, Chucks brother, Hank (“Uncle tape”) and Glen Ingvie (who had owned a boat which had sunk the previous year) were busy rebuilding the big 12 cylinder diesel in order to retrieve the crab pots which were left in the water following the mishap. They were anxious to get that done in order to rig for shrimp season which was coming up.

So I got to watchdog the boat with the understanding that if anybody quit, I would be next in line as crew. It was a pretty groovy job, all I had to do was make sure the thing didn’t sink and that no unauthorized people came aboard in exchange for a warm place to sleep and cook meals. I would fish regularly, catching flounder, ling and bass right there in the channel where she was moored, side tied. Once the scalloper tied in front of the Bold Lady turned me on to a gunny sack full of giant succulent scallops, just waiting to be shucked and fried. The rain fell with regularity, mostly a light mist, as the island awoke from its winter sleep, and boats made their way up and down the Near Island channel to or from fishing grounds. The Alaska Star Cannery was busy pumping out the end of the season Dungeness and Tanner crab, and clouds of steam from the processing permeated the town, mixing with the smell of the ice cold Pacific, the surrounding primal forests mosses and lichens producing a nourishing almost edible smell that still lingers in my memory, and possibly always will.

Chucks brother decided to cash it in, and so I became a crew of the notorious Bold Lady. We finished overhauling the big engine, and finally one day we were ready to get out there and bring back the gear. Our first trip out, we rounded Cape Chiniak, a very rough stretch even on a good day, when the rudder post decided to snap, leaving us without steering. Chuck and I descended into the lazarette in pitching, rolling thirteen foot seas, and I held the two parts together, as best I could while Chuck welded them, both of us standing in shin deep cold water. The repair held, and we retrieved a portion of the gear near the southwest part of the island under gray skies and gray seas.

Delivering the gear to town, I felt like a king to be fishing again. We had tanked the few crabs that were in the pots (even though they were out of season), and sold them under the table to the Kodiak VFW. Back in town, we offloaded the gear (and illicit crab), split the money and lived like pirates for a few days, partying day and night.

The next trip out, we headed over to the Shelikof Strait, another bad piece of water, the large pass between Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula. Leaving in the late afternoon, we hit Whale Passage around 2200. Whale passage is an area where, when the tide turns, the entire Shelikof Strait / North Pacific channel necks down to a funnel like the center of a giant hourglass. Whale Pass only lets one through on slack or standing tides. At the tidal change it becomes a howling, raging torrent of energy with great swirling whirlpools big enough to eat large ships, sucking them into the oblivion of the depths.

I had the first watch, everyone else was asleep down below, and I was simply minding the autopilot, making small corrections here and there as we steamed east under fair skies, a crystal sunset and glassy waters. Near perfect conditions.

Around 2300 were well clear of Whale Passage, and the night had fallen to a blanket of ink, with just the profiles of the jagged peaks framed like cardboard cutouts on a quilt of black. Scanning to the port side, I noticed a group of three elongated oval lights which seemed to be hovering above the mountains in the distance several miles away. I figured that they were just a Coast Guard helicopter hovering, out on night ops, or maybe a SAR. I watched for a minute with barely any interest, when almost instantaneously they accelerated, moving toward the starboard across our bow at a speed that I could not even comprehend, and were just as quickly gone, out of sight. As they crossed our bow, the autopilot suddenly kicked off, the rudder went hard to starboard, and the Bold Lady started chasing her tail. I shot below, woke up Chuck who reset the thing. I told him the story, but was met with skepticism, so I quickly backed off, saying no more.

The rest of the trip went uneventfully except for the return through Shelikof Straight, when we were in the midst of a raging storm, and the swell had kicked up to some 25 feet or so. I had the night watch then too, and was watching an approaching boat on the radar, watching him close on us down range, closer and closer. I couldn’t see shit through the driving spray and mountains of water. Out of the blackness to our port passed the target, another fishing boat no more than a couple of hundred feet away….way too close for comfort in those conditions. We made it back to town, offloaded the gear again and rigged for shrimp.

I learned how to mend net sitting there in the parking lot with the guys, singing a-capella to the rhythm of the net needles and twine. My tenure as a shrimper didn’t last long. On the first trip out, with barely 3000 pounds in the hold, the main engine broke a connecting rod, shot it right through the block with the sound of a hand grenade exploding. When we went below it was a surreal scene, broken piston rod playing hide and seek in and out of the engine block, spraying oil on everything like some mechanical artery had been severed. We were towed back in, and had to wait at Whale Passage while the tide turned. It was the first time I had ever seen that, and I suppose my own eyes were the size of dinner plates, as the tranquil scene was replaced by utter chaos from Neptune.

I got my three hundred dollar check for three months work, booked a cheap standby ticket and flew back South. Haven't been back since.

Free all the Freakin' Orcas

Last Saturday we were up in San Antonio with the kiddies. It was hotter than hell, and sometime late in the scorching afternoon we decided to go to the Shamu show, the Orca exhibit.

They have something like five Orcas that they keep in captivity for our collective enjoyment. Beautiful wild animals, hunting machines that are kept in a couple of acres of artifical seawater and blue painted cement tanks. Gitmo bay for cetaceans.

I have a real problem with that.

Of course, I'm not a tree hugger or even a "green person" by any means, but some things just shouldn't be done, and keeping magnificent, highly intelligent animals in captivity is one of them. However, they do put on one hell of a performance for a few measly pounds of squid and herring....

The kids wanted to sit in the "splash zone", the area where during the course of the show, the animals collectively pound the water with their bodies and tails, soaking everyone in the first twenty rows or so. Here, the sides of the tank are clear acrylic plastic, and you can see the entire animal as it pushes ice cold water onto the gleeful crowd. A great way to cool off on a very hot afternoon.

At a pre-rehearsed moment, a young Orca appears from the depths of the tank and stares at us for a brief instant prior to giving his massive flukes a flick, shoving hundreds of gallons of water onto the expectant audiance.

I stare into his baleful knowing eye, instantly transported back in time to a deep bay between two islands in Kodiak Alaska.

I am at the controls of the hydraulic reel of my boat Marusa as we pick down a mile or more of long line string, set in about fifty fathoms of water, soaking on the bottom, waiting for some giant Halibut to take the salmon heads bait. I like fishing for Halibut, you never know will come up on the next hook. In this same area I had recently hooked a gargantuan fish that we estimated to be upwards of maybe five hundred pounds. We never got it aboard, it thrashed far out on the surface, straightened out the big 26/0 hook and was gone, leaving us all in awe. The water here is crystal blue, as dark as navy blue velvet as it heads into the inky depths. Halibut fishing is a summer time fishery, and the air can be warm, with calm seas, air redolent with the scent of spruce and moss from the ancient mysterious islands.

On this particular day there is little wind. The surface of the water is unusually glassy. A few Codfish and small "chicken" Halibut in the hold, and we are busy rebaiting and laying the string back out as quickly as we work it. We are near the backside of Long Island, and the black sand beach, dark green spruce forrest and deep blue sky make a picture perfect back drop.

In the depths we spy a giant octopus entangled in the line, hooked and writhing, being dragged to the surface. Octopus make excellent bait for everything from King Crab to Halibut, and the canneries pay well for them, so naturally we are intent on landing the critter. This individual is probably around eighty or ninety pounds, outstreached, maybe fifteen feet from end of hood to tip of tentacle.

Anyway, the octopus comes alongside and predictibly sucks on to the port side of the Marusa, a thirty foot wooden planked longliner, clinging to the hull about two feet below the waterline. This creates a unique dilemma. How do we get it to let go to bring it aboard? If we keep applying pressure, the hook will pull out and we'll lose the animal.

I come up with an instant solution. Lets just sink four or five hooks on the line in the beasts hood, then let off the pressure. He'll think he's free, then we can quickly haul him over the rail before he has a chance to discover otherwise.

So we go to work. I lean over the side, reach down into the water and sink the first hook. Then another. All of the sudden, the water darkens as if some undersea cloud is gathering on us, and out of the blue flashes a goddamn Orca, halting just in front of the octopus clinging to the side of the boat. I do not have time to react, as we all stand staring for a moment forever frozen in time and memory, staring into the eye of the whale, which is staring curiously at the octopus, the boat and us.

Then, as quickly as it appears, the Orca disappears into the depths, sinking and gliding effortlessly downward. I don't even debate, I know I have to get the octopus off of the hull and into the hold, remove any temptation before the animal returns for hors' dervours, something that the old boat might not survive.

All the hooks in place in the critters hood, and I return to the starboard side controls to let off pressure on the longline. The Orca appears from the depth again just as the octopus lets go, and stares at it as it wriths, suspended in the blue. He stares at the boat and us again, then disappears into the cold deep Pacific for good, leaving us incredulous, if not a bit shaken.

We quickly haul the octopus over the port rail, and dispatch him with the end of an axe handle, putting him into the ice in the bottom of the hold. We continue to fish, never seeing the Orca again.

I want to think that he knew we had worked hard to capture that octopus, fishing just as he did, and so he just decided to leave us alone, let us have it for the effort. That's why I have a special soft spot in my preditory heart for those animals.

Mr. Smudge

Mark O. Karl works for the US Inefficient Wildlife Service. He has some sort of namby-pamby title like “outreach specialist” or some such horseshit.

This means he doesn’t do a whole lot except suck the cocks of his superiors, and get Herculean pay raises on a regular basis. My botanist friend that works there can’t stand him.

“I’m gonna find some endangered species like Lila-de-los llanos just so it fucks up his plans for a project here” he acerbically commented over his shoulder as we walked a small finger of dusty fine sand jutting out into the Bahia Grande, which for all practical purposes is drying up ever since “the service” decided to cut a channel from the Brownsville Ship Channel into that dustbowl, in an effort to flood it back to its original state, which was altered after the Ship Channel was built in the first place.

The new channel has silted in just like I predicted before they went to great expense and fanfare to cut it out of the mangroves and salt marshes, routing it under the road. That’s the way it is with the feral gumment by God, and you just better get used to it buddy.

The same way it is with Mark O. Karl, a short grinning little bastard with an undefined job.

Mostly my friend says, he attends meetings and talks on the phone, but as long as he keeps his nose firmly planted up the refuse managers collective asses, well, the sky’s the limit. My botanist friend told me that recently one of “the Services” managers, a Herman Goering wannabe, a skinny putrid bastard named Joe Riparian called an office wide meeting to try and address the growing discord that’s spreading throughout the refuse like some sort of malignancy. Of course, my friend, whom I consider a consummate scientist and professional (if not a bit of a healthy iconoclast) along with most of the rest of the place brought a litany of observations concerning the managements lack of management skills to the table….all except Mark O. Karl, who just sat in the back with that shit eating grin, finally raising his hand and commenting; “ Gee…..I don’t know what’s the problem…..I think management is doing a swell job here!”.

The management seems to have a problem with people who really produce

I think it’s the threat thing. Nobody is allowed to succeed, hell no. This might expose the Joe Riaprians, the Lenny Demerits and the Mark O. Karls, people who represent the vast majority of do-nothings that inhabit the nebulous ranks of the feral gumment like giant amoeba waiting for a handout to swim by.

My botanist friend has recently been demoted for his achievements, the labor of over 15 years of faithful service, and is now relegated to a welding,-tractor driver-herbicide applying drone. He observes; “this is why I got a masters degree….to spray roundup”.

I worked among these folks for a couple of years, on a peripheral job, driving a tram, and talking to busloads of gente and viejitos, working as an interpretive naturalist.

A volunteer during that time named Scary K was working there, along with her then boyfriend, Eupatorium. When they broke up, she spent a lot of time shitfaced, and at almost every refuse function she’d show up lit. Sometimes she’d show up over at my friends house, late at night with a case of beer. He told me that he’d drink maybe one or two, and she’d kill the rest of the case. He’d always make her clear out, just send her home, to her house where she had about 12 cats, a house always in disarray, and stinking of unkempt cats and dirty clothes.

We were all friends.

He coexisted with an old tomcat at the time, a refugee from the alleys of Weslaco, that he named Mr. Smudge, due to its dirty complexion. Mr. Smudge was ancient, and suffered from an ailment common to all old male cats, a urinary problem. He figured that he’d have to euthanize old Mr. Smudge as soon as he got back from visiting relatives up in middle America.

When he got back though, Scary K had taken Mr. Smudge to the veterinarian, and against everybody’s better judgment (including the veterinarian), had an operation performed to remove Mr. Smudges' penis and balls, routing the piss hole back to his asshole so that urine would not back up in his bladder.

My friend was livid. He said that from that point on, Mr. Smudge just dribbled piss wherever he went, looking more morose and forelorn tha ever. Mr Smudge, he said, would look up at him with big pleading eyes, as if to say; "just put me out of my misery..... Finally my friend took Mr. smudge back to the vet and had him put to sleep.

Then he received the bill for the piss-routing operation, which he had never authorized in the first place.

Scary K was on his shitlist for a while after that, but my friend being the good natured cuss that he is got over it, and the neurotic community that represents the finest of the feral gumments US Inefficient Wildlife service settled back to its normal state of abnormal.

Scary K kept up with her drinking, but it all finally came to a head one Christmas when she attended a Christmas party at the home of another employee, another outreach specialist named Corky Braunfels. Corky has a reputation of being a true feral gumment maestro, one who truly lives up to the creed; “Never do today what can be put of until tomorrow”.

According to my friend, who read the documents filed after the fact, everyone was drinking. Around midnight, ol’ Corky bursts into the living room, where his wife, Scary K, and another woman were seated, and waving a bottle of half consumed champagne, bellowed; “ WHO WANTS TO GET LICKED SUCKED AND FUCKED?”.

My friend wryly observed that this in reality, was a perfectly legitimate question, certainly one unworthy and uncalled for Scary K to file a sexual harassment charge over.

”Hell” he said….”Who wants to get licked, sucked and fucked?”…..

“Everybody does”.

Las Palabras de Cuba Libre

Thanks Joey for writing this:

CUBA LIBRE
By: Joey Tamayo / Performed by The Bongodogs

Hey
Cuba que vacer tu gente
Cuando se muera el Presidente
Y aqual vacer tu decisicion
Al enterrar lo en el panteón

Ojala…sea Cuba Libre
Cuba Libre deben de calar
Ojala….sea Cuba Libre
Cuba Libre deben de probar

Toda la gente de Havana
Y de Santiago y de las Cruces
Después de tanta agua salada
La Libertad es agua dulce

Ojala…sea Cuba Libre
Cuba Libre deben de calar
Ojala….sea Cuba Libre
Cuba Libre deben de probar

Cuba que vacer tu gente
Cuando se muera el Presidente
Y aqual vacer tu decisicion
Al enterar lo en el panteón

Ojala…sea Cuba Libre
Cuba Libre deben de calar
Ojala….sea Cuba Libre
Cuba Libre deben de probar
Andale Cuba

Vamanos

....El Estomago

Snook Sandwich

I went fishing with the New Sheriff the other day.

He wanted to go early, up the Brownsville Ship Channel looking for snook, wanted to leave around six AM, to which I reluctantly agreed. D and Jen (Ms. Sheriff) were having a yard sale, so it seemed like the perfect time to duck out. But then I decided, ahhhh, fuck it, six AM is way to early, so I laid around like a big bed pig until around ten or so, when I was awaken from a soporific sleep by the whistling wind outside rattling the windows.

Spring time is normally a windy season here on the coast when the late season northers march their way south, only to meet equally powerful high pressure ridges advancing from the distant tropics, colliding in a leviathan shoving match which usually creates severe weather along its boundaries somewhere up there, but leaves us with only a violent howling south wind that pushes great quantities of dust and dirt derived from the vast loma expanses to the south, and the dredge spoils heaped up along the ship channel fouling everything in a thirty mile radius. I spent over two hours cleaning Menagerie washing fine silt, leaves and garbage that had blown onto the foredeck and under the cockpit seats, only to have the winds return the next day and start the process all over. I felt like Atlas rolling the stone up a hill only to have it roll back down, over and over again….

So the New Sheriff called and said that he was going fishing anyhow, and did I want to go? Ah, what the hell. I grabbed a few things and decided to go flog the water for a bit anyway. We stopped and got ice, braving the spring break crowds. About ten thirty or so I cracked open a breakfast Tecate.

The New Sheriffs’ skiff is an ancient Jon Boat, resurrected from its final resting place at his dads house in Florida. The Rusty Duck has a center console, with a steering wheel that’s broken off, and is nothing more now than a stub, but it still turns, still works. It has an vintage Johnson Seahorse Sixty Horse engine that makes it go like a bat out of hell. Most importantly, mounted on the bow is a trolling motor. Now this particular trolling motor did not come straight out of the pages of Bass Pro catalog…no, this trolling motor has seen far better days, but it still works, and that’s the important thing. The corroded cover has been wrenched off, and the New Sheriff now has to use a cut off ax handle, jammed into the pinion gear to change it from forward to reverse, but he’s got the whole cantankerous thing under control.

Hell, I used to have a skiff like this one. Named “the pickle”, it was a modicum of idiosyncratic behavior. Like Steinbecks Sea Cow, it generally ran, but it generally never ran right. It did however lead us to catch a lot of fish.

And so it is with the New Sheriffs boat.

Like myself, he has fallen thoroughly in love with catching the mysterious snook that live up in the reaches of the Brownsville Ship Channel. We’re fortunate to live in the only place along the Gulf (outside Florida) where there is a population of them. I discovered fishing for them about ten years ago or so, when during a particularly strong cold front that had us shut out of the Laguna Madre, we decided to explore the Ship Channel and the adjacent shrimp basin. I was bored with drowning shrimp for mangrove snapper, so I tied on a topwater bait and mindlessly plopped it close to the shore along the rocks. After the ripple dissipated, I twitched the lure, made it do a big GLUG when instantly; WHAM!, the water swirled, and my rod doubled in a “U” shape. It was like tying into a largemouth black bass with a supercharger up its ass….

The fight lasted no more than about thirty seconds before the fish cut the line with its razor sharp gill plate.

I fell instantly in love.

Now launching the New Sheriffs’ boat in this gale, years later, I remembered each snooking trip, each savored experience, each one as much about the adventure as about the catching. However, I couldn’t help hoping that I might again tie into one of these rockets. ….

Heading out south towards the open channel from the Highway 48 ramp, past the Saturday crowds who were braving the sandblasting wind, throwing great hunks of mullet into the water in hopes of catching a big red or maybe black drum, or maybe even, a snook, the New Sheriff deftly steered the little skiff with the stub steering wheel through the chocolate whitecapped water. Other gente lined the shoreline crabbing with string and turkey necks. Once out into the open Ship Channel, the New Sheriff carefully put the Rusty Duck on plane as we bounce along the south shoreline.

Cutting back across the channel, we stop along the north shore, where we toss soft plastic baits up against the rocky slope. Almost instantly, something smashes my bait, doubling the road. After about ten minutes, I land a Jack Crevelle about ten pounds.

One of the strongest fish around, Jack Crevelle can make a wreck out of even the best fishing gear. I return this one to the water, and the New Sheriff and I have a laugh, and a fresh Tecate.

Working our way up the channel, we ease down a side cut lined with mangroves, one I used to fish in years ago. We watch a belted kingfisher flying along the shoreline, working the oyster lined banks. In here the persistent wind is almost calm, shielded on both sides by high banks and vegetation, mesquite and retama trees lining the banks, creating a cool and shady hideaway. We work the spot hard, but don't find any fish. That’s OK though, because the New Sheriff is a great guy, full of interesting stories, and so the intense silence is punctuated only occasionally by observations and commentary. The way any good fishing trip should be. Anyway, I’m always in a reflective mood on any good fishing trip, remembering friends and experiences from past trips, adding the current one to the collage.

We venture back into the wind, and working along a wall, just past the granary for awhile, trying to get the mangrove snapper to bite, but the wind is so violent that it is hard to get the bait down where it needs to be. Finally the New Sheriff catches a fat sixteen incher, which he immediately deposites into the fishbox where it protests by smaking its tail against the platic begging to be released. No dice fucker.. The wind here is so bad, that it was blows seagull shit and feathers off of the dock and down on top of us, and we are afraid that our open beers might get compromised, so we put away the trolling motor, and steam up to the end of the Ship Channel, near where long ago, was held the La Frontera Blessing of the Fleet (and Shrimp Festival)…that however is a story for another time.

Up here in the unprotected turning basin, the wind is blowing way too hard to fish effectively, so we flee and duck under the Montagine Fuel docks, where I used to fish with El Estomigo, Mr. Vamanos hisself. A former outdoor TV celebrity, we’d fish for huge snook there late at night, misbehaving badly in the process.

The New Sheriff and I cast up under the shady pilings to the snook we see laying there, finally enticing two small fat ones to bite, both of which we turn back. By this time it is about two in the afternoon or so, and we figure we better on meander back so we could get ready to do a full assault on Matamoros Mexico with the Ladies that evening….

Back out on the open water, and one last fishing spot. I was recounting a story about something, as I casually flipping the soft plastic bait up toward the shoreline. On the first cast a sizeable snook smacked the bait. I lead him to the net, deciding to keep this one for fish sandwiches….

The wind has now increased to a frantic speed, and the channel is eerily, obnoxiously obscured by blowing dust, which works its wretched way into every clothing opening, all of our pores, into open eyes, ears noses and mouths. We pass a bay boat, as it chugs along, deep in the hole. I guess they are afraid to get up on plane for fear of running into something. It is like a brown terribly toxic and abrasive fog. I feel like some sort of fucking aquatic Lawrence of Arabia or something, lost in a blowing sand/shit storm. I could barely make out the side channel leading to the boat ramp….

My eyes felt sandpapered for three days afterward…..

Back at the docks, I try to drive the Rusty Duck on to the trailer, but it is a losing battle. Like my own skiff of long ago, it only wants its owner and nothing else. We finally load up , and crack open the final Tecates of the trip, washing about a pound of silt and sand, down our throats.

I wasn’t hungry for over an hour after that……

Muy Pendejo

Pendejos and the PMF

It’s twenty eight miles from beach access 5 to the Port Mansfield Jetties. I used to drive that long stretch of beach once a week, more often if there was a turtle, dolphin or other chingaso reported up there. On weekends it could be hell. First, you have to make your way through the throngs of partiers between beach access 5 and 6…mostly folks from Brownsville, all parked just above high water, barbecues sending fragrant smells of fajitas, costillas and hamburgesas wafting on the breeze, making everyone inside a two hundred yard radius lust for Miller and Bud light….in great quantities. Children running amok, back and forth between the waters edge and the parked cars….vintage piece o’ shit vans (like I used to own), lowriders, troques with elaborate murals painted on the tailgates, tiny wheels dug deep into the sand, prime candidates for later towing out…the whole nine yards. And the adults, well, they’re generally unconcerned with anything more than swilling gallons of beerungas, sitting in circles getting thoroughly shitfaced.

Usually on this stretch, there’s always at least one, and often times several vehicles stuck in loose sand, throwing huge plumes of flying sand as they futilely gun the engine, spinning the wheels until ultimately, they’re stuck down to the frame, up to the doors. There’s a few “towing services”, who will unstick you, for around a hundred bucks in this area, which is still pretty close to town. The last time I ventured up the beach (and I hadn’t been there in a long time), there was a motorhome stuck in the sand. Big bastard, new, with a buncha spring breakers looking forlornly at the rear dullies stuck deep in the sand.

During the season, the “Winter Texans” line the beach from here to the Mansfield Cut, throwing bait into the surf, hoping to load up on our gamefish….mostly whiting, but sometimes reds, trout, shark and jacks. I’ve seen them take huge stingrays and toss them on the beach. I usually stop and try and explain that they shouldn’t ought to do that, the stingray is an important part of the whole system, and besides it’s a gentle fish that would much rather get out of your way than bury its stinger in your foot, in your leg. I try and explain to them that the stingrays stinger is strictly defensive, that if someone were to step in the middle of my back (my kids excluded) that I’d get pissed too, and probably try and whack ‘em right in the balls to get ‘em off….it doesn’t do much good though, cause the Winter Texans know just about every goddamn thing there is to know, and of course the only good stingray is a dead stingray, hell, everyone knows they’re dangerous as all get-out…I’ve even overheard the pinche bastards discussing the fact that they catch enough fish down here every winter to take “back home” for fish frys all year long. Bet they wouldn’t like it too much if I were to go on up to “back home” during the spring and summer, maybe Minnasooooota, and rape, pillage and plunder all of their goddamn walleye so that I could have fish fries all winter down here…

Just past all of the madness, the beach opens up as you pass a wide expanse of hurricane wash-over flats and pristine dune fields. Past the end of the paved road. Sometimes coyotes hunt along the beach, and flocks of Sanderlings, little legs running furiously, chase the water as it laps at the shoreline. I always watch for groups of gull and terns diving in the water, giving away the telltale location of feeding big fish.

About sixteen miles north of the end of the road, a shrimp boat is slowly sinking into the sand between the second and third sandbars. About all you can see now are the outriggers, top of the wheelhouse and the antennas, just visible above the surf. I was there the morning after the night it went aground. The Coast Guard had chased it, and once they hit shallow water, the shrimpboat crew bailed, and swam / waded ashore, where they were promptly apprehended. Just to the south was the reason why. A stretch of gillnet over a half mile long lay on the beach, jammed with hundreds of sharks, mostly sand sharks, blacktips and spinners, but there was one big blue about seven or eight feet long, and in among the sharks, a bull redfish about forty something inches in length. I untangled the red, looked at his gills and eyes, which were still bright red, and threw him in the bed of the truck, a fish destined to become blackened redfish and tasty bowls of ceviche.

Up here, the beach gets strewn with all manners of goodies. Once, D found a sonde, a buoy normally dropped from an aircraft, a regular old data gathering tube washed up on the beach. She sent it off to the address on the side, and got a 250 dollar reward. There’s gold in them thar beaches. And just north of course, is the nudie beach.

Marked by a spray painted giant log of driftwood (how apropos) is a stretch of beach that has been designated since I can’t remember when, as the naked beach. Of course, to a normal guy, a naked beach conjures up images of big breasted bronze blonde bathing beauties, lounging lugubriously on sweltering white sand beaches, bodies begging for suntan oil.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In the winter, most often, the nudie beach is populated by knarly old viejitos, refugees from the lands of endless snows, people who popularized nudist camps back in the 60’s. Now in their sixties themselves, they are leathery skinned bastards, women with saggy wrinkled tits and veryclose veins, the men, hunch backed and ancient, with flaccid ballsacks and weenies atrophied from eons of disuse. There used to be one who would sit in a lawn chair and smile and wave as we’d pass, just as happy as a pig in shit. In the summer, the naked beach is inhabited mainly by gays who ply their wretched morality far from the disapproving stares of town.

Just north of the nudie beach is an area that we all affectionately call “the narrows”. Here, the sand dunes extend down to a narrow beach which, at high tide, and during big storms is inundated, and impossible to cross without driving through the water. It is an odd area, out of place with the rest of the beach. At low tides, the prairie terrace, the ancestral consolidated base that the island rests on, a material which resembles mudstone is exposed. I have hauled ass through this area, screaming down the beach at sixty miles an hour plus, when big storms threaten to close off this section rather than get trapped north until the norther blew herself out. I always puzzled over why the narrows were there, until one day I was looking at a map of the island trying to determine where the old Singer ranch had been. It suddenly occurred to me that the narrows lie directly east of the mouth of the Arroyo Colorado, and when sea level was much lower, during the last ice age, this was the course of the river channel. Voila!

The island is segmented in various sections after large hurricanes breach it in numerous places. These areas of wash over eventually heal, but can always be identified by their lack of dunes and dune fields. One such wash over occurs just north of the narrows. The last time it was breached, there was a salt water stream which ran between the open Gulf of Mexico and the Laguna Madre which you had to ford in order to get to the Mansfield Cut. Those of us who’ve lived here our lives know how to do it, and if in doubt, get out and wade across to determine where the best crossing is. There’s almost always some space where the sand starts to fill in first as the river grows less and less pronounced, before finally being totally strangled off, and the wash over flat begins to heal to pre hurricane topography. On one trip some pendejo just decided to ford his new Ford wherever through the stream, and it sat in cockeyed mute testament to his lack of higher intelligence.

Of course, there are lots of pendejos who think they know better. Last time I drove the beach with D there was a maroon truck who passed us going about sixty or so (yea I know I do it, but I know when to), bouncing, vaulting up into the air and almost fishtailing out of control as it disappeared up the beach. We figured we’d come up on it flipped over. Later we saw the same truck up at the PMF jetties, with the driver pouring salt water on the engine, which had apparently overheated. Dumbass. They flew past us on the way back, with a sealed Texaco Oil Co. barrel which we had seen on the way up, a barrel that had washed ashore during some big offshore storm, one filled with probably some sort of toxic shit like benzene or hexane or something worse. Anyway, they were hauling ass again, with the truck sometimes becoming airborne, barrel jumping up independently in the truck bed as the truck careened almost out of control through the shallow water along the shore, sending huge roostertails high into the blue winter sky. We figured these guys life expectancy couldn’t be too long. For sure their vehicle wouldn’t probably last the week.

This far up the beach the flotsam and jetsam become large and odd. People can’t too well salvage the huge tanks, buoys and other industrial crap that washes off the decks of ships, boats and oil rigs, and so the beach hosts a graveyard of shit. Recently I found the remains of a pedal boat, the kind you see in ponds and little lakes washed up on the beach and wondered who the fuck would ever attempt to use one of those thing around here? Another time the beach was littered with computer monitors.

Finally you reach the Port Mansfield South Jetty, the Cut, PMF. This dredged cut through the island was created about fifty years ago, and since it’s not natural, has the tendancy to silt in. That’s the way it is right now. Without intervention, the island will heal herself again, and totally close off the cut, and once again one could (theoretically) drive all the way from the Brazos Santiago Pass to Aransas Pass along the beach. When the cut was first opened up, dredged, the remains of an old sunken Spanish ship yielded artifacts, gold and silver, but the state stepped in and claimed it all for itself, screwing my friend Billy K out of a fortune. I used to camp up at the cut, sometimes floundering at night along the channel edge for big old saddle blanket fish. Other times, I’d paddle across to go surf with friends, a caravan of gypsies on surfboards, the lead board being an ancient Dewey Weber longboard, with an ice chest of beers balanced on the nose, gingerly paddling across keeping a sharp lookout for the chingos of sharks that inhabit the cut.

I had a friend from Oregon that I’d fish with up there long ago. We’d fish in the channel, catching all kinds of fish. Jacks, Kingfish and Mangrove snapper, along with the ever present scourge, hardhead catfish. One time he got so mad at a catfish that he’d caught, one that had swallowed his bait, that he kicked it in disgust. Of course the catfish had extended his filthy, poison filled pectoral fin spines in self defense, extended them straight out, and when my friend kicked the wretched thing it drove the spine through his sneaker and deep into his big toe. My friend promptly fell down on the hard granite, writhing in burning pain, screaming “I’ve been hit!”…..”this is really it!”.

I had a hard time keeping a straight face…….

Pendejo

Sorry Faith, there is no Santa Claus

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Further South

It started sometime before the turn of the twenty-first century…. Ironically, a time, a date disputed. Exactly when did the new millennium actually begin, did it begin in 2000 or 2001? This was a pressing question debated by talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and others, hours spent on this question of great scatological significance. It really doesn’t matter much now…it was a silly, academic question anyhow.

We were lulled and brainwashed into a mindless state of acceptance by the Y2K myth… an event which never was. I remember waiting up on New Years eve for the inevitable meltdown, consuming expensive ancient champagne while the ball dropped – and absolutely nothing happened.

Meanwhile, silent and ignored, or maybe accepted as necessary, the revolution of miniaturization moved relentlessly forward, a high tech amoeba – and catapulted us into the misty twenty first century.

A host of computer driven equipment, from car ignitions to tiny MP3 players, required more and more powerful microprocessors. Inside sterile laboratories in Silicon Valley, and Austin, more and more functions were crammed onto miniscule wafers, giving birth to a host of enhancements, designed to improve the quality of our lives. We were assaulted and indoctrinated on all sides. Dell computers, Pentiums and Ipods, digital cameras and safer brakes sang us a lullaby, and we nodded off into a state of complacency.

It began innocently enough….It wasn’t long before a microchip had been developed that could be implanted under the skin of your pet. The chip contained information the same as a neck tag would on a dog or cat – immunizations and owner history, all able to be read by a remote receiving computer.

In a few years, GPS technology was integrated into the same chip, and the government saw a great opportunity to implant them in our military troops, so that they could be identified and located in battle. Pertinent information including date of birth, social security number and blood type, along with hometown, sexual preferences, school records, family members, hobbies and just about any other type of information could now be linked into a central government operated, networked GIS data base of DHS and DOD employees.

It wasn’t long before the new improved version was being implanted in all government workers, to provide a greater degree of “homeland security”. Convicts and ex-convicts got a chip, and they were added to the GIS database. Teachers, doctors and lawyers were required to have a chip implant in order to work. So were welders, carpenters and mechanics. Just about everyone in the workforce had to submit in order to work -even resident aliens.

A special chip was required for children too, to ensure their safety, in case of abduction or abuse. If parents didn’t comply, they were charged with child neglect, fined and imprisoned until they would finally relent. In short order, each and every child was implanted at birth, for their safety – by mandate.

It became impossible to buy food or clothing, to fuel your vehicle, even to conduct business at the bank without an implanted chip. This was necessary because transactions involving coin, paper and plastic became a thing of the past - for security reasons.

That’s why we’ve been out here riding the winds and the waves, staying far offshore, where the blue water is, with the dolphins and the flying fish, sometimes putting into third world ports, working for fuel and food before setting sail again further south, searching for a land of freedom.

I keep asking the question on night watches when the stars are crowding the open ocean sky and the sea is calm and quiet;

How could this have happened to the land I loved?

The question is carried on the breeze by the Frigatebirds and the Petrels, to the distant shore, and they return silent.

Joke Night

We just got back from the island. Tomorrow we have a tour to Guerrero Viejo with a load of viejitos, and our friends Don and Linda are going with us. Ought to be fun.

We decided to meet them at Fishbones, a normally innocuous bar / grill on the bay. It also has one of the only fishing piers around, so it’s always fun watching people waste money on generally unproductive waters. Mikey, our old friend from the Brewery now bartends there, and we go there sometimes on Wednesday nights while the kids are at church activities. Besides cold Shiner Bock beer (the national beer of Texas), they make one of the best burgers around.

I should’ve known something was up tonight when Mikey turned on the PA system that's normally reserved for the evening crooner who plays there. He plays about a thousand different songs, a la John Denver a real folksinger-wannabe, but he wasn’t there tonight. “What’s up with this?”, I thought to myself.

It wasn’t long till we began to find out, as a buttload of winter Texans began to stream in….this couldn’t be good.

And it wasn’t.

Turns out it was “Joke night” at Fishbones, a night when chingos of touristas get together and tell jokes to try and win a freebe dinner. Ah, the mention of anything free to a bunch of winter Texans brings out a feeding frenzy.

So we sit there trying to hold down our normally otherwise tasty food while a bunch of lutefisk eating retirees from Illinois, Missouri and Wisconsin told jokes. Terrible jokes. Where did these people learn this type of crap? We listened to jokes about transgenders, anuses’, Viagra, various bodily functions and other assorted sophomoric mouth-squirt. All the while we were snickering, not at their jokes, but at their apparent lack of shame. We began the comparison game too…..

After we hurriedly ate and paid the bill, my friend Don told us to go ahead, and we exited in somewhat, disgust. Once outside Don came up behind us, having left from the back exit, walking to the parking lot along the pier. He was snickering as he told us the following story:

“ I grabbed the Microphone and looked out at the crowd, and they all had big grins on their faces. I told them that I was from Texas, from the Island, and during the summer time, when they’re gone…..we tell jokes too".....

..... I asked ‘em “ Do you wanna hear one?” Of course, they all anxiously nodded, grinning from ear to ear".


"I said, OK, here goes":

“What’s the difference between a winter Texan and a canoe?”….

"Nobody made a guess, so I told ‘em”:

“Sometimes a canoe tips!”

Don chuckled and said; “The smiles instantly melted from there faces, and you could hear the ceiling fan, and the ice in their drinks”. “That’s when I took the exit, stage left, and went out the back, along the pier, out here”.