Things that make you go Ahhh…

I don’t get out as much as I’d like, which means I am most definitely NOT taking a vacation. Seems I spend most of my day, ok ALL of my day, working. The two hour difference is killing me… I look at the PC, and I think “Oh, it’s 2, almost quitting time!”…Later I realize, it’s really four, and I’ve been here since 0400Pacific/0600 Central – SHAFTED – AGAIN. <sigh> Beginning next week – this WILL stop. I’ll start promptly at 0600 central, and quit at 4. I refuse to head back to WA w/o having visited some friends, and seen a few old haunts I miss.

Today, I found some odd places… Things I found interesting, stuff you won’t you-know-where. I love the signs churches display – always have. The amusing anecdotes and whimsical rhymes that remind you where you are, and where you should be… Since we are NOT short on churches here, you will be seeing these from time to time, and already have if you’ve looked at previous slideshows.

Today’s slideshow is brought to you by the Comfort Zone Washateria. :O) There’s a few things you’ll see in the slideshow that are very special to me, and some you’ll see are just “unusual”, in a Texas sort of way.. :O)

In the slideshow, you’ll find Hitchcock Elementary School, well, it used to be HES… It was also the place my parent’s church used to meet when I was a wee one. In the cafeteria we met, Sunday morning and evening, like all good Baptists. Eventually our numbers grew, and we began spending saturdays after breaking ground at another location, where my parents, their friends, and many others began building a church. I remember those times with great fondness. Hot summer and autumn afternoons, running and playing, eating your fill of good pot luck food, our bellies full of kool aid and sweat tea. Until you had to pee. As a child, I was NOT into the great out doors (even now, I prefer, when camping, STATE Parks (state parks have bathrooms!). Does a bear *(#@& in the woods? That’s nice, Smokey, but I prefer to drive to town, even if it’s 30 miles. Once, my mother brought this camping contraption to the work party (that’s what we called them). It was a toilet seat on a fold up stool frame (no pun intended), and there was a bag… you get the picture. She constructed a sheet “tent” that hung from a tree. Ahhh, I knew life was good when I could pee in private. I could not have been more than five at the time… I even remember wondering who took care of the bag, and being glad it wasn’t me.

Throughout this trip, it seems I’ve been exposed to more and more creative uses of a “Lowe’s storage building” type structure. First the park in Moab, then in Aspen, and now, in Freddiesville, at God’s Rainbow Baptist Church. Why God’s Rainbow Church needs an 8′ fence with barbed wire at the top, I’ll never know… but they have a porta-potty, so they’ve been very efficient with the use of space in the church proper.

Freddiesville has always had it’s share of problems. For those who DON’T know, Freddieville is just outside Hitchcock, a few miles before you reach Bayou Vista on HWY 6, heading to Galveston. When I was growing up, it was a community ridden with poverty, and rich with heritage. Greater St. Matthew’s Baptist Church was there, and our congregation worshipped with them from time to time. GSM was a black congregation, and ours was all white. I’m sure to many, that move was outrageous and unforgivable. What a ground breaking thing for our churches to fellowship together. It was a very different world in the late 60s/early 70s. One I’m glad my children will never experience. I still remember the food from those fellowships – like manna, it surely came straight from heaven. Ahhhh

I also remember feeling glee as a child, because the GSM Church didn’t have Sunday night services, they stayed on the grounds all day, eating dinner on the grounds, and having fellowship in song until late afternoon. This meant I could watch Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday night, right after Wild Kingdom. My lust for Disney as a child was terrible. I would feign stomach aches and malaria to stay home and watch that show. My neighbors, Lillian and Sharon, were catholic. They went to church on Saturday night. I was green with envy, how I wished I could enjoy their fate in life, sitting home and watching Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights… to the point I once asked my Dad if we could become catholic. I was six when I did this, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. My father, an ordained Baptist minister, and solid Christian man, looked at me puzzled, and asked why I wanted to be Catholic… His face is forever frozen in my mind… somehow he just could not digest the importance of being six, and wanting to see WWOD on Sundays… it was so easy, just become Catholic, and go to church on Saturday night – it doesn’t get any easier than that… or so I thought. :O) Love you Dad.

BTW- did you know the headquarters for the Holy Ghost are at the LIving Word Community of Faith on HWY 6 in Hitchcock??? Neither did I! I don’t think the Holy Ghost really has “headquarters”… do you? The sign probably raises many local eyebrows with it’s forward attitude… Many think Texas is Heaven on earth, but I highly doubt, were it so, that God would pick Hitchcock as his home base… Fredricksburg, or Wimberly yes, but not Hitchcock…

Next to the tracks, two blocks from my house, was a Santa Fe RR Depot. Right next door to Tibaldo’s Feed Store, and across the street from Slone’s lumber, and Lack’s Hardware. The intersection of HWY 6 and FM 646 (aka Main). As the town grew, the Depot was threatened, and so it was moved, just a few miles south on HWY 6 where folks could still drive by and see it… Can’t go inside.. not sure why not. It does bear a Texas State Historical Marker. I like that we have historical markers all over the place, makes it easy to see why we’re crazy about our state. The Gulf, Colorado, and santa Fe Railroads gained right of way through Emily Hitchcock’s land by platting land and naming a town Hitchcock. Oddly, the depot was built on land that was Alta Loma, and later annexed and incorporated to the city of Santa Fe. Unincorporated portions fo Santa Fe are still referred to as Alta Loma, I believe (not sure).

Jack Brooks County Park is huge. It has THE most amazing mountain biking trails known to man! These trails, and the ones in Houston’s Memorial Park used to be the shiznit of Mtn Bike trails. I still have scars from those trails. I remember one time, hitting a dry mud rut, that sent me flying end over down into a gully full of blackberries. I was so terrified to move, I almost cried. I was so scared of where I’d landed, I didn’t even feel the pain of the thorns that had ripped my shirt, shorts and flesh. It was a boggy area, perfect for water moccasins and/or copper heads, or even a rattle snake… it was HORRID. I had two black eyes from that wreck. Oh, did I mention that I’d played hooky from work, feigning illness, so I could go ride bikes? (I was TOTALLY into biking then… Washington drivers squelched my desire to ride) I stayed out a week so my eyes and flesh could heal. It was still fun.

I also learned to drive on this property. Long before it was turned over to Galveston County, it was property of the Army Corps of Engineers. It had been used for something governmental a bazillion years ago, can’t remember exactly what. Anyway, my dad had keys to every bit of govt land on the Gulf Coast, and he’d take me back there all the time in our ‘72 Pontiac Lemans (with AM radio and vinyl seats!). The roads were paved, and two lanes, I learned to do a mean 3 point turn on those roads. Dad was so cool, he’d let me speed, slam on the brakes, do all kinds of stuff Mom would’ve never let me do in a car… Dad’s thought was the better you know what the car will do, the better you can handle it. Thanks Dad – to this day I am undaunted when driving, and I owe it all to you.

Years later, the county relocated the fair grounds from Runge Park to just outside this govt land and then the park was cultivated. I bet nobody else in Galveston county learned to drive on those roads before it was a parK! LOL (BTW – I think they relocated the fairgrounds because it just didn’t get muddy and nasty enough at Runge Park! I mean, come on – hosting the county fair in April in Southeast Texas? Madmen, I tell ya.. Mad! It ain’t the fair if 10″ of rain doesn’t fall the first two days (or two days prior) making it a veritable SWAMP)

Happy memories always bring a feeling of peace. Besides happy memories, one of the things that brings me a peace and comfort beyond words is photographing birds. I spend days photographing eagles near my house each spring during the extreme low tides, and am always racing to grab a camera and capture my yard bird collection digitally… Today i drove out to what used to be called Flamingo Isles. In the 60s, some big shot developer had the twinkle in his eye for mega bucks, and a schnitzy development called Flamingo Isles. The fact this land is like a giant sponge, where salt grass and peat grow in abundance, sitting in wait for a nice storm surge to make it the new shallows of Galveston Bay I’m sure had NOTHING to do with the failure of this business venture. That, or, he spent all his money on the fancy sign and the bridge over the RR tracks.

Speaking of fancy signs, well, Flamingo Isles’ entrance was guarded by an ENORMOUS sign that consisted of a HUGE pink flamingo (100′ tall) and wording that read: “FLAMINGO ISLES”. As a child, I was mesmerized by the giant bird when we’d drive past on our way to Galveston to buy school shoes at Eiband’s. I’ve not been out there since, well, since my late teens when we’d drive out there to throw rocks, fish and drink beer. Now they’ve put in a marina and “yacht club” (you’d have to see the area, you’d laugh too if you saw “yacht club”). Just a stone’s throw from Tiki Island (BIG money homes right on the marsh edge of Galveston Bay). I pulled over, and enjoyed photographing some willing models: a Neotropic Cormorant, a pair of Green Herons, a Great Egret, some juvenile and adult Cattle Egrets. I was THRILLED to see a beautiful Ibis fly over late in the day, as well as a large flock of great egrets (20-30). Saving the best for last, I had the joy of watching Roseate Spoonbills feeding in the flats as the tide retreated. There is no bird more beautiful than a spoonbill, there is no bird more interesting to watch than a spoonbill. I remember living in Bayou Vista, and taking my kids out in the john boat in the evening. We’d eat dinner off paper plates, I’d sit back with a beer and a kid’s story book, and after we ate, I’d read them stories. We’d drift in the marsh and salt grass as spoonbills would surround us. The few times my kids were quiet, we’d sit there bobbing in the water, mesmerized as the bird flock would surround us, their bills swooshing back and forth seining for food in the shallows.

It doesn’t take money to make life beautiful. All it takes is a minute to stop and focus on something beautiful, to close your eyes and smell the air, to listen to the sound of a distant train, wind in the trees, or light from the setting sun as it’s final goodbye illuminates the clouds. These are a few of my favorite things, and the reason I like being here.

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