Gulf Coast Boy... Young Man

This is the third in a five-part series.

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In 1966 I married the girl I had courted with my egg farm wages. I was 18 years old.

Eleven days later, I left for the Navy. I had worked with my father for several summers as an electrician’s helper and wanted to do electrical work. Viet Nam was just getting started and I didn’t want to get drafted into the damn Army, so the Navy was it for me. Four years.

I hoped to become a Sea-Bee electrician in the Navy, doing construction. But the Sea-Bees were full and I thought I could be an electrician on a ship.

Growing up in Wild Peach, there wasn’t a lot to do at night. ‘Lawrence Welk’ and ‘Gunsmoke’ on Saturday nights was about as good as it got. But we had a set of 1953 World Book encyclopedias. I read and re-read them like dime novels. A thru Z. I absorbed a tremendous amount of obscure information. During my boot camp in the Navy, they tested us many times to see what we might be good at. The main test score was for “general knowledge”. Thanks to an old set of World Books, I almost aced it.

What I didn’t know was that the Navy automatically redirected recruits who scored well from ‘ship duty’ to aviation. I got my wish…after boot camp I was sent to Florida to train as an aviation electrician.

Planes…next to water, became my passion.

But this story isn’t about my Navy life. I could fill a book with ‘sea stories’. Condensed version is that I became an aviation electrician, got assigned to a patrol squadron, deployed and sent to the Aleutian Islands and later to Viet Nam.

The marriage produced two wonderful kids and lasted eleven years. It ended in 1977…I was 29 years old.

My son and daughter are great people. And I am blessed with two and soon to be four grandchildren from them. I am remarried to the best woman I’ve ever met. Together we have a total of four children and eight grandkids, counting the two still ‘on the way.’…All my life I’ve wanted to be a ‘Grandpa’ and now I am one…

But this story is about my life as a ‘Gulf Coast Boy”, so I’ll get back on track.

Skip back to 1976…

One day I had a knock at my door…a power company service truck was in my driveway with the engine running. When I opened the door, a lanky young man with a big grin shook my hand and said “Hi, I’m Danny and I was told you know how to salt water fish”. That began a friendship that has lasted almost 3 decades.

We began to fish together. I was a bit of an introvert and he was anything but. I still tell him that he can do a ‘three minute routine’ when he opens the icebox and the light hits him.

We bought a cabin in Bastrop Bay. A shack, really, one room 10’ X 14’ at best. We built a large deck and pier along with a shower and such. Young men can do those things. You could only get there by boat. Danny learned to fish pretty good, but he would drive me crazy fishing with a rusty hook tied with a bad knot. But he seemed to catch as many as I did…maybe that was the problem….But we loved every moment of that cabin and still look back on it as some of the best times of our lives.

The water always seems to attract an unusual assortment of people. (We were normal of course).

We made friends with some bait shrimpers and tried to learn how to shrimp. We bought a 20’ box net and dragged it all over the bays. Our shrimp take was almost nil, but we collected a lot of beer cans and oyster shells.

But those shrimpers showed us things like how to get a heavy boat over a sandbar and spot the game wardens before they spotted you. Two brothers were among the locals. One was called Worm and his brother was Charlie. Worm was a descriptive named that doesn’t need more discussion. Charlie, on the other hand, was pretty industrious. Danny and I saw him one day in Cold Pass, heading out into the Gulf to shrimp. His boat was only about 18’ and no winch for the net, but he thought he could get a load of shrimp and make some money. Trouble was, his steering cable had broken. The throttle cable was ok, but he couldn’t steer the boat. So he had tied a 6’ 2x4 to the motor to steer with and was headed out alone to shrimp in the Gulf.

Another one was named Doug..(no relation). He was the handyman, shrimper, mechanic and jack-of-all-trades at one of the bait camp/beer joint/boat ramps along the bayou. Doug could do about anything and do it well. These places had parties from time to time…lot’s of beer and dancing and cussin’ and fun. Water folk letting their hair down. About the time the party got into full swing, Doug came in…in a dress and full make up! The backside of the moon couldn’t be any quieter than that place got. Doug said he thought it was time to be herself. I’ve never seen a braver thing, but his timing was a little off…The owner fired him.

These bay shrimpers are a breed apart. They would shrimp all day alone in a small boat in Texas in August. I’ve seen them run side by side up the bayou, tossing a bottle of “Jack Daniel’s” from boat to boat. If you’ve ever thought about drinking straight whiskey in the Texas sun, pass on that. These men were in their 60’s and did it every day.

But times come and go. We sold the fishing cabin in 1982. In 1983 hurricane Alicia swept it off the face of the earth.

Danny and I sold our boats and bought Harleys and became bikers. Actually he became an engineer and then a manager at his power company. I became ‘scooter trash’, but that’s another story…I was 38 years old.

End of part 3