Princess Exstrawment was out trying to surf the other day. I always get a kick out of watching him flop around, standing up in an uncoordinated mess of flailing arms and exaggerated movements, never in sync with the waves. This guys is a fiftysomething white haired little puke who hangs around with Gore (probably one of the few people who will tolerate him). He’s a former wind faggot, which is a truly disingenuous yuppie sport, and one where he should’ve stayed. He operates the local Tow Boats “R” Us franchise, where he charges folks a small fortune to go out and tow them in if they break down, or end up on the shallow spoils of the Laguna Madre. Sort of the twenty first century answer to the good Samaritan who used to help people out in the bay, knowing this was a rule of the sea. You help out the guy in trouble, because the next time it could be you. So this guy helps out folks in trouble, but extorts exhorbitant amounts of dinero from them in exchange. He’s pretty universally disliked around here, not so much for his towboat “service”, but just his general nasty, self centered demeanor. I know of several stories of his getting punched out when he’s shot his mouth at the wrong person. In fact Rocky, of the Night Magic punched him out once, and I hear they were (are?) friends. I’m still trying to get the details on that one. When I finally do, it’ll make a good story I’m sure.
It’s something about guys with the name Rick, or Ric. Whatever. Rick is a dick, as are most of the Ricks I’ve ever met. Now if you’re a Rick, but you’re not a dick, then let me apologize, and forgive my mere stereotyping…..
If you’ve followed the Eye for any length of time, you know that back in July I told you about an incident involving another Rick, the brother-in-law of Mark, who owns Anchor Marine. In an agro, drunken stupor, he mooned the TPWD game warden and got a bunch of folks thrown in jail on the fourth of July. And before that there was Rickthedick from up north…. and, there are other Ricks I’ve known and disliked who have exhibited similar fucked up ethos and egos…..soooo….
The Princess settled here a few years ago after having made a substantial amount of money (at least for this area) running cargo barges in the Netherlands or somewhere. Originally from San Fransisco (with a lisp), he went to Europe during the Vietnam war, dodging the draft. Real classy guy. Later he tried his hand at a number of things including owning and managing a local flophouse and marina, and other quasi- legitimate endeavors. Unlike the other pirates of this area, there are no endearing qualities to this pathetic moron, and really, I don't know for the life of me, why I'm even bothering to legitimize him at all by writing this. Might just be a personal catharsis, so humor me on this one. Always unsuccessful at business, the Princess somehow always manages to prosper by ripping everyone else off. You know the type, only concerned with their own personal aggrandizement.
We had the misfortune of crossing paths with this jerkoff back in 2003, when we rented a small house from him and an adjacent piece of property where we parked the Queen Mary, our beloved motorhome that we had lived aboard for the previous three years. An uninsured fire which occurred as we were about to bug out during tropical storm Claudette destroyed just about everything we owned, and the final result was that this little fella filed a suit in small claims court for “damages to his property”. Now in Texas, a renter is protected from such suits by law, but in small claims court…well one can sue for any reason. To add insult to injury, I’m pretty sure he filed an insurance claim on our loss, because not long after the fire he was driving a brand new motorhome hisself, and later moved to a real nice house over on the bay….but I digress.
We call him “the Princess” because one day, we were behind him at the stoplight and we noticed him fussing with his hair, just like a girl, arranging the front curl with his thumb and forefinger, trying to get it to cooperate just so. I don’t believe that he knew anyone was watching, and when his eyes focused in the mirror behind him and he saw us imitating his primping, he stalled this truck when the light went green in an effort to get out of there real fast.
He has a wife yaknow….do you know what she’s called?.....she’s called….incontinentia….incontinentia buttocks.
I put two and two together after having first met this woman, I mean here's the epitomy of butt-ugly. Wrinkles, gnarly hair, swellulite, veryclose veins and all, a putrification of the living corpse. A gen-u-wine female reflection of the princess himself.
Hell, if I had to fuck something like that on a regular basis, I’d be a pretty miserable bastard too. Probably goes a long way in explaining why he’s the way he is……
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Catatonic
Most people think of summer as June and July with August beginning to see a cooling down, a tapering off toward fall. Not so, here on the far south, third coast. August and September are the hottest of all, hellishly hot months, with all of the fury of the earlier summer unleashed at once. Sidewalks can melt flipflops if you stand in one place too long, and even SPF 600 sunscreen isn’t enough as the sun sits relentlessly in the sky baking skin and bone, metal, paint and fiberglass, concrete and asphalt into a searing vision of what a small piece of hell might be like. The Gulf of Mexico continues to be a flat expansive desert, the monotony only broken by the occasional lazy jump of a shell-shocked mullet, or a sea turtle cautiously sticking its head above water to gulp a steaming breath of air before diving back down to the cool of the depths far below the surface.
Yesterday, I went offshore fishing with my friend Don O. and two other guys. Don owns the Catatonic, a 34 foot Baha Cruiser that he takes divers and fishermen out on. He’s traded the sky for the sea and seems to love it, and like a kid with a new toy is always enthusiastic about learning new and vital information about this new home of his.
We fueled up around eight AM and headed offshore, towards a spot out on the continental shelf some sixty miles away called the BFR. Our plan was to get out almost to the area, troll around the shrimp boats laying on anchor and then bottom fish the BFR (Big Fucking Rock) for Big Fucking Snapper and Amberjack. Seas were running only about a foot or two, and the Gulf, even that far out was like a big lake. No birds were in the sky, and only a few puffy clouds dotted the horizon, leaving the sun to chastise us for being so brain damaged as to be out on the open sea this time of year. A few flying fish vaulted into the low air just above the ripples skimming along like scaled kamikazes before splashing down again and disappearing into the indigo depths.
We put out the baits and trolled, cruising along about five or six knots as the white deck heated up to way past unbearable, making it difficult to even walk across without shoes, shiny chrome rails beaconed mockingly, waiting to burn hands if grasped for stability against the occasional groundswell passing lugubriously beneath. Spying a lone shrimper we made several passes, a ring around the rosy, but with no luck. Don set the autopilot to BFR and we continued to haul the baits behind us, until finally one of the other guys, Ike who has a lot of experience trolling out there suggested that we kick up the speed to about twelve knots or so, and soon the lures were skipping over the water at a speed tempting big fish like marlin and wahoo to take a big bite out of the wood and plastic baits .
Even at that speed the breeze generated by the boat was hot as a jen-aire range, and unlike our trip on the Soul Mate, no fish even bothered to look at the spread. Too damn hot. So we trolled past weed lines and other flotsam and jetsam without luck, heading for the BFR some fifteen more miles distant.
Near the BFR we cut bait and bring in the outriggers. It is now high noon, and the sun is brutal. We rig bottom rigs with several pounds of lead, multiple hooks, and drop them down with great anticipation through the crystal clear water. Not even a nibble down there at three hundred feet, and taking a bait-check is a major ordeal. Crank, and crank and crank, a good test for back and arm muscles, and my recently surgically repaired elbow. Several more passes, without success. Don decides it's time to move.
So, we try another spot, with the same non-results. Then another. Finally, about 1600 we decide to move to a spot closer in, and ran full throttle for almost an hour before finding it.
In the fighting chair, gazing back at the churning blue water, I listen to the hypnotic throb of the engines, occasionally staring off at the clouds on the horizon and the vista of nothingness before me. I am inward and introspective. Out here, for me it’s the opportunity to let my brain free spool, abstractly associating any event it wants to pick up on, from early fishing experiences as a child with my own dad, to my life as it stands today. Most importantly, it is my own time to connect with my creator in an environment uncluttered by the things of the land and people. I am in the presence of God, and I am small and unimportant in the great plan, yet as if in oxymoron, I am important enough to have this connection, and a place in the hierarchy of all things created by this inestimable power, important enough to be allowed a glimpse of understanding in this mystery, and the chance to be an eternal part of it. I am always in awe out here. Always reverent and listening, always at peace. Quiet and stilled for a seeming instant.
The engines slow, and we drift over Murphys Hole. Immediately, we all get vicious strikes in the one hundred foot depths. I haul up two big red snapper at a time, twisting and visible far below, white bellies flashing against the inky nothingness. Everyone else is catching fish, mostly keeper size, a few throwbacks. A huge shark lunges at a throwback struggling to head for the bottom, swallowing it in one eager gulp. The next drift over the hole, same results - more fish. The deck is slick with fish slime and blood. A school of cobia gather under the boat taunting us, as the air begins to lose an imperceptible amount of heat, barely a degree or two, but enough to give a sense that the day is waning away, the sun now at shoulder height in the west. Two more passes, and we have our collective limits of red snapper, just as a school of bottlenose and spotted dolphin invade, jumping and playing, chasing fish and managing to finally turn off the bite, as the sun starts to make its grand exit. Tiredly, we haul in the lines.
The run back in is long and rough as a groundswell begins to arrive from a recent tropical storm which lays dying on a distant shoreline far down in Mexico. The boat pounds and shakes, throwing plumes of frothing white water along the sides, and some up onto the back deck, washing the red slurry out of scuppers and back into the sea. About ten miles from town, from the island, the night descends in a sudden coma of pitch black blank, we cautiously reduce speed and creep in using the spotlight, radar, lighted buoys and markers to guide us back to the fingers and Dons boat stall across from where Menagerie sits.
Back inside the boathouse, I tiredly clean fish, thinking about this day and how it really doesn’t matter anymore if I catch anything or not. I thank Don as we leave, and he seems a bit nervous, as if relieved that he was able to finally put us on fish. He's a good Captain, and a true kind hearted human, always concerned with the other person. I assure him that it would’ve been OK either way. It’s fishing, not catching that makes the experience. I caught what I needed to, a moment of fleeting, elusive connection between eternity and existence.
Yesterday, I went offshore fishing with my friend Don O. and two other guys. Don owns the Catatonic, a 34 foot Baha Cruiser that he takes divers and fishermen out on. He’s traded the sky for the sea and seems to love it, and like a kid with a new toy is always enthusiastic about learning new and vital information about this new home of his.
We fueled up around eight AM and headed offshore, towards a spot out on the continental shelf some sixty miles away called the BFR. Our plan was to get out almost to the area, troll around the shrimp boats laying on anchor and then bottom fish the BFR (Big Fucking Rock) for Big Fucking Snapper and Amberjack. Seas were running only about a foot or two, and the Gulf, even that far out was like a big lake. No birds were in the sky, and only a few puffy clouds dotted the horizon, leaving the sun to chastise us for being so brain damaged as to be out on the open sea this time of year. A few flying fish vaulted into the low air just above the ripples skimming along like scaled kamikazes before splashing down again and disappearing into the indigo depths.
We put out the baits and trolled, cruising along about five or six knots as the white deck heated up to way past unbearable, making it difficult to even walk across without shoes, shiny chrome rails beaconed mockingly, waiting to burn hands if grasped for stability against the occasional groundswell passing lugubriously beneath. Spying a lone shrimper we made several passes, a ring around the rosy, but with no luck. Don set the autopilot to BFR and we continued to haul the baits behind us, until finally one of the other guys, Ike who has a lot of experience trolling out there suggested that we kick up the speed to about twelve knots or so, and soon the lures were skipping over the water at a speed tempting big fish like marlin and wahoo to take a big bite out of the wood and plastic baits .
Even at that speed the breeze generated by the boat was hot as a jen-aire range, and unlike our trip on the Soul Mate, no fish even bothered to look at the spread. Too damn hot. So we trolled past weed lines and other flotsam and jetsam without luck, heading for the BFR some fifteen more miles distant.
Near the BFR we cut bait and bring in the outriggers. It is now high noon, and the sun is brutal. We rig bottom rigs with several pounds of lead, multiple hooks, and drop them down with great anticipation through the crystal clear water. Not even a nibble down there at three hundred feet, and taking a bait-check is a major ordeal. Crank, and crank and crank, a good test for back and arm muscles, and my recently surgically repaired elbow. Several more passes, without success. Don decides it's time to move.
So, we try another spot, with the same non-results. Then another. Finally, about 1600 we decide to move to a spot closer in, and ran full throttle for almost an hour before finding it.
In the fighting chair, gazing back at the churning blue water, I listen to the hypnotic throb of the engines, occasionally staring off at the clouds on the horizon and the vista of nothingness before me. I am inward and introspective. Out here, for me it’s the opportunity to let my brain free spool, abstractly associating any event it wants to pick up on, from early fishing experiences as a child with my own dad, to my life as it stands today. Most importantly, it is my own time to connect with my creator in an environment uncluttered by the things of the land and people. I am in the presence of God, and I am small and unimportant in the great plan, yet as if in oxymoron, I am important enough to have this connection, and a place in the hierarchy of all things created by this inestimable power, important enough to be allowed a glimpse of understanding in this mystery, and the chance to be an eternal part of it. I am always in awe out here. Always reverent and listening, always at peace. Quiet and stilled for a seeming instant.
The engines slow, and we drift over Murphys Hole. Immediately, we all get vicious strikes in the one hundred foot depths. I haul up two big red snapper at a time, twisting and visible far below, white bellies flashing against the inky nothingness. Everyone else is catching fish, mostly keeper size, a few throwbacks. A huge shark lunges at a throwback struggling to head for the bottom, swallowing it in one eager gulp. The next drift over the hole, same results - more fish. The deck is slick with fish slime and blood. A school of cobia gather under the boat taunting us, as the air begins to lose an imperceptible amount of heat, barely a degree or two, but enough to give a sense that the day is waning away, the sun now at shoulder height in the west. Two more passes, and we have our collective limits of red snapper, just as a school of bottlenose and spotted dolphin invade, jumping and playing, chasing fish and managing to finally turn off the bite, as the sun starts to make its grand exit. Tiredly, we haul in the lines.
The run back in is long and rough as a groundswell begins to arrive from a recent tropical storm which lays dying on a distant shoreline far down in Mexico. The boat pounds and shakes, throwing plumes of frothing white water along the sides, and some up onto the back deck, washing the red slurry out of scuppers and back into the sea. About ten miles from town, from the island, the night descends in a sudden coma of pitch black blank, we cautiously reduce speed and creep in using the spotlight, radar, lighted buoys and markers to guide us back to the fingers and Dons boat stall across from where Menagerie sits.
Back inside the boathouse, I tiredly clean fish, thinking about this day and how it really doesn’t matter anymore if I catch anything or not. I thank Don as we leave, and he seems a bit nervous, as if relieved that he was able to finally put us on fish. He's a good Captain, and a true kind hearted human, always concerned with the other person. I assure him that it would’ve been OK either way. It’s fishing, not catching that makes the experience. I caught what I needed to, a moment of fleeting, elusive connection between eternity and existence.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
The East Cut
Last winter, I did a seagrass survey in front of the remnants of the old Redfish Inn up at Port Mansfield. On the way through the town I looked for old familiar landmarks, like the Windjammer restaurant, which had been moved and is now in a sterile steel building on a back road in a field, instead of it’s traditional location guarding the entrance to the harbor where you could have giant margaritas while watching the boats returning with drunken fishermen at the end of the hot summer days. I looked for the East Cut Bar where I used to drink with my friends R and the Faceman, but it too was gone, replaced with a family Barbeque joint. I thought about my friends and fondly remembered many nights in that bar in a town I consider to be the least friendly in all of Texas.
I get email forwards now from my old friend R. We used to hang out quite a bit together about fifteen years ago. But then he got married and settled down, became a God-fearing man, his new wife wouldn’t allow him to play with me anymore. Today, I’m thankful for those emails, because at least it keeps a thin thread of connection to someone I consider one of my dearest friends in life.
Back when I was learning to fish the Laguna Madre, we used to stay in a fishing shack in Port Mansfield on weekends, a place we called the clubhouse. The clubhouse was an abandoned run down 1960’s vintage flat roofed shack with minimal comforts, a window air conditioner that barely worked, but gave the impression of doing so by periodically belching clouds of wet air like a horizontal old faithful or something, a few pieces of rickety furniture in the process of shedding upholstery, a toilet that would only accept liquid waste, and a kitchen best left to the cockroaches and scorpions that lived in the dark, dank recesses of the place. It was a place to kick back after a long day of fishing from the Land Cut, down to the Saucer, maybe blacken some redfish filets out in the yard on the grill. The clubhouse was about two streets from the bay, and wasn’t much used for anything other than passing out in after drinking the evenings away at the East Cut Bar.
Sometimes we’d fish with our mutual friend, the Faceman, these sessions would generally turn into a combination of matches and gasoline. Faceman was pure crazy in an explosive and chaotic manner. Once we were drinking in a bar in downtown McAllen when he suddenly turns to two ladies at the table next to ours. These women were minding their own business and were obviously enjoying a quiet evening of good conversation. So Faceman casually remarks to one; “Hey baby…I got five minutes if you’ve got five minutes….Why don’t we go out to R’s van and fuck like a couple of rabbits?”. The women promptly left, rather indignant. The Faceman turned to us and said with a leer; “Well, it never hurts to try…”
Those guys could fish. Our trips into the bay were always filled with drinking and carousing but were also always serious, focused events. We were all transformed into predators in the water, relentlessly stalking our prey. Few redfish, trout or flounder were safe from our lures and lines.
At night we’d drink at the East Cut Bar, one of the few true scoadholes left on the coast. A dingy, dark fishermen’s bar, about the most exotic drink that you could order was a cuba libre, which we drank by the gallon. A pool table and a jukebox completed the scenery along with the ever present neon beer signs and cigarette machine. There was one purpose of the East Cut: To get drunk. And most nights that’s just what we did. Sometimes we’d score the phone numbers of women who happened to be there, serious women with the scars and baggage to prove it, promising to call them later. The scraps of paper adorned the walls of the clubhouse like wallpaper. Other nights we’d stagger out, and drunkenly drive around the little town, tearing up flowerbeds and front lawns in Facemans truck.
One night, we were in the East Cut late. The scene turned surreal. I think it was during the infamous “no name fishing tournament” where just about anything goes. The place was jammed with a sea of writhing bodies, and a cacophy of voices obscured the sound of country music wailing from the distant jukebox, ensconced in a dim corner. Yuppies mingled with rednecks and some of the strangest women I’ve ever seen were there. Women with great piles of buffant hair and wild crazy eyes. There was an old woman we just called “the wrinkleneck” at the bar. Rumor has it that she had been the snatch on the side of R’s father in law, back in the old days, the heyday of the clubhouse, long before we started our tenure there. History does in fact tend to repeat itself.
I was in the back of the place staring through the yellow smoky lighting, watching the Faceman cavort on the floor with a young Mexican woman who he was trying to convince of the fact that he was a professional dancer. I think this night he might have been, as he slid his flipflops around the floor in a perfect samba with her. On each pass, he’d look out over the crowd with that maniacal leer, knowing that he had this one in the bag. Over at the bar, R had his head down, cradled in his arms, in an apparent attack of narcolepsy, rum still clenched in his right hand. The wrinkleneck was sitting next to him, and it appeared as though she had her withered old claw of a hand down his pants. I knew he was in trouble, so I sauntered over toward the bar intending to steer him out of there, along with the jitterbugging Faceman. When I got to the bar, the barmaid caught my attention and sternly nodded toward R. “Your friend can’t sleep in here” she insisted. I knew she meant business, as she glanced toward one-eyed Jack, the crooked Sheriff. One-eyed Jack was the only law in town and he had a mean reputation. He had a dollar sign tattooed on the palm of his right hand, and worked during the season for the El Sauz unit of the King Ranch too. He was later stripped of his constabulary when he drunkenly entered the house of a friend and discharged a shotgun, blasting through the ceiling into the second floor and shattering a porcelain commode causing great volumes of water to destroy the entire upstairs of the house. I shook R awake and he regained consciousness for a moment, a thin line of drool escaping from the corner of his mouth. The wrinkleneck looked surprised as she detached her hand from his pants. One eyed Jack, was watching the scene with blithe interest, ready to get his bribe if any trouble ensued. I hissed in R’s ear…”We need to leave….now”….
By now the Faceman had caught wind of the situation and we escaped like the three stooges, and as the door closed behind us, outside the thick hot August air revealed the glassy water of the harbor reflecting a million stars in the black Texas sky. I’m not sure how we made it back to the clubhouse that night, or what sort of catastrophe we left in our wake, but early the next morning over raw oyster sandwiches somewhere along the real East Cut, in a spoil bank pass loaded with cow tongue sized sweet oysters, and tailing redfish we laughed about that evening in the East Cut Bar.
I get email forwards now from my old friend R. We used to hang out quite a bit together about fifteen years ago. But then he got married and settled down, became a God-fearing man, his new wife wouldn’t allow him to play with me anymore. Today, I’m thankful for those emails, because at least it keeps a thin thread of connection to someone I consider one of my dearest friends in life.
Back when I was learning to fish the Laguna Madre, we used to stay in a fishing shack in Port Mansfield on weekends, a place we called the clubhouse. The clubhouse was an abandoned run down 1960’s vintage flat roofed shack with minimal comforts, a window air conditioner that barely worked, but gave the impression of doing so by periodically belching clouds of wet air like a horizontal old faithful or something, a few pieces of rickety furniture in the process of shedding upholstery, a toilet that would only accept liquid waste, and a kitchen best left to the cockroaches and scorpions that lived in the dark, dank recesses of the place. It was a place to kick back after a long day of fishing from the Land Cut, down to the Saucer, maybe blacken some redfish filets out in the yard on the grill. The clubhouse was about two streets from the bay, and wasn’t much used for anything other than passing out in after drinking the evenings away at the East Cut Bar.
Sometimes we’d fish with our mutual friend, the Faceman, these sessions would generally turn into a combination of matches and gasoline. Faceman was pure crazy in an explosive and chaotic manner. Once we were drinking in a bar in downtown McAllen when he suddenly turns to two ladies at the table next to ours. These women were minding their own business and were obviously enjoying a quiet evening of good conversation. So Faceman casually remarks to one; “Hey baby…I got five minutes if you’ve got five minutes….Why don’t we go out to R’s van and fuck like a couple of rabbits?”. The women promptly left, rather indignant. The Faceman turned to us and said with a leer; “Well, it never hurts to try…”
Those guys could fish. Our trips into the bay were always filled with drinking and carousing but were also always serious, focused events. We were all transformed into predators in the water, relentlessly stalking our prey. Few redfish, trout or flounder were safe from our lures and lines.
At night we’d drink at the East Cut Bar, one of the few true scoadholes left on the coast. A dingy, dark fishermen’s bar, about the most exotic drink that you could order was a cuba libre, which we drank by the gallon. A pool table and a jukebox completed the scenery along with the ever present neon beer signs and cigarette machine. There was one purpose of the East Cut: To get drunk. And most nights that’s just what we did. Sometimes we’d score the phone numbers of women who happened to be there, serious women with the scars and baggage to prove it, promising to call them later. The scraps of paper adorned the walls of the clubhouse like wallpaper. Other nights we’d stagger out, and drunkenly drive around the little town, tearing up flowerbeds and front lawns in Facemans truck.
One night, we were in the East Cut late. The scene turned surreal. I think it was during the infamous “no name fishing tournament” where just about anything goes. The place was jammed with a sea of writhing bodies, and a cacophy of voices obscured the sound of country music wailing from the distant jukebox, ensconced in a dim corner. Yuppies mingled with rednecks and some of the strangest women I’ve ever seen were there. Women with great piles of buffant hair and wild crazy eyes. There was an old woman we just called “the wrinkleneck” at the bar. Rumor has it that she had been the snatch on the side of R’s father in law, back in the old days, the heyday of the clubhouse, long before we started our tenure there. History does in fact tend to repeat itself.
I was in the back of the place staring through the yellow smoky lighting, watching the Faceman cavort on the floor with a young Mexican woman who he was trying to convince of the fact that he was a professional dancer. I think this night he might have been, as he slid his flipflops around the floor in a perfect samba with her. On each pass, he’d look out over the crowd with that maniacal leer, knowing that he had this one in the bag. Over at the bar, R had his head down, cradled in his arms, in an apparent attack of narcolepsy, rum still clenched in his right hand. The wrinkleneck was sitting next to him, and it appeared as though she had her withered old claw of a hand down his pants. I knew he was in trouble, so I sauntered over toward the bar intending to steer him out of there, along with the jitterbugging Faceman. When I got to the bar, the barmaid caught my attention and sternly nodded toward R. “Your friend can’t sleep in here” she insisted. I knew she meant business, as she glanced toward one-eyed Jack, the crooked Sheriff. One-eyed Jack was the only law in town and he had a mean reputation. He had a dollar sign tattooed on the palm of his right hand, and worked during the season for the El Sauz unit of the King Ranch too. He was later stripped of his constabulary when he drunkenly entered the house of a friend and discharged a shotgun, blasting through the ceiling into the second floor and shattering a porcelain commode causing great volumes of water to destroy the entire upstairs of the house. I shook R awake and he regained consciousness for a moment, a thin line of drool escaping from the corner of his mouth. The wrinkleneck looked surprised as she detached her hand from his pants. One eyed Jack, was watching the scene with blithe interest, ready to get his bribe if any trouble ensued. I hissed in R’s ear…”We need to leave….now”….
By now the Faceman had caught wind of the situation and we escaped like the three stooges, and as the door closed behind us, outside the thick hot August air revealed the glassy water of the harbor reflecting a million stars in the black Texas sky. I’m not sure how we made it back to the clubhouse that night, or what sort of catastrophe we left in our wake, but early the next morning over raw oyster sandwiches somewhere along the real East Cut, in a spoil bank pass loaded with cow tongue sized sweet oysters, and tailing redfish we laughed about that evening in the East Cut Bar.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Port Isabels Hatfields and McCoys
The City Attorney for Port Isabel owns the Queen Isabel Inn on the Bay. He’s a client of ours, and although I have a strict policy of hating attorneys, I tolerate this guy because he’s a surfer and musician. I figure he just took a wrong turn somewhere.
We recently took a trip up to Corpus Christi to a JEM meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies to discuss his plans for adding some additional docks on the bay behind the Inn. On the way up there, we talked of everything from the impending collapse of society (it’s amazing how almost everybody has this view, but still we go along, drawn in by the media into thinking everything’s swell…but that’s another story), to surfing and how Port Isabel and the Island used to be. The trip up to Corpus goes in a straight line through miles of endless King Ranch, unpunctuated by civilization, a true western vista, and it was a good place for conversation.
When I was a kid, the causeway crossed the bay further south, a small two lane bridge just over the water. Once on the island, there were few buildings and businesses. The Sea Grape motel and the Palmetto restaurant, some fishing shacks along a poorly maintained road heading an indeterminate distance north (depending on how covered by the shifting sands it was), were some of the only features of note. Where I am sitting now and typing this, there were a few cabanas facing the restless Gulf, ramshackle pastel buildings where you could get out of the incessant wind and sun.
Driving back across the bay from the island, on the right hand side was the old Queen Isabel Inn. The hotel was originally built by Robert Kleberg, another attorney from an earlier time, one who gained fame through his association with Henrietta King, widow of Richard King, all principal players in the infamous King Ranch. He built it as a getaway, at the end of the railroad line during the early twentieth century. The hotel was later managed by Doc Hockaday, the towns only doctor, pharmacist and taxidermist. A true renaissance man, Doc Hockaday founded the Tarpon Rodeo, which later became the Texas International Fishing Tournament (TIFT) one of the oldest and most prestigious saltwater fishing tournaments in the state. The hotel still has many of the good doctors mounted fish and waterfowl adorning the walls, and has been lovingly been restored by my client JH, who lives there. The grounds are immaculate, with a pool overlooking the Laguna Madre, and tropical plants and trees, perfectly manicured. Still, with all of the glitter and come on of the Island, and other more modern facilities in Port Isabel, JH says occupancy could be better. He usually only gets fans of nostalgia like myself.
So JH is trying to add a few more amenities to the old Isabel in order to attract more clientele. One of the things he wants to do is add more boat slips. He just improved his boat launch ramp, and added a fish cleaning table adjacent to it, an awesome thing to behold, first class, all brick and cement, covered and lighted with running water- a mini taj mahal. Painted white, it is an integral part of the brick barrier fence he has that insulates himself from the new establishment next door, the Pelican Station.
The Pelican Station is owned by an old nemesis of JH, Mr. Z, who made his fortune in the shrimping business, back during the time that sort of business was profitable, parleying the “brown gold” into various land holdings and subsequently power holdings within the City. Mr. Z sits on the zoning board, so when it came time to zone and tax the shrimp fleet, exemptions were granted and special dispensations were issued.
Construction started on the Pelican Station about a year ago, and the snazzy modern building went up in a hurry. During the construction a series of decorative creosote pilings went into the bay out in front of the building, along with assorted rip rap rubble in the form of large chunks of concrete. Mr. Z thinks these will attract Pelicans, thus providing authentication for his establishment.
JH moans the fact that the kitchen smells from the Pelican Station, as well as the luffing sound coming from the obscenely giant American flag that Mr. Z proudly placed adjacent to the Queen Isabel will prove annoying to his hotels clients, and states; “Can you imagine?”, “Late at night when these fuckers are drunk and stumbling out of the bar over there, they’re gonna wander over here wondering about this place, maybe urinate in my bushes while they comment about what in the hell this old building is…I can’t have that kinda shit”….
Meanwhile Mr. Z isn’t all that thrilled about the white brick fence with the fish cleaning table that separates the two buildings. The demilitarized zone. He’s especially concerned about the area of fence closest to the bay, where he’s sure seaweed will pile up during storms, creating a malodorous condition which will drive off his clientele. He was so concerned about it that he contacted the Army Corps of Engineers, with an angry letter requesting that they do something about the condition, immediately. When the Corps came down to check out JH’s proposal for new boat-slips, they obliged to look at it, even though it wasn’t in their jurisdiction. When Mr. Wong looked at it, a lightbulb went on over his head, like in the cartoons, and his normally placid expression turned into one of anger as he spied the pilings and rip rap in the Bay in front of the Pelican Station, all placed in the water without permit or sanction. A letter later came threatening a fine of up to 10,000 dollars per day if Mr. Z and Whimpy, his contractor didn’t make things right.
This really pissed off Mr. Z, who was sure that JH had turned him in. Now he’s going to really fix the old Queen Isabel, that goddamn fish cleaning table has got to go, because as everyone knows, a fish cleaning facility that might be viewed by his customers eating their seafood meals overlooking the Laguna Madre is bad for business. He checks the survey, and calculates that the fish cleaning table is maybe eighteen inches or so into the City property easement, and so at the next zoning and planning meeting, triumphantly declares that the damn thing has gotta go! By now the whole City knows that the feud is on, and the newspaper even picks up the story, page one. Somewhere JH finds a loophole. A legal loophole (after all he is the city attorney), and when I spoke with him yesterday he says the table ain’t going nowhere.
Somehow though, I don’t think this is the last that we're going to hear of this, and my guess is that some sort of midnight modification might occur in the immediate future. I’ll be standing by. I’ve been staying away from there recently though, at least until the smoke clears.
We recently took a trip up to Corpus Christi to a JEM meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies to discuss his plans for adding some additional docks on the bay behind the Inn. On the way up there, we talked of everything from the impending collapse of society (it’s amazing how almost everybody has this view, but still we go along, drawn in by the media into thinking everything’s swell…but that’s another story), to surfing and how Port Isabel and the Island used to be. The trip up to Corpus goes in a straight line through miles of endless King Ranch, unpunctuated by civilization, a true western vista, and it was a good place for conversation.
When I was a kid, the causeway crossed the bay further south, a small two lane bridge just over the water. Once on the island, there were few buildings and businesses. The Sea Grape motel and the Palmetto restaurant, some fishing shacks along a poorly maintained road heading an indeterminate distance north (depending on how covered by the shifting sands it was), were some of the only features of note. Where I am sitting now and typing this, there were a few cabanas facing the restless Gulf, ramshackle pastel buildings where you could get out of the incessant wind and sun.
Driving back across the bay from the island, on the right hand side was the old Queen Isabel Inn. The hotel was originally built by Robert Kleberg, another attorney from an earlier time, one who gained fame through his association with Henrietta King, widow of Richard King, all principal players in the infamous King Ranch. He built it as a getaway, at the end of the railroad line during the early twentieth century. The hotel was later managed by Doc Hockaday, the towns only doctor, pharmacist and taxidermist. A true renaissance man, Doc Hockaday founded the Tarpon Rodeo, which later became the Texas International Fishing Tournament (TIFT) one of the oldest and most prestigious saltwater fishing tournaments in the state. The hotel still has many of the good doctors mounted fish and waterfowl adorning the walls, and has been lovingly been restored by my client JH, who lives there. The grounds are immaculate, with a pool overlooking the Laguna Madre, and tropical plants and trees, perfectly manicured. Still, with all of the glitter and come on of the Island, and other more modern facilities in Port Isabel, JH says occupancy could be better. He usually only gets fans of nostalgia like myself.
So JH is trying to add a few more amenities to the old Isabel in order to attract more clientele. One of the things he wants to do is add more boat slips. He just improved his boat launch ramp, and added a fish cleaning table adjacent to it, an awesome thing to behold, first class, all brick and cement, covered and lighted with running water- a mini taj mahal. Painted white, it is an integral part of the brick barrier fence he has that insulates himself from the new establishment next door, the Pelican Station.
The Pelican Station is owned by an old nemesis of JH, Mr. Z, who made his fortune in the shrimping business, back during the time that sort of business was profitable, parleying the “brown gold” into various land holdings and subsequently power holdings within the City. Mr. Z sits on the zoning board, so when it came time to zone and tax the shrimp fleet, exemptions were granted and special dispensations were issued.
Construction started on the Pelican Station about a year ago, and the snazzy modern building went up in a hurry. During the construction a series of decorative creosote pilings went into the bay out in front of the building, along with assorted rip rap rubble in the form of large chunks of concrete. Mr. Z thinks these will attract Pelicans, thus providing authentication for his establishment.
JH moans the fact that the kitchen smells from the Pelican Station, as well as the luffing sound coming from the obscenely giant American flag that Mr. Z proudly placed adjacent to the Queen Isabel will prove annoying to his hotels clients, and states; “Can you imagine?”, “Late at night when these fuckers are drunk and stumbling out of the bar over there, they’re gonna wander over here wondering about this place, maybe urinate in my bushes while they comment about what in the hell this old building is…I can’t have that kinda shit”….
Meanwhile Mr. Z isn’t all that thrilled about the white brick fence with the fish cleaning table that separates the two buildings. The demilitarized zone. He’s especially concerned about the area of fence closest to the bay, where he’s sure seaweed will pile up during storms, creating a malodorous condition which will drive off his clientele. He was so concerned about it that he contacted the Army Corps of Engineers, with an angry letter requesting that they do something about the condition, immediately. When the Corps came down to check out JH’s proposal for new boat-slips, they obliged to look at it, even though it wasn’t in their jurisdiction. When Mr. Wong looked at it, a lightbulb went on over his head, like in the cartoons, and his normally placid expression turned into one of anger as he spied the pilings and rip rap in the Bay in front of the Pelican Station, all placed in the water without permit or sanction. A letter later came threatening a fine of up to 10,000 dollars per day if Mr. Z and Whimpy, his contractor didn’t make things right.
This really pissed off Mr. Z, who was sure that JH had turned him in. Now he’s going to really fix the old Queen Isabel, that goddamn fish cleaning table has got to go, because as everyone knows, a fish cleaning facility that might be viewed by his customers eating their seafood meals overlooking the Laguna Madre is bad for business. He checks the survey, and calculates that the fish cleaning table is maybe eighteen inches or so into the City property easement, and so at the next zoning and planning meeting, triumphantly declares that the damn thing has gotta go! By now the whole City knows that the feud is on, and the newspaper even picks up the story, page one. Somewhere JH finds a loophole. A legal loophole (after all he is the city attorney), and when I spoke with him yesterday he says the table ain’t going nowhere.
Somehow though, I don’t think this is the last that we're going to hear of this, and my guess is that some sort of midnight modification might occur in the immediate future. I’ll be standing by. I’ve been staying away from there recently though, at least until the smoke clears.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
That's a Lot of Pills
The last John Wayne is dying.
Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, metastasized to various and sundry other organs and tissues. Primary liver cancer. Inoperative and widespread, a painful and indignant way for a cowboy to die, it reaffirms my own sense of outrage toward this disease. The body is now fighting itself, with him as the loser.
We all lose, with him dies a little bit of us all.
He’s emaciated and small, wasting away, and I am angry and helpless in life again. His son immediately took him to one of the finest cancer diagnostic and treatment centers around, where he’s been in and out of for the last two weeks. Soon it will be time to bring him home and let him go to the ranch one more time.
For now though, instead of jeans, boots and hat, he wears blue warm ups hanging limply from the hulk of a man who I long to hear roar with drunken laughter again, ever ready to lend a smile or a helping hand. Now his boots are replaced by moccasins, his head is uncovered, valunerable, and he's subordinate to the minions of doctors and administrators who attend him like so many techno-mechanics trying to repair an old totaled out pick up truck.
There's still some dirt road cowboy left in this man though.
Yesterday I waited with him at the reception desk where he was handed a pager, like the one we get whenever we eat over at the Pirates Landing, one that lights up with a UFO like circle of LED lights when they’re ready to see you. He hadn’t gotten the news yet, but I think for sure he suspected.
While we stood there waiting for the receptionist to input his information he spied a huge clear plastic bag sitting on a chair, stuffed with maybe thirty five or forty different amber plastic pill bottles, belonging to a cancer treatment patient. His eyes grew big as saucers, he swallowed and croaked in a sort of half whisper;
“Gawdamn that’s a lot of pills”. And then he chuckled.
He’s quiet now, digesting the knowledge that he’s looking at the last chapter of his life. He doesn’t speak much, the fire is gone as he tries to understand what’s happening, and how to handle it with dignity and style.
In the consultation room, the doctor reads his chart and states somewhat triumphantly that the cowboy "liked to drink beer". I detect just a hint of rancor in his voice, because cirrhosis is a big factor in liver cancer. As if making fun of the doctors attitude, he smirks and answers “I like to drink A LOT of beer”, to which the doctor queries; “It says here that some nights you drink as many as twelve beers?", again he replies in a voice strong and confident, eyes crinkling with laughter around the edges; “I like to drink as many beers as I can!”
Just for that brief moment, his spirit returned and I could again see the man in his dirty jeans, dusty boots and sweat stained cowboy hat, arms crossed, bellowing that infectious laugh, spitting in the face of his own death.
Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, metastasized to various and sundry other organs and tissues. Primary liver cancer. Inoperative and widespread, a painful and indignant way for a cowboy to die, it reaffirms my own sense of outrage toward this disease. The body is now fighting itself, with him as the loser.
We all lose, with him dies a little bit of us all.
He’s emaciated and small, wasting away, and I am angry and helpless in life again. His son immediately took him to one of the finest cancer diagnostic and treatment centers around, where he’s been in and out of for the last two weeks. Soon it will be time to bring him home and let him go to the ranch one more time.
For now though, instead of jeans, boots and hat, he wears blue warm ups hanging limply from the hulk of a man who I long to hear roar with drunken laughter again, ever ready to lend a smile or a helping hand. Now his boots are replaced by moccasins, his head is uncovered, valunerable, and he's subordinate to the minions of doctors and administrators who attend him like so many techno-mechanics trying to repair an old totaled out pick up truck.
There's still some dirt road cowboy left in this man though.
Yesterday I waited with him at the reception desk where he was handed a pager, like the one we get whenever we eat over at the Pirates Landing, one that lights up with a UFO like circle of LED lights when they’re ready to see you. He hadn’t gotten the news yet, but I think for sure he suspected.
While we stood there waiting for the receptionist to input his information he spied a huge clear plastic bag sitting on a chair, stuffed with maybe thirty five or forty different amber plastic pill bottles, belonging to a cancer treatment patient. His eyes grew big as saucers, he swallowed and croaked in a sort of half whisper;
“Gawdamn that’s a lot of pills”. And then he chuckled.
He’s quiet now, digesting the knowledge that he’s looking at the last chapter of his life. He doesn’t speak much, the fire is gone as he tries to understand what’s happening, and how to handle it with dignity and style.
In the consultation room, the doctor reads his chart and states somewhat triumphantly that the cowboy "liked to drink beer". I detect just a hint of rancor in his voice, because cirrhosis is a big factor in liver cancer. As if making fun of the doctors attitude, he smirks and answers “I like to drink A LOT of beer”, to which the doctor queries; “It says here that some nights you drink as many as twelve beers?", again he replies in a voice strong and confident, eyes crinkling with laughter around the edges; “I like to drink as many beers as I can!”
Just for that brief moment, his spirit returned and I could again see the man in his dirty jeans, dusty boots and sweat stained cowboy hat, arms crossed, bellowing that infectious laugh, spitting in the face of his own death.
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