Summer seems to be kicking into high gear in South Texas. After a couple of days off it's back to work. Have to make a few bucks to retire the ageing Bronco. Old girl just turned over 185,000. Has been abnormally reliable given her age. Humidity is running about eighty to a hundred percent but the crazy weather hasn't for the most part hit us yet. No more fishing for at least a month.
The night before last I video'd a light show put on by Mother Nature that blew by to the West of us. Then I set it to Pachebel. Long ago I learned that even though you might be recording something far away, the audio is recording right there and the background motor, television and/or other embarrassing sounds whatever might cause one to wonder, are no longer there. Turned out kind of nice
This was another photo op that dropped in my lap. A tour boat believe it or not. Arrrrrhhh.
And, Lord I tried to take pictures of the sea turtles that were popping up around me. These should be at the end. Kind of like trying to take snapshots of jumping fish.
Our experience with the homeless guy pulling the knife from his belt thinking that he was about to be attacked a few months ago has stayed on my mind in one way or another.
I have included the above idyllic photo of where we were a year ago last Christmas for a reason. This is Magnolia Beach located about ten miles outside Port Lavaca and where we stayed for about five weeks. I posted this pic because it was December, 2012 and this day was one of the few tolerable ones because most of the time it was stormy, rainy and cold. On Christmas of that year we endured a night of fifty MPH winds. It was the highest winds of that year verified by weather data. I included a video of the entire side bulged in that night as it came close to tearing our little shelter apart. But the popup, a 1983 Coleman long gone now held together like a Champ. That was the main event but there was a larger story there I wanted to write about. Magnolia Beach is a little known Boondocker's paradise. You are allowed to camp there as long as you like, whenever you like for free.
And as such it is also a magnet for the homeless or nearly so. When we were there on one end were several modern self contained RV's whose occupants pretty much stayed to themselves and who were taking advantage of the free campsites for the short term. On the other end, where the only public restroom existed was where everybody else crammed together. Because we needed the use of the facilities as well, we spent the five weeks crammed in with a number of folks like ourselves, but with a much sadder story. There were a number of people who had shelter of some form or other but had to share a restroom. On the guys side this consisted of one toilet and one urinal. It's pretty daunting climbing out of bed and stepping out into thirty or forty mile winds whistling off the ocean with a wind chill of zero or below. Sometimes waiting in line in the dark to get your turn at a bathroom with a third of the wall open and the wind whipping dust, sand and other debris around.
Among the people in that small community we came to fit in quite well with was an 80 year old Korean War veteran and self styled Missionary. Parked next to us, he lived in a newer van but spent his nights huddled in an old sleeping bag that barely accommodated him as the van was chock full of useless bric a brac. In fact this bric a brac thing was the common element of all the folks in that little community. Not a lot unlike the folks you see pushing the shopping carts full of their "treasures" Virtually nothing that was useful or assisted his lifestyle in any manner as he was living it. He just slept amongst it.. Lew faithfully walked two miles a day, would visit briefly but almost all of his time was spent sitting in the drivers side of his van, reading his bible and staring out at the Ocean. Another, hulking guy (yes he looked hulking even to me) scary looking guy with few teeth, long hair and beard and I would probably guess a veteran was parked on the other side. The scariest thing he did was every morning he walked the beach looking for sea shells. Otherwise just a quiet unassuming guy. Also living in and spending most of his time in a Van, though much more ancient than Lew's. And on the other side a couple driving an ancient Ford Pickup with no muffler and plywood box built on the back. They had traveled well over a thousand miles to get to this spot. But when he started the old ford up, it was obvious that a rod was knocking and the engine didn't have far to go. For the life of me I don't think they had any intentions of going anywhere else. They never talked about it the five weeks we were there anyway. I think they intended to stay there as long as they could. He went by the moniker of "Mr. Bill" probably in his early sixties and sported a leather cowboy hat. I don't recall the name of his travelling companion. We tried to guess the nature of their relationship because Mr. Bill, night after night slept in the cab of the old truck. His feet on the dash while she slept in the back in the plywood box with a canvas cover serving as a door. There didn't appear to be any intimacy there. I looked in the back on one occasion and it was the same sad story. End tables. A couple of electric lamps and boxes full of stuff. Again nothing useful to their current situation. When it rained, to keep the back from leaking he fought with the weather to try and tie plastic Viscreen over the top. I helped him on one occasion wondering why at some point he just hadn't solved the problem with a four dollar tube of caulking and some exterior paint. Seriously, the thought had probably never occurred to him. This backward solution was probably learned and he likely dealt with other problems in his life in a similiar ineffective manner, learned from who knows where. Though when talking with Mr. Bill, he was almost articulate and I learned that he was an avid reader of paperback novels, the dash of the truck stacked with them. He also made some extra cash selling home made walking sticks for ten bucks, or whatever amount you had. They cooked on an old camp stove huddled out of the wind by the tailgate of the truck. No place to get out of the weather but in the cab of the truck. You sure couldn't get dry in the bathrooms. Anyway, there were others who would come and go but these were the mainstays. There was also an older gentleman sporting a foreign accent who came down just to visit and though actually pretty well off he would also sit and visit for extended periods. Omer, who we learned his name to be sometimes showed up outside our trailer in the wee hours whacking on the side to wake us up. Old guy humor I guess. Omer was eighty five years old and had traveled constantly since his wife had died thirteen years earlier.
In such surroundings Lisa and I tend to keep our former occupation close to the cuff. No sense in rousing some kind of bizarre reaction from folks who know more about PO's than any other segment of the population. Keeping in mind the other homeless guy with a knife. But with these folks, and Mr. Bill's travelling companion, a woman in her fifties who liked to share that she thought she had pancreatic cancer, we did try to impart some info that we thought might be valuable. Or Lisa did anyway. Things like food banks, food stamps and SSD. As far as we could tell, she and Mr. Bill lived entirely on his meager social security check. Her child like mind just didn't grasp it and like a lot of mentals, she would have neither the know how or patience to initiate the process. You see if they don't show up for evaluations or appointments, they just fall through the cracks. She and Mr Bill were happy living on canned soup, stew whatever. With all of them malnutrition seemed an issue along with and probably exacerbated by dental issues. At night after the bars closed, locals drove by, sometimes several times blowing loud horns for the purpose of harassment. Drunks stopped at the restrooms and screamed obscenities at them. Well, I guess us too.
But our life was nothing like theirs. We had dry quarters. We had forced air heat, a good bed, good food and a generator that allowed us to run a space heater, coffee maker, television computer etc. We snuck off to where we knew we could get internet and long hot showers. We could afford to eat out a couple of times a week or go shopping. And though we lived fairly harmonious with these folks, we knew it was just for the short term.
After one of these trips and after our harrowing night, we returned to surprisingly find that some vehicles had been repositioned to protect our little popup from the wind. It was a sweet gesture. During the entire five weeks nothing was taken or stolen. In fact we took turns looking out for each others stuff. They were long past drug use and the only person consuming alcohol was me. Before we left, Lew came over and forced a couple of cans of food on me. I accepted more to not hurt his feelings. And when we left, Lisa and I didn't have feelings one way or another. I vaguely thought that we had just lived through some kind of social experiment. What did hit home with me was the meager manner and the lack of adequate tools the homeless have to cope with everyday life. And the trade off is harsh if you consider just the weather, Mr. Bill and company were rarely out of it. And yes South Texas can be temperate in winter, it can also be damn cold and miserable. Then there were the nightly drunks But our stay was also pleasurable in a way because they were in fact good company.
My Dad has said a lot of things that at the time were meant to be profound but I just didn't get it. Some of those statements have come to fruition. And one that comes to mind is that he has said many many times. "In this country, it's a crime to be poor".
"We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unloved, unwanted and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty." Mother Teresa
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