Update

With a lot of help from my sister-in-law, I'm trying to put a few pictures into my little life stories. I will add more as soon as I find some worthy. I do ask my new readers to go all the way back into my earlier blogs. It was my first and favorite story, "The Man in the Moon" about my Grandfather and me. Written from the heart.
I hope it renews some of your favorite memories also.
I have a lot of life to write and time is slipping. Yeah, I was in the Navy '66-70, and in Viet Nam. Some I'll share and some can't. You that know, know.
Be well and thank you for your time and interest.
d.

The Christmas Box

It really was just an old pine box with a wooden lid. It was built to ship canned peaches and had a paper pin-up girl mostly intact on one end.
My Uncle had it for years. He had been on New Guinea during WWII and said he always remembered getting a can of peaches one Christmas Day. He found this box after he came home from the war, always retelling me the story.
I'm not quite sure how I came to own the box. I shared a bedroom with my folks until I was ten or so and my box never was far from my piece of the small room. It held my treasures and my dreams.
Christmas was always a special time. We were poor, but most everybody was poor. It didn't hurt the joy and excitement on every one's face. A lot of tree lots were around town. Even if it was seventy degrees, people were happy and excited. We had a tree most years, some a little picked over, but they smelled so good, like Christmas.
We had our Christmas gathering on Christmas Eve. We loaded up in the truck and off to Papa and Grandma's. A tarp would help a bit if it rained, but a wet Christmas couldn't dampen our spirits.
The twenty mile trip seemed to take forever. Going into Grandma's house, the wonderful smell of food, homemade candy and other delights filled the air. Even if we were having just a 'regular' meal, it smelled better just because it was Christmas Eve.
She always had a tree lit brightly, some real, some aluminum, but either one would fill the house with excitement. The presents we brought were added to those already under the tree.
Grandma was a big fan of making fudge or divinity, if it wasn't too rainy or humid. I ate both with an appetite only an eight year old could survive. After everyone had eaten, we would watch some Christmas music on the old black and white TV as I squirmed eagerly get to the presents.
Back then, a knife or a hatchet was a good present for a boy. I've still got the scars to prove it.
Clothes were the dreaded gifts, even when I needed new ones.
I got a 'varmint' call once. Just two pieces of plastic with a rubber band stretched through them. I blew that thing for hours on end out in the woods. Even my hound dogs gave up and went home. But it was a neat present.
Our presents were mostly modest, some homemade, but everyone was a treasure, except the clothes. Most of the presents came from my Papa and Grandma, but the gifts from my parents were just as appreciated and treasured.
What counted was that we were a family, sharing with each other on Christmas Eve.
I filled that old wooden box with as many treasures and presents as it would hold.
The old peach box finally gave way to age, but I just included it inside of me, memories and all.
Find your box somewhere, large or small, but keep your memories because they are the enduring spirit of Christmas.
Merry Christmas, folks.

Toad Frogging

In my life, I've been fortunate enough to go 'toad frogging' with two wonderful girls.
The first time was in 1955....I was 7 years old and so was she. I was spending the weekend at my Grandma's house and a friend dropped by. She had her granddaughter with her.
Her name was Ginny.
Ginny and I squirmed and avoided eye contact until my Grandma told to go outside to play.
It was dark by then, but we took my Papa's good flashlight and hit the yard. Kid's could do that in the fifties... sadly, today it never could happen.
We walked around the yard and got comfortable with each other. There wasn't a lot do see or do at night, but there were a lot of toad frogs croaking. It had come a big rain that day and they were in a mating frenzy They were everywhere. Ginny and I got a large bucket and began to collect them, chasing them until Papa's flashlight went out. We eventually poured them out so they could resume their croaking.
Ginny was beautiful. Her family moved to Louisiana a year later, but not before I got my first kiss. By that time, I was in love as much as I knew how to be. I never saw her again.
My toad frog hunting was on hold for the next 45 years. I had built a goldfish pond in my back yard. After a big rain, my back yard would fill with toad frogs courting. The lay their eggs in water and their tadpoles thrive. Goldfish won't eat them.
By a stoke of luck, one of my grand daughters, age 7, and her family were visiting. The frogs were in full voice, calling out to each other.
My grand daughter and I decided to get a bucket and catch some. We got a flashlight and chased toad frogs untill we were tired. We had over 50, it was a great night. I released them the next day.
I hope somewhere that my Ginny from so many years ago gets a chance to go 'toad frogging' with her grandson and maybe she will remember that night in 1955 and get to relive that feeling too.
Thanks for reading.

Gulf Coast Boy..The Community Years

It was 1993 or there abouts. I had been a communications technician for the phone company for 23 years. I worked in the central office, hi tech and all that. I enjoyed the work, but my old friend Danny was getting me involved in community affairs on the side. He thought I should 'expand' a bit. He was involved in a lot of local service and politics, he was a natural at it.
I began with the Chamber of Commerce. Danny and I co-chaired the annual golf tournament fund raiser for two years, then I chaired it for two more with a new friend, Mike as co chair.
I also did a few committees and such. My wife became an 'Ambassador' for the Chamber.
We were socializing in 'high cotton'.
And then my company's External Affairs department took note of me. I was one of their own who had good connections to the local business and political folks...
Translation..."Use Him".
Now, bear in mind that all of this 'community involvement' stuff was voluntary, unpaid and after hours, I still had my day job to make a buck.
I had a great boss who helped me any way he could, but my work came first. I would change from my work clothes into Dockers and nice shoes and race to a Chamber luncheon and be back in an hour to fix phone company stuff.
After a while, the External Affairs manager I worked with started taking me to city council meetings and such. They were all registered state lobbyist. My education into politics had begun.
She had a large area, with many small towns. But in politics, there is no such thing as a 'small town'.
Once she asked me to come with her to a town about 60 miles away. She had been there once and became uneasy when they locked the door behind her. The Mayor wanted his town to be included in the Houston area code. She couldn't explain to him why that was impossible, so I was there as a security/back-up/tech guy trying to explain to 'His Honor" why his demand was not available. I drew him a chart, explaining that his town's pre-fix number already existed in Houston and couldn't be repeated. Numbers are numbers.
The Mayor didn't get it, the meeting ended in a draw, but they unlocked the door for us.
She recruited me to approach several small communities, seven or eight, with a new proposal.
I don't care how confident you are, or what the item you are offering them, city councils can be imposing. But, my biker career had made me somewhat immune to that.
I presented the proposal to all of the towns and they accepted it, it was good for them.
Now, my external affairs manager was a very attractive woman. In her line of work, that was an asset. We became good friends, but nothing more.
She spent a lot of time and money keeping one VIP politician happy. I asked once if she would sleep with him to get his vote on an issue. She said "Absolutely Not". She was lying out her ass, I knew it and she knew I knew it. Who said politics can't be fun.
One of the communities I presented my proposal to was a remote village that had suffered some serious flooding earlier. Their town hall was a small trailer. As I waited in turn to present my proposal, I listened to other citizens address the council. One was an elderly lady wanting to know what they were going to do about the 'damn raccoons' that invaded her trailer. That problem just didn't seem to have a political solution, but one councilman offered to come by and 'shoot a couple of them'. Now, folks, that's service!
It went that way all evening.
At one point, the city council was to vote on paying the police chief for his over time in the previous flood situation. They had a very small budget. About then, the trailer door opened and the Chief came in. He didn't say a thing, he just found a chair and hiked one leg up on it, staring at the council from 15 feet, his very big 'pistola' jutting out prominently...and low and behold, the issue passed...
Democracy in action is sweet to see.
I presented my proposal soon and they agreed it was good for the community. I didn't even have to bring out my 'pistola'.
But it was time for me to get back to just being a civilian and my day job. I phased out of politics and community affairs. I had met a lot of good people and shared many interesting experiences, but my life, as I'm sure yours has, has been a great ride.
Well, that's about it for the Gulf Coast Boy series. I'll add short stories from time to time. Write about your life, everyone has stories. Share them with others.
Thanks for your time.
Party on, Dudes!

Gulf Coast Boy..The Biker Years

Well folks, it's time to talk about another segment of my life. I told you that I gave up fishing and bought a well used Harley. I'm going to keep this thing as 'polite' as possible, but it was a hell of a ride.

It was 1986 and I had sold my boat. I was 38 years old. Actually, Danny and I were flounder fishing on late afternoon in a driving rain storm and I said "I want to buy a motorcycle".

Danny looked up at me, water running over his face answered, "You, too?"

So I bought a Kawasaki and got familiar riding it. Danny had ridden dirt bikes a lot in his younger days, almost losing one leg in a wreck.

I enjoyed my Japanese toy until one day Danny came by my house on a used Harley, 1983 narrow glide.

I snorted, "Man, you're gonna have to work on that thing every day and it's gonna leak oil everywhere."

Danny smiled and said, "Just get on it and ride a few miles down the road."

I did. And I was hooked. I learned that moment that there are motorcycles and then there are Harley's.

Soon after, I found a used one, same model and year as Danny's, except his was a cherry and mine was a tired old iron horse. But, we had an ace-in-the-hole.

We knew a man named Steve that owned a 'Hog Shop". He is one of those easy, laid back people that can back up everything he says and not be bragging. He didn't sell Harley's, but he could, and still can, fix anything with a Harley name on it. I started hanging out at the shop and became friends with Steve.
My bike had a lot of problems. The first owner had tried to make it a drag bike, souping it up with a bunch of stuff like cams, lifters, oversize carburetor jets, etc. It needed work. Steve taught me how to work on it. With his help, I tore it down and rebuilt it, several times, from the block to the ignition. It ran a lot better, but never as good as I hoped for.

The hog shop wasn't your average yuppie Harley owner hangout. Steve's friends and customers might have been a bit rough, but I never met one that wasn't good people. I had found a new home.

I loved that old bike. It was a shovel head, 1983, just before the new 'evolution' engine came out in 1984. But, I actually enjoyed working on it, except when I had to repair it on some back road or beer joint parking lot to get home.

But riding it was great. The pipes and the vibration...well, it was a Harley, a real Harley. My wife would wrap her legs around me and doze as she leaned on the 'sissy bar' as we tore down some piece of hi way.

A big group of us would go every fall to a small campground on the banks of the Guadalupe River in central Texas during 'October Fest'. Party time!

I learned how to pack a tent, sleeping bags, clothes, and food on my Harley. And have room for one wife. (Plus a complete set of tools.)

Sleeping on rocks on a steep river bank got old quick. But the partying was great! We were all friends, but an occasional fist fight or knife waving broke out, but you've got to expect that. Getting caught slipping off with someone else's woman might get a bit more serious, but, that wasn't too common.

Once, a woman walked into our camp as we were having a typical beer drinking evening. She said she wanted to party with some bikers. She and her husband had a large motor home parked a hundred yards away. She was looking for some adventure and her husband stayed in the motor home, just peeking out the windows as his wife wiggled her ass in front of every guy.

Several of the guys were getting pretty wound up...but the biker girls and wives took her aside and explained to her exactly what they were going to do to her. She put her top back on and ran back to the motor home, they were gone the next morning. Ah, 'wanna be's' .
I've seen two biker women fight from inside a bar out into the shell parking lot and wind up under a truck. A bucket of water was all that stopped them from killing each other.

On one trip, some of the guys decided to roast a whole pig on a spit over a fire. Seemed like a good idea. They dug a pit, hug a rod and began to cook the pig. We were there for three days and all these guys did was turn that damn pig....and it was still only half done...

In the end, no one ate any of it...we were bikers, but hell, we weren't crazy.

On another trip, we went to Austin to an Easy Rider rodeo.

Easy Rider is a great biker magazine, full of bikes, tattoos, naked women...good stuff like that.

Outside the building, vendors set up displays of their stuff. One that caught my eye was a guy selling nipple rings for the ladies. He had a whole selection of them. No piercing. He had an album of Polaroids showing how they looked in use. His wife offered to show us the live product. She pulled up her Harley shirt and gave us a 'hands on' view. Being a biker was very good.

The rodeo had many interesting events. One was a 'wienie eating contest'.

A large sausage was suspended on a string and a biker would drive under it. His woman would stand up on the back pegs and try to bite as much as possible of it without using her hands. The driver couldn't stop or put his feet down, just one pass. Amazing how talented some of those ladies were.

Back at the hog shop, we would hang out, drink beer, bar-b-que, tinker with our bikes...If a 'real' customer came in needing a new tire or something minor, one or two of us would do it. It was a small way to repay Steve for all that he did for us.

None of us were 'patch holders'. That's someone who is a member of a bona fide MC club. Some clubs were outlaw and some were fringe and some were regular, but I never had any trouble with them. I wouldn't stop at a beer joint unless there were bikes out front. I was comfortable there.

One of our group was a 'pledge' to get int the Viet Nam Vets MC. They were good people, people I understood. He tried to get me to join, but I passed. Us old vets were getting scarce in the late 80's.

I started to rethink my life. I loved the biker lifestyle. Hell, why not? Beer, boobs and bikes...you could pour testosterone out of your boots.

I guess my final straw was at a beer joint. A guy started giving the barmaid some lip. She was perfectly capable of handling him, but I felt the urge to step in. Before I did something stupid, I thought about it. I was about to pick a fight in a beer joint with a guy I didn't know, who hadn't done anything to me or hurt the barmaid. My biker career was getting out of hand. I had to get all the way in or get out. I was getting way too comfortable.

I sold my beloved old Harley, bought Dockers, a set of golf clubs, joined the Chamber of Commerce and became the oldest yuppie in town.

Evolution is weird, isn't it. It was 1990. I was 42 years old.

I have one more chapter to add.

Thanks for reading.

The Grocery Store

A brief detour from 'Gulf Coast Boy.' I'll continue with 'The Biker Years' soon.
From time to time, I venture to the 'food getting place.' We've all gotta eat.
But, sometimes it's more of an ordeal than it should be. People....some of them are idiots. They have no consideration for anyone. Carts blocking the aisles is a given, but some shoppers make it an art form.
Before smoking was banned from most stores, people would drop their smokes on the floor and give them a quick tap with their shoe, leaving a nasty mess.
Another pet peeve, is to find meat or frozen goods on a dry goods aisle. Some shopper changed their mind and just left it on a shelf. Does that go back into the cooler when some employee finds it? Is that what I'm buying?
I try to park the cart away from the meat cooler or other popular browsing areas. I swear, I can park in front of the mops or floor polish, and in two minutes, three people are reaching over my cart to grab a mop or something. You can't win.
And the 'express checkout' is a joke. 'Fifteen items or less' the sign says. Obviously, some people can't read or count.
I bought some pre-cooked chicken nuggets recently. The package said 'Mostly Chicken".
Huh? What's the rest of it? They should have added, "Just eat it, it won't kill you"
And by the way, the myth of the 'frozen food aisle' just ain't true.
Thanks for reading.

Gulf Coast Boy...Young Man

In 1966, I married the girl I had courted with my egg farm wages. We were both 18, too stupid to listen to advice, I guess.
Eleven days later, I left for the Navy. I had worked with my father for several years as an electrician's helper and I wanted to continue that in the Navy. Viet Nam was getting serious and I didn't want to get drafted into the Army, I already knew how to shoot a rifle and drive a truck. So it was the Navy for me. Four years.
I hoped to be a Sea-Bee electrician, wiring buildings and such for the Navy. But the Navy had enough Sea-Bees and I thought maybe I could be an electrician on a ship. The Navy was full of ships.
Growing up in Wild Peach, there wasn't a lot to do at night. 'Lawrence Welk', "Paladin' and 'Gun Smoke' on Saturday nights was as good as TV got.
But we had an old set of World Book Encyclopedias, early 1950's vintage. I read and re-read them like dime novels, A thru Z. I absorbed a tremendous amount of obscure information.
During my Navy boot camp, we were tested to see what we might be good at. I didn't do well on sonar or typing or other things, but I almost aced 'General Knowledge'.
What I didn't know was that the Navy automatically redirected recruits who scored well into Naval aviation.
I got my wish. After 13 weeks and 5 days of boot camp, I was given orders to Jacksonville Fla. to aviation electrician school, 26 weeks. Tough school, but it gave me a career. A local Jr. Collage offered us a chance to take a test and receive an associates degree in electrical engineering after we completed the Navy school. This idiot didn't go take it; those that did said it was a 'cake walk'.
But this story isn't about my Navy experiences, they would fill a book by themselves.
Condensed version is I that became an aviation electrician, got assigned to a patrol squadron, deployed twice, once to the frozen Aleutians Islands and later to Viet Nam.
We had 9 four engine planes and I loved working on them. I have always had a passion for aircraft, and still do.
Back to the tale. My marriage produce two wonderful kids, but after eleven years the relationship ended in 1977. I was 29 years old.
But, this story is about 'Gulf Coast Boy', so I'll get back on track.
Skip back to 1976...
A knock at my door...a power company truck was idling in my driveway...
A young, lanky guy with a big grin said 'Hi, I'm Danny, and I hear you know how to salt water fish..."
So began a friendship that has lasted over three decades.
We began to fish together. I was something of an introvert, and he was anything but. I still accuse him of doing a 'three minute routine' when the icebox door opens and the light hits him. His enthusiasm and attitude remains the same to this day.
We bought a small fishing shack out in a local bay, only accessible by boat. It was just one room, maybe 10 X 14 feet, a bad pier and not much else.
We built a larger pier and deck, adding a basic shower and toilet. We drove pilings by hand and carried timbers out to the cabin on our boats to enlarge the place. I almost sunk my 'john boat' with pilings loaded on it. It always leaked afterward due to the stress on the rivets.
But, we were young and could work all day in the Texas sun. Danny's wife and small daughter were often there, never complaing about the heat or mosquitoes. My kids came sometimes, as did my girl friend who later became my 2nd wife. Life was good.
Danny became a good fisherman, although I never understood how he could catch as much a me using a broken hook and a bad knot. Now days, he is very good with lures and such, still chasing Texas fish.
We loved every minute of our 'cabin days'. We knew at the time it was good, but looking back,
it may have been, as Victor Hugo wrote, "the Best of Times".
Water seems to attract an unusual assortment of people. Our little piece of the Texas coast was no different. (We, of course, were perfectly normal, ahem..)
We made friends with some of the local bait shrimpers, helping them trawl for shrimp their small boats. Most had no winches for their nets, so extra hands were always useful. They showed us many things..like how to get a heavy boat over a sand bar and how to spot a game warden a mile off. Useful stuff.
Danny and I bought a 20' box net...gonna catch us some shrimp with all of this new found knowledge. We managed to snag some beer cans and oyster shells, but shrimp...well, let's say we were glad to have friends in the business.
We knew two brothers..one named Charlie and the other was Worm. We spotted Charlie one day heading out into the Gulf alone in a small boat to shrimp. We noticed that he had a two-by-four board tied to his motor to steer with. Steering cable broke, so you make do. Shrimping alone in the Gulf with a board to steer with..that's Texas.
Another interesting local was named Doug. He worked for a bait house/beer joint/boat ramp place. Doug was a jack of all trades. He was a mechanic, carpenter, shrimper, you name it, he was good at it.
From time to time, the place he worked for had parties..you know, a bunch of fun and drinking, dancing, etc. Did I mention drinking?
Well, Doug showed up for the party...only he was wearing a dress and full make up. He announced that he thought it was time for him to be him/her self. The joint was a quiet as the backside of the Moon. But, everyone liked Doug....so.....aw Hell, they fired him anyway..
Bay shrimpers are a breed apart. They would shrimp all day in small boats in the August sun. I've seen them going in after ten hours in 100 degree heat, tossing a bottle of Jack Daniels from boat to boat. These men were in their upper 60's and would be back on the water at 6:00am.
But times come and go.
We sold the cabin in 1982. In 1983, hurricane Alicia wiped it off the face of the Earth.
Danny and I sold our boats and bought Harley's. Danny became an engineer for his power company and later manager.
I adapted well to the new lifestyle and became 'scooter trash', but that's the next chapter.. I was thirty-eight years old.
Thanks for reading.
end of part 3.

Gulf Coast Boy...Teenage Years

Deep woods...Wild Peach community..1960..I was twelve years old.
I hated to move from my coastal town to the woods. I was sure all my friends and adventures were behind me.
We had no close neighbors, but less boys my age. But I had a dog, and we hunted every day.
I learned to love the woods and even the solitude.
We had cleared enough of the dense woods to build a modest house and large yard. Probably four acres. Chain saws were rare, but axes weren't, so we chopped and dragged the undergrowth and trees to a good spot for burning.
Red bugs and ticks were a new torment, but the deep woods mosquitoes were old friends.
I rode a bus to school, a long trip. Some of the other riders were pretty rough. The bus ride could be filled with terror or boredom.
The bus driver was never bothered by the sound of a punch or a girls scream as she was being held down against her will.
But try to tell him that he had missed your stop and he would rip your head off. He was my science teacher, also.
My family always hunted deer. We had a nice lease in south central Texas, 3200 acres. The owner wanted only eight 'guns' on the lease and charged $100.00 each. That money was hard to come by...I remember my mother and father going to a finance company every year to borrow our share of the lease money.
But we always had venison. I loved to hunt and did well, always getting my limit. We ate a lot of venison.
Back then, we just hunted, no feeders, walkie-talkies, or four-wheelers...just a tree to sit beside. If it rained, I would take a piece of plastic to sit on. I loved it. If you got one, you would go back to camp and return with a wheelbarrow. After cleaning it, we would take it into town to the ice house. When the trip was over, we would stop and retrieve it, taking it to a processing market.
One day leaving the lease, my uncle's car got stuck in soft sand. I jumped out of our truck and found a fallen tree to use. I straddled the trunk and began to hack at the bark with my hatchet.
About the third blow, the axe glanced off and went thou my boot. It didn't hurt, so I thought it just nicked me. But when I pulled the hatchet out, blood spurted with it. I limped back to the truck. One of my older cousins was there. He had been a medic in the Korean war.
He told me to lay back in the truck bed, but I said I wanted to see the nick.
But I discovered seeing your own blood for the first time isn't as cool as you might think. We were soon off to the clinic in the nearest town. By pure luck, the blade had gone between my tendons, saving me from surgery and a limp. They just stitched me up and I was good to go.
When my dad and I got home, my mother met us in the driveway as always.
She saw the huge bandage on my foot and actually trembled as she asked what happened.
I was cocky, my first real wound and all.
"I shot myself in the foot" I answered.
I will never forget the pain and horror in her face. The suffering I caused her with that stupid statement has haunted me ever since.
I learned something about life and a mother's love that day, but she paid for my lesson.
I was fourteen years old.
As time moved on, I met new friends, even in the deep woods. It was becoming a pretty good way to grow up. We would haul hay or cut wood or do ranch work for spending money.
We had fun, and never were vandals. Burnt down a tree trying to smoke out a squirrel once, but never intentionally harming any ones property.
But boys have to be stupid at times, and I kept the faith.
I told my mother three of 'us guys' were going night fishing. We actually were going down to a river to drink beer. One of my friends had somehow got two bottles of whiskey. We stopped on the way to the river and each bought a Coke. One Coke each. Two fifths of whiskey
and three Cokes. After the first stout drink, you really couldn't taste it. Pretty soon we were chasing wild range cows and rolling down a small hill, over cactus and rattlesnakes like idiots.
Then we saw tug boats pushing shell barges up the river ever thirty minuets or so. We decided to see who would swim closest to the tugs before 'chickening' out.
A tug would come buy and one of us would swim out toward it. When you got within fifty feet, the propeller would begin to suck you toward it..at about thirty feet, you panicked and tried to avoid being sucked under. It was pitch dark on the river and no way the tug boat would ever know you were there. I was sixteen.
I had a girl friend about then. Girlfriends require money to date. The deep woods wasn't the commerce capital of the world, but there was money to be earned, it you were willing.
Some of my buddies told me I could get a job at a local egg farm. I drove into the driveway of the mom and pop egg farm and got out, eyeing their dog.
About then, a crazed old man, followed by an elderly woman came running out.
"Git, git, git off of my property. You boys are no good, I'll sic my dog on you..git, now."
This man was awful to look at. He had a mean disposition and a meaner appearance. His wife wasn't much better. I realised my 'friends' had set me up. Several had worked for him, but spent most of their time smoking cigarettes behind the chicken barns.
But they needed help, so, after a good cussing, I was hired. $1.00 an hour.
My main job was to use his 1954 Chevy truck to shovel the chicken 'litter' from under the coops into the truck and drive it to the back of his property and un-load it with the same shovel. All day. Once, I had to kill two dozen copperhead snakes from a den I disturbed. All in a days work.
Now, folks, chicken 'litter' never really dries, and it was a disgusting job. I couldn't eat chicken or eggs for two years.
On occasion, I'd get to go with the lady into town to deliver eggs to the stores. I liked that.
They paid me. $8.00 for 8 hours....that would cover a date pretty well in 1965.
At the end of the summer, I told them I had to go back to school. They paid me the best compliment I've ever received. These mean, cynical people said I had changed their mind about boys, and 'maybe' not all of them were bad.
I missed them after I left.
I was seventeen.
end of part two

Calcutta Bamboo Rods

My first instalment of 'Gulf Coast Boy' mentioned using a Calcutta rod to fish with. A brief description of these might be in order.
In the days before fiberglass rods, poor folk like us made our own fishing equipment.
Back then, you could buy the long poles and cut them down to the size you wanted. I've made them up to sixteen feet, but found fourteen better. We used them to surf fish, mainly for large red fish.
As with most things, they came in a 'male' and 'female' variety. Male stalks were preferred because their strength. You could identify them because the length of their segments between knots were shorter.
We would buy rod tips and eyes or reuse old ones to make the rod. A simple reel seat was added to the rod and a heavy duty cord wrapped around the butt end to make a good grip.
All rods have a 'natural' bend in them; meaning they prefer to bend in that direction. The rod maker would tie a substantial weight to a string and tie it to the tip of the bamboo pole. Slowly turning it would reveal it's natural bend. You always put the tip and eyes on the top of the rod to let it bend naturally. We would tightly wrap the eyes with strong thread and then coat the rod with several layers of spar varnish.
Some of these rods made by gifted rod makers were amazing , but their main function was to last a long time and catch fish.
The rods I made served me well. I could throw a weight and two large pieces of bait a long way out into the Gulf.
One rod I made was almost perfect. Fourteen feet long and ready to fish. I tied it in the bed of my truck, the rod extending six or more feet over the cab. I Went to pick up my fishing buddy and failed to allow for his oak tree over the driveway.
Snap!
That rod never saw salt water. I laid it on the ground beside his driveway and off we went to fish. On the way home, I bought another blank to make another one, using the salvaged rod tip and eyes.
I gave up surf fishing for big 'reds' a long time ago. I don't particularly like to eat the large ones; too strong. But the rod making was satisfying.
Some people marvel at how creative it was to make a rod that would last many years and catch large fish.
I marvel at how a person can make a shirt out of a piece of cloth.
Skills.
I'll get back to 'Gulf Coast Boy' soon.
Thank you for your time.

Gulf Coast Boy Begins

I wrote this series of excerpts from my life about seven years ago. This is the first chapter. I hope it brings back some memories for you.

Freeport, Texas, 1953....That is the time I became aware of where I lived. I was five years old.
Freeport is a small coastal town on the mid Texas coast. Shrimp boasts from Texas, Florida and Louisiana used to fill the harbor during shrimping season. If you ate a shrimp in the 1950's, it could have come from Freeport.
We lived in a two bedroom rent house....we were poor, I guess, but everyone was poor and it was a good life for a kid.
I grew up in a time when boys played marbles and spun 'tops' for keeps. Cowboys and Indians and hide and go seek kept us busy all day. If we had a ball, we would play 'Annie Over' until someones Mom ran us off for hitting the roof too much.
Not much to watch on TV...but none of us had a TV anyway. Kids were expected to play outside and come in when Mom called out the door that supper was ready.
No one air conditioning, except Mr. Johnson who had a heart condition. We visited him a lot during the summer.
If we needed money for a soda or candy bar, we would finds some bottles and cash them in at the Piggly-Wiggly, enough for a Snickers or Orange Crush.
Movies were fifteen or twenty five cents, depending on the elegance of the theater.
And, they were air conditioned.
But, my best memories are of the water. I've always loved the water. My Dad worked hard like all dads do..he was an electrical lineman for a sulphur company.
But almost every Saturday, we would go together to catch a couple of nice red fish, our food for the next week. Blue Lake was a favorite fishing hole. It had been a sulphur drilling site. My Dad said once a drilling rig began to sink with men on it. It took them down, never to be seen again.
We also went down to the bays. Drum Bay was a favorite. My father would catch us bait in his cast net and we would walk through the salt grass until we reached a spot he liked. He would bait up a home-made Calcutta rod cast it out into the bay. He would move down the bank a couple of hundred yards. We would fish all night, only the glow from his pipe as he relit his Sir Walter Raleigh was visible. We had no lanterns and only one flashlight. The mosquitoes were thick as the air. Every hour or so, my father would come down to check my bait and re cast-it. Fishing was about food, not father/son time. I was eight years old.
As I got older, I could ride my bike everywhere. My friends and I explored every curiosity in town. My Mother cautioned us to stay away from the shrimp boat docks, because of the unsavory people. So we of course spent a lot of time there.
During shrimping season, boats would fill the harbor. The shrimpers would fuel up and take on ice for their catch. They would stay out in the Gulf until they were full or out of supplies. When they came back into port, the crew would buy a fresh set of clothes. They would spend their pay in beer joints and then go back to sea. They came back days later in the same clothes and bought new ones.
Occasionally a body would float up among the shrimp boats. Either a drunk fell in and drowned or some old grudge was settled. The police would fish the body out and make a report, but not much was ever done.
Like all boys, my friends and I loved to explore. Once we found an opening to a sewer pipe at the edge of town. We gathered up flashlights and a knife or two and went in to see what was there.
We crouched over in the four foot high pipe and found out what lived there. Snakes.
And rats and other vermin. Lot's of snakes..we jumped over them trying to avoid the cottonmouth moccasins and just pushing the water snakes out of the way. We traveled a long way..finally I inched up a side pipe and stuck a stick out sow we could tell how far we had gone. Back out the way we came in, avoiding the mess of snakes and such. We found the stick, almost a mile into the sewer pipe. I was ten.
A favorite swim was across our big harbour, where the cargo ships docked. It was easily over a quarter mile across. We would swim it and try to avoid the tugs and such.
Nearby was a levy with a muddy slough next to it. One very hot summer, the slough dried almost totally up. We saw thousands of red fish gasping for air in the muddy mess. Huge crabs were in the thousands. So, of course, we went home and got gigs and such. We swam/crawled through muck and got 27 huge red fish, avoiding the very angry crabs. I went down to the petroleum dock and call my Mom. She came with several wash tubs. In the end the red fish tasted like the mud they were dying in, but it was fun.
I had somehow bought a decent diving mask and fins. I made a dive belt out of old cast net weights. One special day, several of us went to the jetties. The water was clear as drinking water. Our part of the Gulf seldom gets really clear, so this was a treat.
We dove for hours, loading up on lots of lures and weights and such. I got tangled up in some fishing line, but cut myself free before I became crab food.I had a mess of cuts and scrapes from being washed against the rocks. I was twelve.
Later that summer, we moved about twenty five miles away and built a small house in the deep woods. I missed the water and my friends and all the things I had grown up with.
But life had more adventures in store for me....
end of part one

The man in the Moon

I have known for over 55 years that there really is a 'Man in the Moon'.
I watched the astronauts land there in 1969, but I knew they wouldn't see him. Oh, he's there, alright, but you've got to know how to look for him.
I learned to do in back in 1954 when I was six years old.
I'd sit on my Grandpa's lap out in his back yard, when the mosquitoes weren't too bad.
He had a big wooden chair, I think they call them Adirondack chairs now. We would sit together and look at that big yellow moon through his old binoculars. When the clouds co-operated, we could see the 'Old Man' and imagine he winked at us.
When we got tired of looking at the moon, my Papa would tell me stories of his boyhood in Indiana. His tales were like reading Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. I never got tired of hearing them.
As I grew older, we enjoyed many wonderful things together. He had been a great fisherman all his life, but he loved to take me down to some lazy river and rent a leaky old rowboat. He'd row while I bailed water out.
His smile would be ear to ear when I caught something, always encouraging me.
As I grew older, we deer hunted. He was with me when I got my first buck at age ten.
I believe he was reliving some of his youth with me.
My parents let me spend as much time with him as possible. His health was failing and his time was short, but I never knew it. I just loved every minute we shared.
As I grew older, Papa shared a bit more earthy knowledge with me.
He had an occasional taste for the spirits; to say he was a drinker would be an exaggeration, but he always had a bottle of 'Old Hickory' around and enjoyed a few cold Pearl beers.
Our county was 'dry', meaning you couldn't buy hard liquor. Papa and I would occasionally drive over the county line for him to buy a pint.
Papa had a friend, Oscar, that owned a small liquor store out in the middle of nowhere. A small building surrounded by corn fields on three sides. I'd drink a Coke while Papa and Oscar shared a sip of whiskey or a beer and talked.
The store had wooden floors and Oscar had a fifty cent piece bolted to the floor. We always enjoyed watching some unwary customer try to discreetly pick up the old worn down coin when they thought no one was looking.
Sometimes we would go deep down into the Brazos River 'bottoms' to an old beer joint.
Out back, there would sometimes be a cock fight between roosters. It was illegal, of course, but we were so deep in the 'bottoms' that the law seldom bothered anyone. The fights were brutal and exciting, with money bet on the outcome and much yelling among the crowd.
Once in a while, a fight broke out between a couple of men over some bet or grudge or woman. Mostly, it was the beer fighting.
That old juke joint taught me a lot about life, another lesson my Grandpa wanted me to learn.
We went to small saw mills to see lumber made; at another place I saw cane syrup made on a long trough over a wood fire.
Papa was a Foreman in a sulphur plant and let me see how sulplur was processed. We went on dredge boats in some backwater place to see hout they deepened the canals. He showed me a thousand things in what time he had left.
Many of the men he knew down in the 'bottoms' had worked for him at the sulphur plant. They were old now. He always checked in on them. I know now that was the main reason we went down there.
Some lived in shacks without even a water well. They would get water from a friend in two fifty five gallon barrels and use an old wagon pulled by two worn out mules.
A little money or a ride to town or a store made a lot of difference.
My Papa died in 1959. It was a time of segregation and most churches didn't have a mixed congregation. At his funeral, the entire balcony was filled with people from the Brazos River 'bottoms', all there to pay their respects and say 'good-bye' to Mr. Lee.
Of all the things he taught me, the most important was that respect among men is earned, not given.
I still have that old pair of binoculars; the leather straps have fallen off long ago and you can barely see through them.
But someday, maybe I can use them to show my grandsons how to look for that Old Man in the Moon.
The best place is out in the back yard, in a big wooden chair, when the mosquitoes aren't too bad.

Life on a Computer Screen

Welcome to my blog. I am, indeed, a Gulf Coast boy, if you believe a 62 year old guy can still be called a 'boy'. I've lived most of my life on the mid-Texas coast. My experiences aren't unique from some of yours, but I have good memories of growing up in the '50's. I'll pass some of them along from time to time.
I like to write about different things; growing up in a small shrimping town, moving to the woods, joinging the Navy, working on planes, Aleutians, Viet Nam, a long career with the telephone company...many life experiences I'd like to share.
Maybe some of my memories will revive some of yours.
I'll do my best to make them readable, but, I promise you, every word will be true.
If you happen to find this little space on the Internet, I thank you for your time and indulgence.