The Island Moon Newspaper, 14646 Compass Drive, Suite 4, Corpus Christi, TX (2025)

11/25/2025

In the twenty-nine years the Island Moon has been publishing we have collected what could best be described as the first draft of history for our Island. Mike Ellis left thousands of photos, and the stories they tell which we have saved. So we have decided to tap into the resource with a segment we are calling Remember When…
Remember in 2006 when a couple of patrons of a local watering hole left in a loaned Bentley automobile and took a long drive on a short street. The guest was given the chance to drive the car and was unaware that the street they were speeding down ended abruptly at a canal, which he soon found out as the two men went airborne before splashing down well out into the water. They both scrambled out and no one was hurt but the $100,000-plus car was totaled and stories abounded about why the occupants of the car were not paying attention to the road.
All we can say for sure is that it led to this photo…and we remember when…

11/25/2025

Now it’s a party. Look out La Posada Foundation

11/24/2025

Sadly, the coolest H***y Tonk on the Texas Riviera ' The Salty Dog' is on the market for a cool 4.5 million buckeroos. Someone please buy it and keep it a great place for locals and visitors to gather! It's only money!

11/24/2025

The holiday season is a time for touching base with old friends and remembering Ghosts of Holidays past – both good and bad.

A while back my friend Short and Wide Jerry – at least that’s his name for these pages – called and I reminded him of a holiday ride through Palm Beach in the back seat of a Bentley that at the time was a hair-raising experience but now more than a decade in the rearview takes on an opaque quality.
Started as a business meeting
It was just before Christmas 1998 and we were slaving in the television dodge at the CBS station in the West Palm Beach market where Jerry was my boss and he wanted to start a business taking old family photos and turning them into videos for viewing at family gatherings. There are a lot of old families around those parts with all kinds of stories and pictures, and Jerry aimed to cash in. The project had reached the Who Brought the Money Stage and Jerry had someone in mind. She was a nice lady of about 85 named Gertrude who did a pet segment on the station and Jerry set up a “meeting.”
There’s a section of Palm Beach Island where the island is narrow enough that houses there have an ocean view on the front side, interrupted only by the county road, and on the back side border the laguna so they can have a boat dock. There are twelve houses, if memory serves, in that stretch of the island and it is known as Billionaires Row; these are not hovels. Gertrude lived in one of those. Her former husband had been the king of vending machines in Chicago and made a lot of money which Gertrude now had half of.
“She’s going to invest in the company,” Jerry said. “We’re going to have a meeting with her on Saturday night.”
“A business meeting on Saturday night?” I said.
“Yea, in Palm Beach.”
Well, okay.
So, on Friday afternoon Jerry comes by my office and says, “Gertrude’s car is going to pick us up at my house at five.”
“Gertrude’s car - pick us up? I’m not liking the sound of this Jerry.”
“Oh, don’t worry. Just be there at five and wear a suit.”
So, at five o’clock here comes Gertrude’s Bentley without Gertrude and me, Jerry, and his friend Roger from Houston who had turned up get in and off we go for Palm Beach, not to a restaurant to Gertrude’s house on Billionaires Row. I wasn’t liking the looks of things and I wasn’t alone. Roger, who was a retired touring golf pro and television weatherman turned television evangelist smelled a rat too.
“Hey Jerry, how many other people are we meeting?”
Jerry mumbled something into his hand and changed the subject.
“This is going to be good,” Roger said ominously.
Turned into something else
So, we arrive at Gertrude’s house, and she is nowhere to be seen. As we admire the Re*****on sculpture in the foyer, we are informed by the butler that we were going for dinner at the Galaxy Grill then drinks at Chuck and Harold’s, a popular nightspot where the Fabulous Baker Boys – brothers of Hollywood fame – were playing and where it was likely many of our friends would be hanging out. I was not liking the sound of this, and I caught Roger in the kitchen looking through the phone book for the number of a taxi service.
“I’m making a plan B,” he said.
Our suspicions were confirmed when a few minutes later Gertrude made her entrance wearing a hat that cost more than the three of us made in a year and red lipstick so bright it would have made a crossdresser blush. Gertrude had been Miss Poland or something or other and was a nice-looking lady for 85 but the sight of her in her hat arm in arm with Short and Wide Jerry in his off the rack J.C. Penny suit with the front buttons screaming for relief against his ample girth was more than Roger could bear. He busted out laughing.
“When we get to the restaurant people are going to think you’re the doorman,” he said. “If you keep your mouth shut you can make some money.”
But then it got worse.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Oh no, we can’t leave yet, we’re waiting on Francis,” Gertrude said. I looked at Roger.
“Oh no, I just showed up today,” he said. “She’s all yours.”
And sure enough Frances showed up with lipstick at least as red as Gertrude’s and in a dress that looked like it was made from the drapes at a Gypsy opera house. She was Gertrude’s “big sister” and was pushing ninety and it was clear she had more than dinner on her mind.
“I’m going to kill you Jerry,” I told him as we headed for the car.
“Well, if I’d have told you wouldn’t have come,” he said. “Just slide on the ice. It’ll be fun.”
The human thumbtack
When we entered the Galaxy Grill Gertrude and Francis knew everyone there from the owner to the shoeshine man, fortunately we didn’t know a soul. If we weren’t with our “dates’ they wouldn’t have let the likes of us in the place. Dinner came off without a hitch and Roger was having the time of his life. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he giggled his way through dinner as he kept adding chapters to the story we would never hear the end of.
When we arrived at Chuck and Harold’s we cut quite the sight; me barely 40 with my 88-year-old date and her lipstick and curtain dress, and Jerry at 48 with Gertrude and her hat so big she looked like a human thumbtack. Sure enough there was a table full of our friends well into their revelry who all made a point of coming by our reserved table for an introduction. The ladies had an open tab at the bar which our work-a-day friends took full advantage of as we watched Jerry sweat into his J.C. Penny suit; even sitting down he was half an inch shorter than Gertrude and looked every bit the plump little lamb being fattened up for the slaughter.
“I’m calling a cab,” I told him when we got to the men’s room.
“You can’t,” he said. “You’ll blow the whole deal.”
“Well, then I’m bolting as soon as we get back to the house,” I said. “And I’m taking Monday off.”
“We’re not going straight to the house,” he said. “We’re going to the Leopard Lounge.”
The Leopard Lounge
This was the coup de grace. The Leopard Lounge was/is an African themed bar in the Chesterfield Hotel which is just off Worth Avenue and has been there since the 1920s. It is Old Palm Beach, and the Leopard Lounge was/is known far and wide as prime trolling ground for Palm Beach’s Chicken Hawks and Cougars. Men with walkers came through the door with ladies who didn’t look old enough to vote on their arms wearing shimmering dresses they had to be poured into; woman, well in their 80’s with men in their forties who looked like they had bought their suits off the rack at J.C. Penny. If you ever visit Palm Beach a visit to the Leopard Lounge is a don’t-miss experience. Our friends from Chuck and Harold’s followed us there and our Movable Feast continued until the wee hours.

On the ride home in the back of the Bentley we had the windows down and all of a sudden my backside started getting hot. I was looking for a graceful exit and considering bailing at a red light, and I figured my nerves were causing my keister to heat up.
“My tookus is getting warm man,” I said to Roger. “I think I might pass out.”
“That’s a heated seat you redneck,” he said. “I dare you to jump out at the next light. I can see you’ve been fidgeting with the door handle.”
“Do you know any songs?” I asked him. He broke out in full voice with Don’t Fence Me In and by the time we hit Billionaires Row we had sung the only verse we knew half a dozen times at the top our lungs and our dates were sound asleep.
We tipped the driver to let us out at the curb and learned a valuable lesson that night; if you ever find yourself escorting a couple of frisky octogenarians around Palm Beach in a Bentley, take them to the Leopard Lounge and ply them with Harvey Wallbangers and be nice to the driver.
A few years later Gertrude married a 41-year-old man and as far as I know lived happily ever after on Billionaires Row. Frances faded from view, and Short and Wide Jerry never got his video company off the ground.
As for myself, my keister still heats up on occasion but at least now I usually know the cause.

11/24/2025

A little Island history
Harbor Island the Quest for a Deep Water Port

By Dale Rankin
Ask someone where Harbor Island is often you will a vacant stare followed by a wild guess. But tell them that when they cross the ferry from Port Aransas to the mainland (or The Big Island as we Islanders call it) that they are on Harbor Island, and they will understand.
Harbor Island lacks the glamour of many of the islands around the area but for more than 100 years it has been the workhorse of local islands, filled with oil storage tanks, high fences, and the pier where the gambling ship used to dock.
But Harbor Island has been the gateway to Corpus Christi Bay since its discovery in 1720 by the French explorer Jean Béranger when he discovered the pass through The Island and placed a marker there. Since the days before Texas became a Republic, a contest has been waged along the Texas Coast to become the state’s preeminent deep-water port; Harbor Island with its strategic location just inside the pass has been part of that discussion since the beginning. But it wasn’t until 1890, after the Panic of 1893 and the failure of the original jetty at the pass that things got serious.

The beginning
In 1858 the United State Corps of Engineers was seeking to establish a port on Harbor Island and after extensive investigations by the Central Transit Company, backed by the Great Baring Brothers of London, the present site of Aransas Pass was selected to build a port city to carry commerce between Europe and Asia. Construction of a railroad terminal and harbor improvements were underway when the Civil War intervened. Then the building of the Union Pacific Railroad from coast to coast stalled the project further.

Just prior to the war a man named Pryor Lea dreamed of a railroad from the Lamar Peninsula, Rockport, to San Antonio with stops in Refugio and Goliad. His project was eventually folded into the Aransas Road Company and the Baring Brothers project. Then after the war the focus for deepening the pass focused on Rockport where the cattle packery business was centered. The Corpus Christi, San Diego and Rio Grande Railroad was founded and in 1875 was taken over by the Mexican National Railways who wanted to build a spur to the city of Aransas Pass with the goal of connecting to deep water.
The first attempt to deepen the pass came from the citizens of Rockport who in 1868 raised $10,000 for a 600-foot d**e on St. Joseph Island. Details of this plan have been mostly lost to history.
Then in 1879 Congress authorized the deepening of the pass after a Corps survey recommended two parallel jetties and protection for the eroding of Mustang Island. This was/is known locally as the Old Government Jetty and consisted of layers of rock and brush; it was a failure as the jetties produced no deepening of the pass. The next attempt came at the urging of Maj. Oswald H. Ernst who recommended two stone jetties be built and that erosion on Mustang Island be contained by laying an eighteen-inch-thick riprap cover; the riprap was placed but a shortage of funds stopped the building of the jetties.
Into the breech stepped private enterprise.
Plan B is not much better
In March 1860 a charter was granted to the Aransas Pass Harbor Company for the “constructing owning and operating deep water channels from the water of the Gulf of Mexico and across Aransas Pass. At the same time the Aransas Harbor City and Improvement Company was formed and investors from all over the country got involved, including the son of President William Henry Harrison. With investors in place the promoters launched a nationwide publicity campaign and what followed was a rush to invest like South Texas had never seen.
The Bay View Hotel was built in 1893 and was a three-story showcase to impress potential investors. Included in the project were plans to build a railroad from Aransas Pass to Harbor Island and construction began. Rock for the planned jetty was shipped in by rail and loaded onto barges head for the jetty site.

But things hit a snag when the Panic of 1893 hit and the railroad was taken over by South Pacific Railroad which had financial ties to Galveston. Harbor Island developers appealed to the Texas Legislature and got the rights to buy land immediately around the harbor and with money from Brown and Sons of Baltimore drew up plans to adopt a single, curved jetty around the island and went to work. The project was an abject failure. The water got no deeper and land sales went to zero. The Aransas Pass Harbor Company had spent $401,553 and had nothing to show for it. They contracted with a man named C.P. Goodyear to provide a twenty-foot channel and he used 13,000 pounds of dynamite to blow out 500 feet of the jetty but all it did was blow a lot of water up in the air – the channel refused to deepen. The project to deepen the channel had now taken on a Rube Goldberg quality as each succeeding group poured good money after bad.
At long last success

Private industry appealed to the deep pockets of government and in 1899 the deep pockets complied. The Corps finally realized that a single jetty would not do the job and removed the old north jetty, replacing it with that of an earlier design. Then in 1907 they authorized the completion of the south jetty along with the extension of the north jetty. When the project was done the water began to deepen across the mouth of the pass and engineers began looking at the deepening of the channel and the building of a basin for Harbor Island. Work continued for several years until the oceangoing liner Brinkburn arrived at Harbor Island on September 7, 1912, and took on a load of over 10,000 bales of cotton. The celebration lasted a week. The Brinkburn was later sunk by German U-boats off the coast of Algiers but Harbor Island was economically afloat.

The 9.6-mile Aransas Harbor Terminal Railroad connected Harbor Island with the mainland and the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway and a cotton compress was built on the island in 1913. Then during World War I a concrete shipbuilding firm was constructed there and by 1927 the Humble Oil and Refining Company had built a large oil terminal on Harbor Island. Other major oil companies laid pipelines to the docks to meet the oil tankers and Harbor Island had its deep-water port and became home to a series of oil storage tanks for more than fifty years.
The rest as they say is history.

11/24/2025

Advocate for those who advocate for us!

11/23/2025

La Posada two weeks away
Wednesday, December 3
The La Posada Lighted Boat Parade events kick off with the second annual tree lighting at Whitecap NPI on Wednesday December 3.
Wednesday December 3 Whitecap NPI Tree Lighting
Thursday December 4 Kick-Off Party at Hardknocks Sports Grill. Doors open at 6:30pm Music by DLB DJ Entertainment
The lighted Boat Parades
Friday December 12 7:00 pm televised by KRIS 6 at Doc’s Waterline. Register your boat to participate at Laposadadfoundation.org
Saturday December 13 Parade begins at 6:00 at Caravel Boat Ramp

11/23/2025

A look back at La Posada 2017! Lots of familiar faces that we haven't seen in a long time.

11/23/2025

There are so many fun things happening next week on the Island. Melissa Mitchell explores just a few:
Melissa Mitchell
Evoke Studio & Gifts
(formerly Padre Island Art Gallery)
14646 Compass Street, Ste 10
The Island
Everyday errands just feel different on the Island—more like stopping in to see friends than checking off a list. And this month, we’re turning that easygoing spirit into a full-on adventure with our Shop Small Business Crawl Bingo on Saturday, November 29, from 11a-4p—a playful, community-driven day designed to bring visitors and neighbors together while highlighting the small businesses that give our Island its charm.
A Bingo Card Full of Local Love
Here’s how it works. Stop by any participating business to pick up your Bingo card. Each participating business has only 20 Bingo cards available. When they’re gone, they’re gone—so plan to swing by early for yours. On Saturday, the fun begins: wander the Island, visit local shops, and fill your card with stamps along the way—rediscovering familiar favorites and possibly trying a new spot you haven’t visited before.
Each stop will stamp your card, and there’s no purchase necessary to play. If you fill a row—horizontal, vertical, or diagonal—you’ll be entered to win prizes from the retailers. Fill the entire card, and you’ll earn a spot in the Grand Prize Drawing, where one lucky winner will receive a bundle of twelve $10 gift cards (one from each participating business) for a $120 shopping spree. Drop off your completed card at any participating retailer to be entered into the drawings.
This event is part scavenger hunt, part shopping day, part neighborhood stroll—and entirely Island fun.
Meet the Shops Behind the Fun
This year’s Shop Small Business Crawl Bingo features twelve incredible Island businesses—each one offering something unique, local, and full of personality. Think of it as a curated tour of the places that make our community special:
1-Texas Sealife Center—Offering tours to the public Wednesday-Saturday from 10a-3:30p and Sunday 12p-3:30p.
2-Nauti T's—Jellies, desserts, charcuterie & lunches to go
3-My Coastal Home—Stylish furniture & home décor
4-Island Wellness & Nutrition—LMNT smoothies, wellness, skincare & gifts
5-Beach’n Blooms—Fresh floral designs, gift baskets & more
6-Isle Mail & More—Mail services, printing, shipping & small gifts
7-Cabana Pantry—Specialty foods, cooking classes & private events
8-Evoke Studio & Gifts – Curated art, home accents, hat bar, unique gifts & special events
9-Island Family Eyecare—Optometry, glasses, contacts & sunglasses
10-Agave Beach Boutique—Clothing & permanent jewelry
11-Padre Island Cigar Co.—Premium ci**rs & accessories
12-Island Day Spa—Massage, skincare, makeup services, hand & foot treatments
Whether you’re stopping in for a sip, a snack, a sample, or a smile, each business is excited to meet you for the first time or welcome you back! And all of them have something special planned for the day.
Why Community Events Matter
Shopping small has always been close to my heart. Every local business has a story behind it—late-night planning sessions, early-morning deliveries, handmade displays, family support, and the courage to chase a dream. When you walk into a small shop, you’re not just stepping into a store—you’re stepping into someone’s purpose.
Events like this Bingo Crawl remind us that supporting local businesses doesn’t have to be complicated. It can look like grabbing lunch at your favorite café, popping into a boutique for a hostess gift, checking out a new bakery, or saying hello to a business owner you’ve known for years. Every stamp on your bingo card represents a real person who pours passion, time, and heart into what they do.
Prizes, Fun, and a Little Friendly Competition
Once you’ve filled your rows or your whole card, drop it off at any participating business. The prize drawings will be hosted live on Facebook by Cabana Pantry the following Sunday at noon. If you're the Grand Prize winner, you'll pick up your prize there. All other prize winners may pick up their prize directly from the shop offering it and will be contacted by that business.
There’s something delightfully nostalgic about returning to a familiar game like Bingo and turning it into a community celebration. It brings out the playful side in all of us—no age limit, no pressure, just fun.
To me, the best part of events like this isn’t the prizes or even the shopping. It’s the moments in between—catching up with neighbors, meeting business owners, discovering a new favorite snack, or finding the perfect item you didn’t know you needed.
It’s a reminder that community isn’t just where we live. It’s something we build—one conversation, one smile, and one small act of support at a time.
If you hang around here long enough, you'll find there is never a shortage of things to do on the Island. Also happening on Saturday the 29th from 1p-4p is the last Padre Island Charity Poker Run of the year benefitting CASA of the Coastal Bend. Join the Black Sheep Bistro, Brewster Street Icehouse on the Island, The Anchor Beach Bar & Grill, the Angry Marlin and The Island Moon Newspaper in making this event a huge success. Bring a gift to be donated and take part in the post-Thanksgiving fun.
So, grab your Bingo card, gather your friends, and come spend the day exploring what makes our Island so special. Every stop, every stamp, and every little “hello” along the way is part of the story we’re writing together.
And if you spot a business on the list that you’ve never visited before, don’t wait for a Bingo card to go. Every one of these local shops would love to welcome you in—today, tomorrow, and anytime you're in the neighborhood. So, stop in and say hello. They’d love to meet you.
The Art of Island Life will return next week with more stories and inspiration from our coastal community. Have a story to share or an upcoming event? Reach out to me at [email protected].
And finally—Saturday, November 29th will be the official opening date of Evoke!

11/22/2025

On the Rocks
By Jay Gardner
Lily and I headed north last week up to Austwell to do an oyster survey for a new pier that’s going in up there in Hynes Bay (which is a secondary bay of San Antonio Bay). I hadn’t been up that direction (other than passing through) in quite some time. The trip reminded me of when I was working for the Texas Coastal Ocean Observation Network (TCOON) back in the early 2000’s, maintaining water and monitoring stations up and down the coast. We had a station installed near Chicken Foot Reef there in San Antonio Bay, and I would have to change batteries, or the hydro sonde’s out. This would involve dragging a skiff up to the Aransas Wildlife Refuge, dump it in, and run around the corner through the ICWW, and up into the bay to the station. Those were good times, but Hurricane Harvey wiped that station out.
One of the weirdest things I saw up there coming back from doing my station work was The Duke, an Eco-tour and dolphin watch boat I worked on for Billy Gaskins a few years before that in Port Aransas. It was a foggy day, very flat, and I was just easing back towards the ICWW and I saw her slowly chugging north. I had no idea why she was so many miles from home, but there was my old tour boat. I couldn’t see anyone behind the helm, and I felt like I was in a ghost story.
Anyhoo, we got to the old pier site and thankfully there were two of the old pier pilings left out in the water, so we knew how far out we had to go and all that. We were surprised not to find any oysters, but the water was really shallow and windswept, so they shouldn’t have been there anyway. The pier is free to move forward. Of course, Lily found a large dead alligator gar and had to mess with it. Gross.
Water reuse
The city council finally voted to look into reusing water from the wastewater treatment plans for industry. We have been reusing a portion of the water for golf courses for many years. There was a line that went from either the Greenwood or Oso plants back out to the Kings Crossing course, but that has likely been offline for years. The Oso Golf Course is right next to Oso Treatment Plant, which makes that easy for piping. The Greenwood plant has more volume, but it's far away but feeds Lozano. The Broadway plant there at Concrete Street is close to industry, but they’re phasing that one out. Maybe those plans will change with the new focus on reuse.
That wastewater would have gone into the river or bay or laguna, depending on which plant you’re talking about. The Allison Wastewater Treatment Plant used to pump some of its water under the Nueces River and out into the Nueces Delta. I did some water quality monitoring of that back in day, as others like Sam, Aaron and Erin did, and the freshwater hitting those cells helped the fishery a lot. Unfortunately, they had to stop pumping in there due to high levels of something, which really wasn’t hurting anything.
I highly support the reuse of our wastewater; you loyal readers know that in some parts of the country, they treat it and put it back into their drinking water system. We’re headed in that direction. Water is water. However, I’d like to see a day where the water coming into our system passes through and makes it into the Nueces Delta and river, but you loyal readers already know about that. The Coastal Bend Bays Foundation is having a coastal issues forum about how inflows are managed into the bays on Monday, December 8th at the Del Mar CED. If you have questions, go check that out.
Well folks, I’m already looking down the road towards the turn of the year. The weather for Thanksgiving could be worse, but it could be better. I will be out on the beach and out on the rocks at some point. Send me some pics at [email protected] and we’ll see you maybe next week before Turkey Day On the Rocks.

11/22/2025

SAVE THE BAIT! Nothing but bait fish are biting at the South and North Jetties

11/22/2025

It's Saturday and here is the fourth installment of 'Island of reprieve"
Island of Redemption
Surviving the 1933 Hurricane
Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment of the memoirs of Louis Rawalt who along with his wife Viola lived at various locations on Padre Island after being given six months to live due to injuries from a mustard gas attack in World War I. He lived on The Island for more than 40 years.
In the last issue Rawalt had been harvesting gunnysacks of Old Hospitality Bourbon whiskey which had been thrown overboard by the captain of the I’m Alone smuggling ship in the Sigsbee’s Deep where the ship was shot full of holes and sunk by the Coast Guard.
By Louis Rawalt
So, the days flowed into weeks, and the weeks became months and years. I had grown steadily stronger and seldom gave a thought to the fact that I wasn’t even supposed to be alive. I could walk for miles without tiring, and many nights I slept on the sand with only a piece of tarpaulin around me when I was fishing away from the camp. It was one of the times when I had gone alone to a spot thirty-five miles below our shack that the car stalled. No amount of coaxing or tinkering could get a sound out of it. There was nothing to do but start walking. It was seventy miles to Corpus Christi Pass where someone lived who had a car. The tide was exceptionally high, and I had little hope that any fishermen would be venturing down the beach that day.
It was early morning when I started out. A little before sunset I reached our shack. Viola was visiting my people in Kingsville at the time, so the place was still and empty feeling. I ate, drank coffee, and rested for a few moments before starting again. The tide was rising rapidly. It looked as though a storm might be brewing in the Gulf. If I didn’t get the car up out of reach of the water, I wouldn’t have a car. This thought kept my bare feet plodding through the sand all night. It was dark as pitch. Sudden squalls blew in keeping me drenched most of the time. But with the first gray light of morning, I could see by the familiar outlines of the dunes I was only a few miles from the pass.
Fishing with Shorty
Bill White, another fisherman, was cooking breakfast in his tarpaper shack when I knocked at his door. I was too tired to eat, but as I gulped down scalding cups of coffee, I couldn’t help crowing over the fact that four years before I had been doomed. In the last twenty-four hours, I had walked seventy-five miles!
During the next year I acquired a fishing partner. We called him “Shorty”, and if he had any other name we never knew it. He was a good man on the end of a net. It relieved Viola from some pretty hard work too. She had found a bale of cotton washed up on the beach and subsequently launched into a quilting project. Shorty set up his tent a little beyond our shack, and until the hurricane that year (1933), we had a pleasant and profitable partnership.
That was the year the Gulf staged a real shin-dig. We had several scares that September. Viola kept most of our valued and important possessions packed in boxes against the time we might have to evacuate. The Friday before the storm hit on Monday was one of the most perfect of island days. The water was flat and blue. The skies clear and the southwest wind, warm and gentle. Shorty was expecting weekend guests, and Viola, thinking they would perhaps visit us too, had unpacked the boxes and made the house cozy and neat.
I was fishing early Saturday morning when I noticed that the swells were coming over the beach in an erratic rhythm. Far out over the water, the sky had an ominous look; wildlife had deserted the beach. A squall hit with sudden intensity. I pulled in my line and went into the shack. Viola was still sleeping. I wakened her and told her to get ready to go to town, that I thought there was a storm on the way. Sleepily, she started pulling on her jeans and shirt, mumbling about repacking everything. I walked to the porch and looked out. The tide had risen so fast that it was already hazardous to travel the beach.
“You won’t have time for that,” I told her. “We’ll have to go now, or not at all.”
Shorty came in then. He had seen the signs. There was no need of telling him. Another squall hit as we were getting into the pickup where we squeezed up together in the seat. The beach was almost impassable where the long sweeps crowded us up into the soft sand and shell. But the Model-A came through, and in the late afternoon, we reached the house of some friends in Corpus Christi.
Into the storm
I checked with the weather bureau and found that there was, indeed, a storm in the Gulf. It was one of exceptional force and was headed straight toward the Texas coast. They expected the storm to hit Monday. After getting Viola more or less safely settled, Shorty and I began to talk about returning to the island and going down the beach on low tide that night to get some of our equipment. We decided to go, and over Viola’s protests, we refueled the Ford, and drove back over the causeway to Padre.
The island was a place of darkness and fury that night. It rained incessantly and the wind blew in gusts that threatened to blow the pickup over. We had only gone a mile or two down the beach when we both had to admit that it was hopeless to try to go further until daylight. So we drove the Ford up into the edge of the dunes and sat there all night trying to sleep, our legs cramping and the water reaching nearer with every heave of the Gulf.
When morning came, the rain let up a little. We shoved and shoveled our way through the dunes and to the grasslands in the center of the island. It took all day to reach the shack driving over the rough terrain and through the pools of water left by the night’s deluge. It still rained and the wind blew.
We left the truck behind the dunes and walked over to the house. The water was running under it so deep it was over our knees as we waded up to the steps. We estimated that the tide was four or five feet above normal. I knew that unless some miracle happened, the shack was not going to stand much longer. I went inside, and dumping a pillow out of its case, started grabbing some valuables and putting them into it. I tossed in a box containing several old coins I had found around the wreckage of an old ship, a rust-encrusted lavaliere I had picked up at the site of the Balli mission-ranch. Then there were stem-wind gold watches I had found in a wooden box on the beach and my collection of arrowheads and spear points.
I was looking around at all the rest of our furnishings and equipment, wondering how much to take, when a giant roller hit the shack with terrifying force. I felt the floor sway and buckle under my feet. The water was running up through the cracks when I went out the back door with the pillow case in one hand. The steps had washed away. As I jumped off the porch into the water that was now over waist-deep, I caught sight of a can of gasoline that I was counting on to use for the return trip to town. I caught the can as it floated by me and waded out of the melee. Shorty, having finished collecting his belongings from the tent, was waiting for me in the truck.
I put the gasoline in, and looked back at the house. It had toppled and was being beaten to pieces by the waves. When I started to place the pillow on the seat, I discovered that I had grabbed the wrong one – had salvaged only a pillow and a can of gasoline which might not even be enough to get us back to town. Darkness was coming down fast. The storm grew in intensity. We would be lucky if we go out of it with our lives.
Next issue: The sea takes away and the sea gives back.

The Island Moon Newspaper

11/25/2025

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