Legacy

When I was growing up, we lived on 7th St. in Port Arthur's Lakeview neighborhood. From my earliest recollection, my grandmother, Beth Pollock, lived with us, or we lived with her. I was never really sure of the actual arrangement. My dad Les, like most of the other fathers in the neighborhood, was a refinery shift worker, and my mom, Renee, attended Port Arthur College and worked as a bookkeeper. Since Dad was usually working or sleeping, and my mother worked, my grandmother kept the house and did most of the cooking and riding herd on me during the summers and school holidays. Most of my days were spent outside playing in the yard and along the railroad tracks behind our house or, as I grew older, pushing the ever-widening limits of my bicycle boundaries, which reached from Proctor Street and Stadium Road to 16th Street.

On Tuesdays, I’d go with Granny to her Golden Pilots senior club meetings at the Methodist Temple and Thursdays we’d go to the Henke & Pillot or Weingarten's for the week's groceries. About once a month, we drove down to Sabine to check on my great-grandad, Rene Krebs. Grandad was twice widowed and lived alone about a block off of the ship channel in an oleander-rimmed and salt-air-faded white clapboard cottage, not far from the family's old home place that dated back to the 1890s.

Trips to Sabine always held the promise of high adventure. Sometimes, Grandad would take me over to Dick Dowling Park, where I'd play on the old Ft. Griffin bunkers or we'd go down to Texas Bayou and throw his cast net and then cane pole fish for croaker and yellowtail perch off the end of the shrimp boat docks. Other times, he and Granny drank coffee and visited on the screened porch. I'd bide my time playing in the yard or chunking clam and oyster shells and stalking marsh hens and pulldoos along the cordgrass, and Roseau cane lined tidal ditch that bordered the western edge of the old "Sabine City" townsite. Grandad's only admonition was to watch for snakes and stay out of the distant neighbor's yard at the foot of Quinn Street.

When it was time to head home, Grandad would take me back to the kitchen, reach up to retrieve a worn Clabber Girl tin from the shelf above the sink, and shake out the contents on the drainboard. The treasures included pennies, a couple of nickels, safety pins, a rusted pocket knife, sea beans, and a watch with no band. He'd pick a shiny coin out of the pile and then press it into my palm and say, "get you a soda water on the way home." Before leaving, we always walked down to his garden, picked some okra, or filled a bushel basket with cantaloupe or big green striped cushaw to take home for supper. After our hugs goodbye, I pretended not to notice that Granny cried as I waved to Grandad through the back window, and we drove off in a cloud of clam shell dust.

I was confused by her tears. As far as I could tell, there was never an argument or hurtful words exchanged, but of course, as a 9-year-old, I was still blissfully unaware of the complexities of life. Only years later would I fully understand those conversations on the front porch and the tears that were a bittersweet ending to each visit. Rene Krebs was much a man, but eighty-plus years of hardscrabble life on an unforgiving coastal prairie, the drowning of his first wife, Ivy, and her sister Davey in a sailboat accident, the death of a beloved infant daughter, Bessie Belle, the loss of three homes to devastating hurricanes, and the passing of his second wife Maudie, along with his own failing health had worn my great-grandad down. My grandmother was concerned about him living alone and talked with him about coming up to Port Arthur to live with us or possibly moving into the Community Home down on Proctor Street. For a proud man, leaving his home of 84 years must have seemed an unthinkable option.

One day in late spring after a visit with Grandad, we made the turn north on the blacktop and headed back to Sabine Pass, where Granny dutifully stopped at the corner grocery so I could get my usual Suncrest orange soda water. When I got back in the car, rather than heading on toward Port Arthur, she turned left on the Beach Road and said she had a surprise. We were going on a picnic and then we were going to try picking some berries for a cobbler. For me, a perfect day!

A couple of miles outside of town, she slowed the car and then stopped and parked on the roadside in front of a grayed board gate flanked by sagging barbed wire fencing. Beyond the gate, there was an overgrown road that wound through a stand of grand oak trees and thickets of Cherokee roses, muscadines, and honeysuckle. I climbed the wobbly gate, steadied myself on the top board, dropped to the other side, and then held the loose barbed wire for my grandmother. She stooped under it and pulled the wicker picnic basket through after her. I hoisted the basket, and we walked down the road past and old brick cistern and found a clear spot beneath a massive oak. In its shade, we spread a red checkered tablecloth on the ground, and she unpacked the basket. The day’s provisions included summer sausage, a tin of King Oscar sardines, Ritz crackers and yellow mustard, and a can of pork ‘n beans. Granny’s mood brightened as we ate and she told stories about her dad hitching his mule team and loading the family in the wagon and riding out on the Front Ridge for Sunday picnics on the oak-covered “high ground,” and about the time he was deputized and escorted a notorious outlaw on the train to Port Arthur as the outlaw's gang shouted and waved pistols as they galloped their horses alongside the train and of Grandad's good friend, pilot tug boat Captain Cott Plummer who lassoed an enormous sperm whale, stuck in an oil pond just off the beach, west of the jetties, and then towed the monster to Sabine and how thousands came from far and wide to see the 65-ton behemoth. My favorite story was when Grandad let a steamship captain take King, his prized bird dog, to Tampico, Mexico, on a quail hunt where King bolted and was lost. The captain returned to Sabine with the bad news. Six months later, Grandad, the Sabine Jetty Master at the time, was on watch and looked southward to see King, all skin and bones, coming up the mud beach.

We finished our lunch as a cooling beach breeze stirred the great oaks. Granny rested in the shade to the soothing “weeeee-whoa” chorus of summer locusts, and twitter of cardinals up high in the canopy as I chased grasshoppers and hunted mosquito hawks that lit on cattails around the edge of a small pond behind the old home place. After a while, she joined me, and we picked berries from a patch we found near the cistern. She hadn't brought a bucket, so we dropped them in her sun hat, and when we had enough for her cobbler, we walked back and re-packed the picnic basket, eased up to the road, squeezed through the fence, loaded the basket in the trunk and set out for home.

I have no further recollections of that day, but I imagine, like other trips, I slept in the back seat most of the way back to Port Arthur and then later played in the yard until Granny called me in for supper. I’m sure we enjoyed the dewberry cobbler with Carnation vanilla ice cream as I regaled the table with a breathless recounting of the day’s adventures.

By the end of the summer of 1960, my grandmother prevailed, and Grandad agreed to leave Sabine and move in with us in Lakeview until a room came available at the Community Home. On the day we picked him up, he had just finished boarding up the house, and he met us at the road in dress pants and a white shirt and tie, carrying a single worn brown suitcase. Grandad got in the front seat, and as we drove away for the last time, I watched through the back window as the clam shell dust swirled and then lifted in the Gulf breeze.

“OLD MAN: You get old, and you can’t do anybody any good anymore.
BOY: You do me some good Grandpa. You tell me things.”

— Robert Penn Warren

In the months Grandad spent with us on 7th Street, he taught me to knit a cast net, build a box kite from balsa sticks and tissue paper, and whittle a slingshot from a forked tallow tree branch. We studied the Birds of Texas book he bought me at Kress' downtown, and we picked berries and took long walks along the railroad tracks behind our house. At his knee, he told me tales of his bird dogs King and Snowball, of pirates, outlaws, and captains of great sailing ships, of fat greenhead mallards and clouds of white brant, skiffs filled with redfish and quail hunting in the marsh behind the house and of the terror of the great 1900 storm and the 1915 tidal wave.

Now, some 60 years later, those stories are precious threads of memory woven into the fabric of my life. In the quiet times, when the tide of years surges back, I wax melancholy with memories so vivid, so real that I feel I could almost reach out and tug on his sleeve again and ask…."Grandad, can we throw your net today?"

Rene Eugene Krebs was a true pioneer, devoted husband, father, businessman, hunter, fisherman, shrimper, gardener, and my best friend. Grandad moved into the Community Home in the spring of 1961 and lived there quietly until his passing on June 29, 1962.

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The Cut

One evening at the dinner table in the late spring of 1963, right out of the blue, my grandmother announced that she had rented a cabin down at Gilchrist, and we were going to spend the “summer” at the beach.

I remember thinking, “I sure hope she doesn’t mean the WHOLE summer.” Our Boy Scout Troop 61 was scheduled to go to Camp Bill Stark in late July, and Daddy had already taken me down to the G.I. Surplus to get a new cot and over to Sears & Roebuck to order my summer uniform. But, back then, kids were expected to be seen and not heard, and matriarchal decisions required no family consensus or feel-good negotiation. Although looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t whine a little about going by myself, with no friends or cousins, just Granny and me. I must have thought… “It’s the beach, how bad could it be?”

On the first Monday of summer vacation, we loaded her Ford Falcon, said our goodbyes at breakfast, and struck out for the beach. Rather than our usual route through Sabine Pass and down the Beach Road, we took the “long way” through Winnie and made a stop at Cammareri’s Store for last-minute groceries before heading south through rice field country on Highway 124. After I had fidgeted through a fifteen-minute delay for a barge to clear the Intracoastal swing bridge, we continued, up the hill, through High Island and down to the road's beachfront junction with Highway 87.  There, we turned right toward Gilchrist, and the chenier oaks and clusters of oil derricks and horsehead pump jacks gave way to green cordgrass covered salt meadow that stretched to the horizon. To our left, each beach side turn-off offered a teasing glimpse of the sand and surf just beyond the dunes.

Ten minutes later, we passed our landmark, Faggard’s Store, and started watching for our turn. About three blocks before Rollover Pass, we took a right on Mae Street and found our cabin. I remember it as faded gray with asbestos siding, set on creosote pilings with clam shell underneath. There was a salt-burnt oleander bush at the base of a single set of weathered stairs that led up to a small covered porch. Through the screen door, we could see the interior, which would be described today as “open-concept,” a single room with honey-colored pine board walls and linoleum floor. The kitchen and dinette were along the back wall. Three double beds were positioned around the perimeter of the room by the windows, along with an easy chair, Naugahyde couch, and a side table with an oscillating fan and a reading lamp.

After unloading the car and helping Granny carry our groceries and suitcases up the stairs, I stowed the beach chairs, my fishing tackle and cast net underneath the house and set out to explore the neighborhood. Our cabin faced the highway. The vacant lot between us and the blacktop was overgrown with dense sea myrtle, high tide bushes, and matted berry vines and was moated by a snakey looking green scum bar ditch that discouraged further exploration and short-cuts. Our sparse Bermuda grass yard was splayed with clumps of flat-topped Johnson grass, dandelion, and pink powderpuff mimosa, and as I quickly discovered, was a minefield of sandburs and catchweed that stuck my ankles and caused mutinous tangles in the laces of my Keds.

On the far side of the highway, there was a row of cabins along the beachfront. Across the street, catty-cornered from us was a bright green cabin with a wide screened porch and a couple of houses down the street toward Rollover Bay. Behind our house, a salt cedar and windmill palm fringed finger canal ran straight back to the bay. Further west, down the Beach Road, was a shell and beach souvenir shop, a bait shack, and then Rollover Fish Pass. The possibilities were endless for a 12-year-old armed with a rod and reel and cast net.

Before our trip to Gilchrist, my beachgoing had been limited to family day outings and picnics at McFaddin Beach, just down Highway 87 from Sabine Pass. Still, I knew about Rollover from my 7th Grade Texas History class. The narrowest spot on the Bolivar Peninsula was used by Jean Lafite pirates and later Prohibition rum-runners who, to circumvent Galveston Custom House duties, packed their smuggled loot and liquor in barrels and rolled them over from ships on the Gulf side to waiting boats on the bay. The Pass was dredged by Texas Parks and Wildlife in 1955 to improve fishing and provide better seawater exchange between the Gulf and the upper reaches of East Galveston Bay. I remember articles by Ed Holder in his Port Arthur News Great Outdoors column describing the crowds drawn to the Pass by the fantastic fall golden croaker and flounder runs. One incredible photo showed fishermen shoulder to shoulder, three and four deep along the bank.

By the end of our first week, we had settled into a regular routine. Each morning, after breakfast, my first stop was the whitewashed clapboard bait stand on the bay side of the beach road, just a few steps east of the Pass. The concrete-floored shack was only about 10 x 10 but was clean, organized, and well-stocked, including a Coke box and a pegboard rack that held an assortment of terminal tackle, corks, stringers, crab twine, nets and bait buckets. A fine hand-made 6’ cast net hung from a hook on a ceiling joist. Frozen shrimp, squid, mullet, and crab bait were kept in a chest freezer just inside the screen door, and “fresh dead” shrimp were scooped from a red Coleman cooler behind the counter. In front of the cash register, there was a big jar of hot pickled sausage, a box of Slim-Jims, and a clip stand festooned with Tom's peanuts, chips, and pork skins.

I took it as a sign of good luck if I arrived before they sold out of “fresh dead.” For a dollar with change back, you could get a white butcher paper wrapped pound of shrimp and a Slim Jim. To my mind, Slim Jims were the perfect fisherman’s snack, providing sustenance during slack tides and biteless mid-day doldrums. They were highly portable, slipping easily into your back pocket. They could be eaten "one-handed" while holding your rod in the other by tearing the plastic wrapper with your teeth, and the cellophane casing protected your beef stick from fishy fingers to boot.

After my bait run and provisioning, if the tide and crowd allowed, I’d set up at my “spot” on the west bank of the bay side near the base of the bridge. From that vantage, a quartering cast to the right would place my bait at the edge of the eddy created by the bridge’s rock abutment. The strategy held a high risk of a hang-up but avoided the ripping incoming tide that could sweep my light Dipsey sinker rig sideways, causing dreaded crossed-line tie-ups with the fishermen to the left of me. At 12, patience wasn't my strong suit, but owing to Grandad's credo, "You can’t catch anything if you don’t keep your bait in the water,” I held my post as long as I could before moving or calling it quits for the morning.

About noon, I'd head back to the cabin where Granny would have Cotto salami or ham and pickled onion sandwiches waiting for me, and we’d eat our lunch at the yellow Formica table in the kitchen. If I’d had some luck that day and had a mess of fish in my bucket, Granny would help me scale and head them, and while she gave them a final rinse with the hose, I’d lug the bucket of guts and heads down to the canal. There was a burn drum on the back edge of our lot, but I theorized that the remains of my catch, deposited in the canal, would attract crabs and baitfish, which I would later target on my cast netting and crabbing jaunts.   

My grandmother wasn’t a believer in outdoor activity in the “heat of the day.” After cleaning up, I had to rest for a while before I could take off for my afternoon rambles up and down the canal or down along the bayfront. Later in the afternoons, she would join me on the beach to look for shells or walk down and watch the seiners pull their net.

The commercial seiners were local celebrities of sorts and drew a crowd of gawkers wherever they set up their drag. In my memory, they were big, rough-and-tumble men with immense beer bellies, straw hats, and suntans as dark as gumbo roux. They lit filterless Camel and Lucky Strike cigarettes with shiny silver lighters and drank canned Pearl beer. I kept a respectful distance. Their rusted-out stake bed truck had a full-size box freezer in the back and no rear gate to ease the laborious unfurling and gathering of the 200-foot net. Each sweeping drag would deposit a smorgasbord of squirming and flopping marine life on the wet sand along the tide line. Their prize, the big silvery iridescent-green speckled trout and copper penny “bull” redfish, were likely bound for Captain’s Platters at The Schooner and Leo and Willie’s in Port Arthur.

Just before sunset, the steady onshore sea breeze would begin to lay down, our cue to start heading back up to the cabin before the mosquitoes came out. We didn't have a TV, so after supper, our evenings were quiet. Granny reading or sewing while I cleaned my reel, rigged leaders, and organized my tackle box for the next day's adventure. Each night, before bedtime, I pored over the back pages of an old dog-eared Outdoor Life, I found in a wicker basket next to my bed. Reading and then re-reading the ads for raising nightcrawlers, Wham-O blowguns, boomerangs, and “throwin” knives. 

After the cabin was dark, I propped my chin on my pillow and through the screen window watched the winking and bobbing lights of shrimp boats as they worked the high tide up close to the beach and, far out on the salt, tanker lights as they lined up to enter Bolivar Roads. Then, I’d drift off to the rhythmic “whirr” and cooling sweep of the table fan and the sound of the distant surf. 

When we arrived at Gilchrist that summer, I was already a pretty seasoned angler. I had fished down at Sabine with Grandad, at the Pleasure Pier, and up in Woodville at my Uncle Lester's farm pond. But, nothing could compare to the incredible bounty and opportunity I found at Rollover. I caught croakers, hardhead catfish, piggy perch, yellowtails, whiting, sand trout, drum, a flounder, a big sheepshead, an eel, and a pufferfish, mullet, and crabs. Every spot I fished and every cast I made was a fishing lesson. I learned how to tell the difference between the quick tapping bites of piggies and hardheads, the thump of a big croaker, and the quick jerk and run of a sand trout. I discovered that an incoming tide was better fished on the bay side of the bridge, and the outgoing tide was better on the beach side. I honed my casting skills, switching from flat sidearm to overhand when the bank was crowded. Knots were tied, leaders were chosen and rigged, and swivels, hooks, and sinkers tested. Fresh dead and frozen shrimp, live and cut mullet, mud minnows, and squid were all tried as bait. I watched porpoises in the surf and gulls, terns, pelicans, sandpipers, skimmers, herons, and egrets along the beach and bay. I got finned, cut, scraped, pinched, bitten, stuck, stung, and sunburned. I learned to be careful around the water, keep a sharp eye out for stray hooks, “fins up” hardheads and sinister man o’ war, be respectful of others' space, and enjoy the camaraderie with other fishermen. We were bonded by our common purpose.

By the end of June, Rollover felt like home. I had the run of the Pass. When I made my regular morning stop at the bait stand, my jovial lady friend at the counter always said, “Hun, you be careful down at the cut," and then she’d slip a few extra shrimp in my sack. When I was out back stalking mullet along the canal, our neighbors would give me a big wave and sometimes come down to watch me throw my cast net or see the catch of the day. The folks at Faggard's knew us by name, and even the seiners would let me help cull their catch.

I fished hard and played hard, and by the end of most days, I was tired and worn out, but it was a good tired, the kind you get from a day well spent. But one evening, after my canal patrol, I came back to the cabin with a bad headache and felt achy all over. Granny felt my brow and said she thought I had a fever, so she walked across the street to see if our neighbors, the Pampolinas, had a thermometer. It turned out that Mrs. Pampolina was a nurse, by sheer coincidence, and she offered to come over and check on me. She looked me over and took my temperature. It was 103.5, and she proclaimed…”Looks like you’ve got the mumps.” The first night was misery. I sweated down the sheets and had “sick dreams” while the room swam around me, the knots in the pine board ceiling turning to scary faces. Granny worked to get my fever down by soaking towels in cold water and putting them under my arms and on my chest. By the next morning, my throat was so swollen I could barely speak, and the lumps under my chin felt as large as baseballs. When Mrs. Pampolina returned to check on me, she warned my grandmother to keep me quiet or “they’ll go down on him.” I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded real bad. My high fever broke on the third day, but I stayed in bed for a week. Life at Rollover was passing me by.

Toward the end of my convalescence, my grandmother sat in the chair next to my bed and said that, besides getting the mumps, it had been a great trip, but she thought it was about time for us to go home. She reasoned that I needed to rest up and get ready for Scout Camp, Mother and Daddy were surely missing us, and they would be disappointed if we didn’t get back before my birthday. My reluctance was no match for her resolve.

That Sunday, I woke up early, just as the sunrise's first rays washed the cabin in a soft green-gold. Granny must have gotten up during the night and turned the fan off as the cabin was cool and quiet, with only the beach breeze lightly bumping the window shade against the wooden sill. I parachuted the sandy sheets and let them settle down softly around me and lay still until I heard the low whistle of the tea kettle and hollow clinking of her cup and saucer. Then she sat at the table, drank her tea, and read her daily devotional from The Upper Room. Later, while I lolled in my pajamas, she fried the last of the bacon and made her special French toast with powdered sugar and syrup and, in a rare deviation from her usual formality, let me eat with my plate in my lap as I sat cross-legged on the bed. After breakfast, we swept up the cabin, packed our suitcases, and loaded the Falcon.

While Granny walked over to thank the neighbors and tell them goodbye, I carried the trash down to the burn drum and then made one last pass down the canal. The low tide had exposed clumps of oysters, a mud stuck tire, and old Hurricane Carla strewn timbers. As I approached, summer grasshoppers clicked in the salt scrub bushes, a redwing blackbird called from the Roseau cane, fiddler crabs waved fat orange fingers and scuttled for cover under the cut bank, and a big bull mullet spooked from the shallows, threw up a V-wake and then, as if to celebrate his escape, jumped twice when he hit the deep water. In the distance, through the shimmer and glint of the bright mid-day sun, I could see a group of “pluggers” wading the bay flats behind the Pass, and beyond them, out on the Intracoastal, seagulls wheeled and dove behind a towboat pushing a string of barges eastward toward Port Arthur. Granny’s honking horn broke my gaze, I paused for a moment and blinked away the welling in my eyes and then turned around and headed back up to the car.

When we made it home that afternoon, Mother greeted us on the driveway, gave me a big hug, and said she thought I had really grown since we’d been gone. Looking back today, I think she was right.

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Curse of the Cone Johnson

In March of ‘69, after countless trips to Bruce Wiggins’ Sports Shop and months of studying ads in Surfer magazine, I bought my first surfboard. The beautiful 9’ 8”, psychedelic foam spray, Greg Noll Stemwinder started my transition from button-down Gants and wing-tips to Birdwell Baggies and sandals. 

By June, along with my best buddies Tommy and Terry, we had surfed every spot between High Island and Surfside. We quickly learned that the dawn patrol offered the best shot at uncrowded lineups and coveted glassy conditions.

The night before the first trip of the summer, I set my alarm for 4:00 but didn't need it, and by 4:15, I had finished loading my Delta Green '68 Volkswagen. The early morning was still and damp, and the air was scented with mimosa and wet tallow leaves. I took a dishrag from the kitchen and wiped the dew off my windshield, tossed it in the floorboard, cinched the Stemwinder tight on the surf rack, cranked the Beetle and headed down 29th street toward Terry's. I made the turn at Ave. H and then into his driveway. Too early to honk or knock, my arrival was announced with the crunch and pop of clam shells beneath the VW's tires. Molly, his Golden Retriever, bounced off the porch to greet me. Terry followed her down the steps, and we stowed his gear, strapped his board on top of the Stemwinder, hugged Molly and let her back in the house. In less than 5 minutes, we were on our way across town to Tommy's Franklin Avenue garage apartment.

His porch light was on, and as we pulled up, I could see the big Bing noserider propped against the railing at the bottom of the stairs. I loaded it on the passenger side of the rack as Tommy appeared, Thermos of coffee in hand and a tightly rolled and tucked towel under his arm. He wore a pair of orange Birdwell Beach Britches, a long-sleeved Gordon & Smith Surfboards T-shirt, and leather thong sandals. He called shotgun; Terry crawled in the backseat, and before we cleared the driveway, he thumbed my Cream Goodbye tape into the Pioneer 8-track deck and pegged the volume knob. When we made the turn at Boston Avenue, the rattle and thump from my homemade plywood box speakers and Jack Bruce's "Badge" bass line shook the storefront windows.

We took our usual route down Hwy 365 to 124, through Winnie and down to High Island. Then, hung a right on the Beach Road to our routine first stop at Meacom’s Pier. After a quick survey of the conditions and a dune side pit stop, we decided to push on to Galveston and find a rideable spot at the Flagship or 37th Street. Since it was early, if we hit the ferry right, we could still get out before the Houston crowd showed up. 

Twenty minutes later, as we passed the Bolivar Point Lighthouse, I could see the approaching ferry's lights. Perfect timing. We rolled up to the landing and took the coveted first in line position, an ideal set up for a shot at the prime "first off" spot on the ferry's bow. As the last car came off the ramp, the deckhand's traffic cop mime and orange-glow flashlight wand waved us toward the center lane. I eased the VW into gear, and we chugged forward and claimed our prize. I killed the engine, set the parking brake, turned the key back to "on" and tuned the radio to 740 AM so we could listen to Bob Stephenson's fishing report. The sky was purple and the eastern horizon glowed with orange and pink as we settled in and waited for the ferry to finish loading and depart for the Galveston side.

It was full daylight when I was jolted upright by a deckhand knocking on my window with the rubberized butt of his flashlight. We must have dozed off during the transit, and he was clearly agitated as he yelled, "move out," windmilled his arm, and pointed toward the ramp. I was dinged from my nap, so it took me a second or two to realize that our VW was blocking the cars behind us, thus paralyzing the starboard side's disembarkation process. He yelled again, and I slammed the clutch pedal down and turned the key only to hear a sickening click..click..click. My second try was, even more, impotent, and we sat, deader than a doornail, as the drivers behind us began to honk and gesture. The normally torpid ferry crew quickly gathered in front of us. I could read their lips as things escalated into a full-blown donkey roast. By then, the guys were awake and had figured out what was going on. Tommy yelled for me to put it in neutral and scrambled out to push us forward. He was a stout guy, and I could see him straining mightily in the rear-view mirror, but we only moved a few feet. Finally, an exasperated attendant and a big guy with a ponytail from a truck behind us pitched in to help. All three looked like they were busting a gut as we rolled off the ramp at a snail's pace.

As I steered the Beetle to a disgraced stop on the gravel shoulder, I glanced down only to see that the emergency brake was still on. I discreetly clicked it off, looked around to see if anyone had witnessed my deceit, and quickly stepped out to thank the panting, red-faced crew. As I waved back to them, I could see the Cone Johnson name above the pilothouse observation railing. And so it began.

After a “what now?” meet-up on the shoulder, Terry raised the engine lid to signal our distress. The ferry had already begun to load from the Galveston side queue. As the last few cars behind us rolled off the ramp, a guy in a blue Impala pulled over and offered a jump. The VW’s battery was beneath the rear seat on the passenger side (German engineering!). A row of oleander bushes on the right side of the shoulder blocked the logical right rear to left front jump-start set-up. I'm sure the Samaritan rued the day he offered to help us. It took us a half-hour of back seat contortion and pretzel logic maneuvering to position his Chevy so the jumper cables would reach from the left. After three tries, we finally got the Beetle started, thanked the gentleman, and mercifully got back on the road.

When we finally arrived at 37th Street, the lineup wall to wall with Treasure Isle locals and Houston surf shop teams. The surf was already starting to mush under a stiffening southwest wind. We u-turned in Gaido’s parking lot and squeezed into a spot on the beachside behind the Locked In team's Chevelle wagon, piled out walked down to the concrete steps and watched the action for a few minutes and then walked across Seawall at the light, past the Commodore to the Dutch Kettle and ate a dejected breakfast. We never took our boards off the rack. On the bummer ride home, I didn’t have the heart to tell Tommy and Terry about the brake.

I can’t recall any bad Galveston trips when we rode the Cone’s fleet mates the R.S. Sterling and E. H. Thornton. Still, our misadventure that day, and the dark cloud of subsequent "snake-bit" Cone Johnson crossings are now a part of the folklore of our youth. And our Galveston ferry stories are still recounted today, as “the parking brake incident,” “the seagull and surf wax incident” (don’t ask), the “Bamboo Hut incident,” the “37th street jailbirds incident”, and the “Hill’s towel serape incident.”

In the '90s, the Cone Johnson was finally retired. After languishing for years at a shipyard dock somewhere down the Intracoastal, it is rumored to have been sold on eBay, towed to New York, and repurposed as a reptile museum. I thought it was a fitting end. 

“The waiting is the hardest part”

— Tom Petty, "Hard Promises", 1981

It's only 2.7 miles (as the seagull flies) across the Bolivar Roads Channel. But the crossing has both confounded and delighted upper Texas coastal travelers for hundreds of years. In the 1800s, Texas filibusters, pirates, including the infamous Jean Lafite, and Bolivar Peninsula watermelon and sea-island cotton farmers made the journey by skiff, sailing vessels, and barges from Bolivar Point to Galveston and back. After the Gulf and Inter-State Railway was completed, affluent Beaumonters would ride down and spread picnics under Hackberry trees and stroll the beach and lighthouse grounds while they waited for the Silver King and Pelican and later the Jefferson and Galveston to take them across the bay to weekend soirees at the Grotto and the Hollywood Dinner Club or to swim and sunbathe at Murdoch's Bathhouse. The first free service to the Island started in 1949 as the post-war surge in automobile ownership spurred family vacation travel. The Cone Johnson, E.H Thornton, and R.S. Sterling entered service the next year, all named for directors of the Texas Department of Transportation. In the '90s, the Johnson and Sterling were retired and replaced with five new vessels: the Robert C. Lanier, Gibb Gilchrist, Dewitt C. Greer, Ray Stoker Jr., and Robert H. Dedman. In 2012, a sixth boat, the ‘high tech’ John W. Johnson joined the fleet but had an inglorious debut after mechanical, and software glitches extended sea trials and delayed the maiden voyage. Time will tell whether the 'Johnny Johnson' joins its like-surnamed predecessor as a harbinger of bad luck Galveston trips.

If you are planning a trip to Galveston on the Bolivar ferry, take my advice:

Get there early!

And as the captain's announcement says:

Don't feed the seagulls from the front of the boat.

Turn off your engine.

Don't forget to set your parking brake.

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Haints, Lubbers, and the Blue Moon

This spring, the 6 o’clock weather forecast of “cloudy to partly cloudy with a 60% chance of thunderstorms, S to SW winds gusting to 30 mph” had started to sound like a broken record.

Then last week, we finally caught a much-needed break with back to back bluebird days and a light northeast breeze. Mother Nature had granted us a narrow window of opportunity, and I didn’t want to waste it. All options were on the table. Fishing, crabbing, a beach trip, a day in Galveston?

But, not so fast! Sabine Lake and the ship channel were fresh and dirty from the recent rains, and a check of the Crystal Beach and TxDot webcams showed the beachfront surf lapping against the dunes and a mile long ferry line. Sea Rim Park had been loaded with flotsam and seaweed on our previous visit, and Cattail Marsh was still choked with hyacinth. I put the kibosh on yard work and (yikes!) a ride along to Dillard’s. We were running out of ideas.

But then it came to me in a hail-Mary epiphany…What about Shangri La? We hadn’t been over to the Botanical Garden and Nature Center since the Scarecrow Festival last fall, and it was a perfect day for a road trip! We geared up—grabbing some sunscreen, the Off, a couple of waters and a tumbler of coffee—and after a quick stop at Rao’s Bakery, struck out for Orange.

Two kolaches and a pecan sticky bun later, we turned off MacArthur Dr. onto 16th street and then hung the first left, at W. Park Ave. Public parking is about a half mile on the right and tour groups, handicapped, drop-offs and staff take the main entrance drive to the left.

Just stepping through the gate is an “ahhh” moment. The wildflower-lined walking paths are cloistered from the street and lead through the trees to the beautifully designed main entrance and welcome area. Once there, you are greeted by friendly staff members who take your zip code and offer helpful advice to enhance the enjoyment of your experience.

We normally take an unstructured approach and wander through the gardens guided by flora, fauna, and installations that catch our eye, but on this trip, we picked up a map and plotted a counter-clockwise route from the visitor center. The raised bed plantings around the perimeter of the courtyard offered summer color from indigenous coneflower, white rose of Sharon, and black-eyed Susan. I had my camera and hoped to get some pictures of the colorful dragonflies that patrol the area or maybe even a butterfly or bumblebee visiting the spikelets and blooms.

“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now. It’s just a spring clean for the May queen”

— Robert Plant, Jimmy Page "Stairway to Heaven", 1971

I spotted the Monarch just as it lit on a coneflower, maybe ten feet down the pathway. With some stealthy tai-chi-style sneaking, I was able to get pretty close and then squatted down for a better perspective, extendeding my camera with both hands and using the rear screen to frame the butterfly and flowers. I took a shot, and as I was recomposing for another, a rustle in the dry leaves and pine straw just to my right gave me a start, and I lost my balance sitting back hard on the concrete walkway. Since I had my camera strapped to my right wrist, I couldn’t use both hands to push myself back up, so I had to half-roll on my side to get up on my knees and then stood up. My pride was bruised, as well as my rear end. I dusted myself off, quickly glanced around to see if anyone had witnessed the debacle and then, trying to be nonchalant, strolled on down the path. Thankfully, my wife had her back turned and missed the whole thing. I would never have heard the end of it. ”Let me get this straight…so you hurt yourself when a lizard scared you while taking a picture of a butterfly?” I’d have to turn in my man card.

Soldiering on from the courtyard, we turned right, passing full-bloom yellow cosmos, sage, firebush and, lantana at the Bee Scene pollinators garden and then stopped to marvel at the stunning Dancing Sisters guarding the entrance to the Children’s Garden. The four seventeen-foot Blue Bottle Tree sculptures were designed by noted Southern metal artist Stephanie Dwyer to celebrate bottle tree folklore which has a long history as an element of religious, cultural, and artistic significance in the Deep South.

In African American Hoodoo culture, bottle trees were thought to guard the home and trap roving night spirits called “haints,” that are drawn to the bright indigo blue-colored bottles and then once inside the spirits are destroyed by the morning’s light. Bottle trees have come to symbolize nature, good luck and rebirth and the Dancing Sisters are the perfect metaphor for Shangri La’s resilience and renewal since Hurricanes Rita and Ike and the deluge of Tropical Storm Harvey.

Next, we walked through the Epiphyte greenhouses that showcase ferns, bromeliads, air plants, and orchids and rainforest tropicals. Then onward through to the massive archway framing the beautiful caladium-banked Tree Ring Plaza, where we lingered for a few minutes by the reflecting ponds and enjoyed the bald cypress and Spanish moss-draped view of Ruby Lake.

Beyond the plaza, the path winds through the shade of massive live oaks hung with gigantic staghorn ferns and then splits. I took a left to the Perennial Garden strip and my wife the right through the Hanging Gardens.

That’s when I discovered the eastern lubbers on a canna lily leaf. Exited, I circled back around and found my wife. “You’ve got to come over here and see these lubbers!” I said.

“Who is it?” She asked. “How do you know they’re lovers?”

“Not lovers, lubbers…giant grasshoppers. You know, like landlubbers? They don’t hop or fly like regular grasshoppers; they are too big and clumsy.”

We found dozens of the mega hoppers on black and green cannas, confederate roses, and agapanthus. I wished the grandkids had been with us. They would have totally freaked out.

After the entomology jackpot, we pressed on to The Pond of the Blue Moon, where we found a bench and rested. The azalea-ringed pond and towering Cypress Gate easily form the most beautiful and zen spot in Southeast Texas. The perfect manifestation of H.J. Lutcher Stark’s vision of an Eden-like refuge for all to enjoy.

It was a trek back to the pond, and of course, I had endured a “camera roll,” so we decided to save the perimeter pathway Garden Rooms for another visit and headed back before they put out a Silver Alert!

A great way to end the story with the perfect Led Zeppelin lyrics!

“My Shangri La beneath the summer moon, I will return again”

— Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham, "Kashmir", 1971

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Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center is open Tuesday-Saturday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Admission is free. For more information call 1-409-670-9113 or visit their website: www.starkculturalvenues.org