PEACE ON THE ROAD
A Setback
March 10, 2005
It seems that whenever something that comes along that is too good to be to be true it is not true. Just when I had my farm all set to go and start a new career I had a set back. Tricky Dick and Fast Eddie came to us and said they would not accept the payment we had made to them. While they were perfectly willing to take payments with the pictures of dead presidents on them they said that one with Bill Clintons picture on it like the one we paid with was not acceptable. They said the bank indicated that he was not dead yet. When I said I would get one with Richard Nixon on it they did not like that either. They said what the bank wanted was one with George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. So the deal fell through.
Now that made us so mad that we just left Texas. You might say that we shook the dust of Texas off our boots. Actually I guess it would be more like kicking the mud of Texas off our shoes. There had been enough rain in Rockport, Texas to convert most of the dirt to mud. We are now in Roberts, Louisiana, heading for the Nawlens area. If you want to find that on a map look for New Orleans, that may be the way they spell it here, but that is not the way they pronounce it. We still have a couple of days till we get there and then we plan to be there a couple of weeks.
Rockport, Texas was an interesting area. It is located on a couple of bays that are connected to the Gulf of Mexico. We took a trip out on a sightseeing trip to view the Whooping Cranes. It seemed that we went out as far as the horizon and then that far again and suddenly there were many barrier islands. The intercoastal waterway runs along just out a few miles from the coast. There is a lot of large ship traffic that goes through this waterway. There is a lot to discover in all the new places we go.
While we were in Rockport we had a lot of fun watching the birds. We went along one beach area and saw hundreds of Black Skimmers. They are the only bird with a lower beak that is longer than their upper beak. They skim along the surface of the water and whenever their lower beak touches something, hopefully a small fish, they snap their mouth shut and grab it. Some years ago I read that their mouths can snap shut in less than a thousandth of a second. When I was reading about them I never dreamed that someday I would be in a parking lot next to the ocean watching hundreds of them. They were rather funny birds. They would all land on the ground facing the same direction, and then in a single movement every one of them would fly off the ground leaving any sea gull on the ground. We saw flocks in other locations besides Rockport and they would act the same way.
The day we got into Rockport we wanted to get something to eat and we saw a sign for a BIG FISHERMAN restaurant just a few miles down the road. When we got to the place the parking lot was packed so full of cars that it was hard to find a place to drive, let alone find a place to park. I figured that it the restaurant was that popular it must have good food. I finally found a place to park and we went in to find a line that was almost reaching out the door. And most of the people were retirement-aged people, a few younger but not many. The line moved very rapidly and we were soon seated. The prices were almost too low to believe. There was one meal deal that really was priced out of the 1950’s. An ALL YOU CAN EAT, chicken fried steak, chicken gizzards or livers, for $1.75. An unbelievable price, but a true price. We asked the waitress if we were reading the menu correctly, she said we were, and of course we had to order it. It was only offered on Tuesday between 11:00 and 4:00. In time we realized that the retired people were coming here for the Tuesday specials. They were very good specials. At the price they asked it would not be unreasonable to expect low quality food, and that was not the case at all.
A few days later we went back to the BIG FISHERMAN and left with a couple of pieces of fish, some bread, and a few french fries. If Christ had been with us we could have fed 5000 people. Since he was not with us, we decided to see if we could find some sea gulls to feed. We went back to the nature area that we had found the Black Skimmers.
A Setback
March 10, 2005
It seems that whenever something that comes along that is too good to be to be true it is not true. Just when I had my farm all set to go and start a new career I had a set back. Tricky Dick and Fast Eddie came to us and said they would not accept the payment we had made to them. While they were perfectly willing to take payments with the pictures of dead presidents on them they said that one with Bill Clintons picture on it like the one we paid with was not acceptable. They said the bank indicated that he was not dead yet. When I said I would get one with Richard Nixon on it they did not like that either. They said what the bank wanted was one with George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. So the deal fell through.
Now that made us so mad that we just left Texas. You might say that we shook the dust of Texas off our boots. Actually I guess it would be more like kicking the mud of Texas off our shoes. There had been enough rain in Rockport, Texas to convert most of the dirt to mud. We are now in Roberts, Louisiana, heading for the Nawlens area. If you want to find that on a map look for New Orleans, that may be the way they spell it here, but that is not the way they pronounce it. We still have a couple of days till we get there and then we plan to be there a couple of weeks.
Rockport, Texas was an interesting area. It is located on a couple of bays that are connected to the Gulf of Mexico. We took a trip out on a sightseeing trip to view the Whooping Cranes. It seemed that we went out as far as the horizon and then that far again and suddenly there were many barrier islands. The intercoastal waterway runs along just out a few miles from the coast. There is a lot of large ship traffic that goes through this waterway. There is a lot to discover in all the new places we go.
While we were in Rockport we had a lot of fun watching the birds. We went along one beach area and saw hundreds of Black Skimmers. They are the only bird with a lower beak that is longer than their upper beak. They skim along the surface of the water and whenever their lower beak touches something, hopefully a small fish, they snap their mouth shut and grab it. Some years ago I read that their mouths can snap shut in less than a thousandth of a second. When I was reading about them I never dreamed that someday I would be in a parking lot next to the ocean watching hundreds of them. They were rather funny birds. They would all land on the ground facing the same direction, and then in a single movement every one of them would fly off the ground leaving any sea gull on the ground. We saw flocks in other locations besides Rockport and they would act the same way.
The day we got into Rockport we wanted to get something to eat and we saw a sign for a BIG FISHERMAN restaurant just a few miles down the road. When we got to the place the parking lot was packed so full of cars that it was hard to find a place to drive, let alone find a place to park. I figured that it the restaurant was that popular it must have good food. I finally found a place to park and we went in to find a line that was almost reaching out the door. And most of the people were retirement-aged people, a few younger but not many. The line moved very rapidly and we were soon seated. The prices were almost too low to believe. There was one meal deal that really was priced out of the 1950’s. An ALL YOU CAN EAT, chicken fried steak, chicken gizzards or livers, for $1.75. An unbelievable price, but a true price. We asked the waitress if we were reading the menu correctly, she said we were, and of course we had to order it. It was only offered on Tuesday between 11:00 and 4:00. In time we realized that the retired people were coming here for the Tuesday specials. They were very good specials. At the price they asked it would not be unreasonable to expect low quality food, and that was not the case at all.
A few days later we went back to the BIG FISHERMAN and left with a couple of pieces of fish, some bread, and a few french fries. If Christ had been with us we could have fed 5000 people. Since he was not with us, we decided to see if we could find some sea gulls to feed. We went back to the nature area that we had found the Black Skimmers.
A FLOCK OF BLACK SKIMMERS IN ROCKPORT, TEXAS
The gulls were waiting for us. Before I could get the food out of the car there were several gulls checking to see if I had any handouts for them. We found out later that all you had to do was roll down a window and the sea gulls would come. I set the styrofoam container on the hood of the Jeep and took out a french fry. As soon as I tossed the first fry out there were a lot more gulls that came to get a bite. I tossed a few fries up in the air. The fry was snatched out of the air before it had a chance to start down. Then I tried just holding a fry up in the air and within a second a gull would snatch it from my fingers. I had most of the fish pieces left and was going to step a couple of steps away from the Jeep so that Erma could get pictures without the Jeep in it. Within the space of three or four heartbeats those gulls had all the remaining fish gone and all that was left was a bread roll. It was fun to feed the gulls and we fed them several times later. The worst that happened was that several gulls spotted the Jeep and I had to wash it all off. Why they didn’t spot me I don’t know, but I escaped with no cleaning needed.
FEEDING THE SEA GULLS
We stopped in a location where there were a lot of white pelicans and tried to feed them. There was no interest at all in anything but fish. People would feed fish to them and they would fight for a bite, but only for fish.
There was one evening that we drove to Sinton, Texas to eat at a lumberyard that had been converted into a barbeque restaurant. The original design of the lumberyard was maintained by simply removing the dividing walls of the lumber storage areas and replacing them with plank tables and building plank benches to sit on. In a lot of ways it reminded me of a lumberyard in the town of my youth. There were old bottles, cans, and other old items used for decorations. The center section that was originally a driveway for delivery and pickup of lumber supplies was concreted and had plank picnic tables for additional seating. At the entrance end of the Lumberyard Barbeque there was the front half of a truck outside of the building and the back half of the truck inside with the original door bisecting it. At the other end of the drive through there was a staging area for a DJ to play music. Wednesday evenings they have a music imitator perform the music of different entertainers. He was Elvis Presley while we were there. I have to say that it was rather interesting to watch the people respond to his performance. There must have been a couple hundred people there when he started his performance. Most of the people were retirement aged. It was interesting to see the women with gray hair and some extra pounds acting and dancing like teenagers. Of course the gray haired or bald headed men were acting like they had when they were teenagers. The fact is that the people that were enjoying the performance were enjoying Elvis when he started and they were actually teenagers. After forty or more years the way people react to Elvis has not changed much.
Rockport was at one time a thriving seaport shipping cattle, fishing, shipbuilding and other enterprises. An extremely bad hurricane altered a lot of that in 1919. It seems that a lot of things changed after that year. There are numerous indications that the harbors were even damaged so much that a lot of shipping was not longer possible. On of the things that happened during the hurricane was a windmill blade was lodged into a Live Oak Tree. Evidently it was not discovered for several weeks and then later it forgotten about and relocated years later. It is still in the tree to this day.
WINDMILL BLADE IN THE LIVE OAK TREE AT FULTON, TEXAS
There is another Live Oak Tree nearby called “The Big Tree” that is the largest tree of its kind in the world and it is over a thousand years old. I have heard about Live Oak Trees ever since I was a small boy. There are quite a few songs and stories that mention them. I have never seen one in the past and knew what it was. Having seen many of them now and having seen the largest one in the world I now understand why so many people like them. I have seen ones with thirty foot branches that started ten or twelve foot up the tree with the branch extending outward and downward till it nearly touched the ground and then went back upwards ten foot. There are many fences that have slots or holes in them to accommodate a limb. While this may not sound like anything desirable they are really beautiful trees.
THE BIG TREE, THE LARGEST LIVE OAK IN THE WORLD ON GOOSE ISLAND
We had a lot of fun in Rockport, watching birds and sometimes feeding them, driving along the bay. We went into Corpus Christi a couple of times and really did not find a lot of interest there. There are some very nice beaches there but I have found out that this time of year is not really the right time to enjoy them. We have gone so many places over the last few years that people have said something like, “You should have been here last week. It was twenty degrees warmer and the weather was all sunshine.” It seems that we are hitting the same sort of thing this winter. I don’t expect the weather to be nice all the time, but it seems that we have been in lot of rain and cool everywhere we have gone. I am still happy to be where the low is in the fifties instead of the twenties. I am still glad to be where falling water is wet and not white.
Being here has been a time of education. We have learned to distinguish the different types of sea gulls and different types of pelicans. The white and brown were easy to tell apart. However we found out that the white pelicans with the protrusion on their beaks are ready to breed. The brown pelicans with the brown head are juveniles. The yellow heads are adults and breeding if they have a white neck and not breeding if the neck is black. Since they do not have chicks at this time we did not get to see the color of a feeding adult. Sometimes the color difference is so subtle that it is impossible to see the difference from any distance.
BROWN PELICANS AND WHITE PELICANS NEAR OFF THE HOOK RESTAURANT
While we were running about we happened to be within earshot of a couple of fishermen. One had been fishing and the other came up and started a conversation that went like this;
“Hiyamac.”
“Lobuddy.”
”Binearlong?”
”Coplours.”
”Cetchanenny?”
”Goddafew.”
”Kindarthay?”
”Bassencarp.”
”Ennysizetoom?”
”Cuplapowns.”
”Hittenhard?”
”Sordalike.”
”Whachoozin.”
”Gobbaworms.”
”Fishanonaboddum?”
”Rydonaboddum.”
”Whatchadrinkin?”
”Jugajimbeam.”
”Igoddago.”
”Tubad.”
”Seeyaroun.”
”Yeahtakdeezy.”
”Guluk.”
It seems to me that fishermen have a language all their own.
I thought you might like to see where we are staying. This is a picture of the navigation system display on our Jeep. Our Vectra is at the circled arrow in the middle. While it is called Bayview the bay cannot be seen from the park because of all the trees. As you can see it is not very far to the Copano Bay, which is part of the Gulf of Mexico. Rockport is a few miles in the direction indicated by the circled arrow.
”Cuplapowns.”
”Hittenhard?”
”Sordalike.”
”Whachoozin.”
”Gobbaworms.”
”Fishanonaboddum?”
”Rydonaboddum.”
”Whatchadrinkin?”
”Jugajimbeam.”
”Igoddago.”
”Tubad.”
”Seeyaroun.”
”Yeahtakdeezy.”
”Guluk.”
It seems to me that fishermen have a language all their own.
I thought you might like to see where we are staying. This is a picture of the navigation system display on our Jeep. Our Vectra is at the circled arrow in the middle. While it is called Bayview the bay cannot be seen from the park because of all the trees. As you can see it is not very far to the Copano Bay, which is part of the Gulf of Mexico. Rockport is a few miles in the direction indicated by the circled arrow.
OUR HOME BASE IN BAYVIEW NEXT TO FULTON, TEXAS
By the way, if any of you are interested in buying some terrific property like I was almost able to get, I will have to defer helping you. Since I have left Texas now I have lost my contacts there. I guess you will just have to do your own searching. Sorry!
Till Later This Is Doug Of
PEACE ON THE ROAD
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