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.