Editor-In-Chief
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas - It is by any measure of the word "lost" the only rib of sand in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas that can offer genuine escapism from the cheap hustle & flow of the Rio Grande Valley. Every inch of ground west of here will only disappoint, if not hurt you. It is true that no man is an island, yet, here on the lip of the Gulf of Mexico, one can get the feeling that the island will block-off the Valley's more-horrible vistas. In search of something different, we journeyed here one day last week.
I was accompanied by one of this Blog's loyal commenters, a lovely lady from up Austin-way who identifies herself to you only as M. She'd come down to visit the Ol' Cowboy for a week, and the island was something she wanted to see one more time. As most who know me know, I love the road. This one is flat as a West Texas high school cheerleader, but it is still a road. Texas 100 has to be the region's loneliest highway on an early Thursday morning. Why, you can even hear the seagulls flapping wings in a welcoming symphony of sorts. Andre Rieu anyone?
So we pressed on toward the island a few miles ahead, and shortly we were rolling past the small bedroom community of Laguna Vista and then into busy, busy Port Isabel. Some electrical charge or another cuts across Port Isabel. The smell moving across town is of fish and fishing bait, but the energy sweeps across the bodies and faces of its inhabitants - workabout shrimpers, tourist shop operators, seafood joint employees, transients angling for a beer, sunseekers in vehicles headed toward the Queen Isabella Causeway. It feels like a coastal town in more than just the obvious ways. Port Isabel could easily transport itself to the Massachusetts coast, or even Maine, and fit right-in, something all other Rio Grande Valley communities could never do. It strikes me that a commercial airfield in town likely would take all the business currently flying into Harlingen to the west. Maybe some day.
We make it across the Causeway and angle left on Padre Boulevard. It's your typical t-shirt shop and seafood restaurant drag, with cheap and expensive hotels lining the bay & gulf sides of the road. Nothing stands out as being spectacular, just a row of utilitarian convenience stores, gift shops and gas stations. South Padre Island is not Key West, Florida. Not even Key Largo. Not yet anyway. Aside from two tall towers off to the right as you clear the causeway (hotel), little change has come to SPI in the past 20 years. A new convention center has good acreage far up the city's main drag and sun-deck public facilities on the northern end seem to be about it. Some say the nightlife is better these days. A looksee at the natives walking around allows for quick characterizations: today's wino doesn't necessarily walk at an angle. I run into a pair of upright boozers at a convenience store halfway up the boulevard, where I also pick up a great snack deal: Two hot dogs for a dollar. The two men are arguing over who'll pay for the cigs. It's yet another hopeless lament. There they go, again.
Then it's on to the beach, where M and I sit on a sand dune and watch an oil tanker out in the gulf seemingly at rest. It doesn't move, framing itself in our line-of-sight between wind-blown seagulls looking for crackers. None has seen Jonathan Livingston lately, they all tell us, which is a disappointment. I say something about whether it's true that the gull that flies highest sees farthest (a line from the Richard Bach book), but I get nothing from the hungry seagulls. Perhaps it's the region's corn diet, I tell myself as we walk back to the car. Maize is bad for the brain, is my feeling. Clumps grow up there, taking space designed for thinking.
On our way out of town, M picks up a few T-shirts and a few flower pots at a store in Port Isabel, there in the shadows of the fabled lighthouse. The drive out of town is uneventful. I think about hooking it over to Brownsville for a beer, but decide against it. Why spoil a lovely day by spending even a second in that falling town?
Back on 100 headed west, it is Bobz World, a mirage of sorts on the right side of the highway east of Los Fresnos that blows me away. What is that monstrous thing doing there? Construction crews are putting the finishing touches on a chicken-wire framed sculpture of King Kong. A giant ape in the Valley? Something's wrong about that, I say to myself. Perhaps it's tourist business. Next year, it'll be Tarzan, eh? Big, loin-attired Tarzan at the city limits. That'll draw kiddoes from every sector in the fun-starved RGV.
We roll to the end of Texas 100 and turn right on the highway. Harlingen looms up ahead. It's a strange town singing bad tunes at midnight these days, but we'd found the Starbucks coffee shop on Tyler somewhat welcoming. A town can't be all bad if one can readily find a cup of Pike's Blend early in the morning. But it was a bit weird reading the day's Wall Street Journal in such a struggling town, very much like reading Successful Farmer magazine in, say, war-torn Matamoros.
M went back to her hometown at weekend's end, but what she said there near the end was that we'd have to do it again real soon...
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4 comments:
A few heavy set cops in Los Fresnos? Who are you trying to kid? Seems that if they all aren't having their tacos at home, they're in their cruisers keeping themselves very well fed. And believe me, that is putting it extremely nicely. Imagine if they had to use their feet to run after a crook? NOT!
I used to listen to Juan William's report on NPR when I had to work on Sundays, for Uncle Sam. I liked him, to the point that I would listen to his comments on Foxnews. And now, that he got fired from NPR, I hope he has sense enough to just tell them (NPR) "good riddence".
Gladys, I agree. Juan Williams is a good fella. Now, if a catholic or jew would dress in their religious garb on an airplane, I would not give it one care, outside of laughing at them to myself. But muslims dressed like allah on a plane? You'd better start praying and calling your relatives to say some final farewells.
If it hadn't been for foxnews I would never have known what JW looks like. But hanging around that Bill Orilley character, is not a good thing. In my humble opinion.
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