Texas Summers

Although I have lived here in West Tennessee most of my life, I am a Texas native by birth. I was born in the most Texan city of them all, Texas City. and spent most summers down there in Shoreacres (LaPorte) until I was 15 or so. My mom and I would go stay with some close friends of the family, Ward and Rachel, and I would spend my summers playing with friends in the neighborhood. Most mornings, I would walk down the street a bit to the public pier for the subdivision and set out my crab lines. I would then fish off the pier too with my nifty new Zebco rod and reel, I was so proud of that rig. I would bait my hook with chicken livers, and cast out and see how well I would do. One day the fun really began.......





I had a big cooler that I would put the crabs and fish in to take home to cook. There is no better smell in a kitchen than shrimp and crab boil, and that is a fact. One day I put chicken livers on my crab lines, and cast out my line from my rod and reel. I almost immediately had a bite, and reeled it in. As the "fish" came out of the water, I was surprised to see a crab hanging off of my line. I got him on the pier, and dropped him in the cooler. I kept doing this for several hours, and with my trusty old Zebco I caught 14 crabs and 4 fish that day, along with 12 crabs from my lines that were set out. I took my catch home, and we had a good crab feast that night for sure!!



There was a group of five or six boys I hung out with in the neighborhood. One fun thing that we did was try to sneak into the Houston Yacht Club that was adjacent to the subdivision. There really wasn't much to do over there, but we were 12-14 years old and had nothing better to do back then. One of the guys we hung out with had a habit of dressing in drag to sneak in. I still to this day can't figure out what the hell Jerry was thinking, but I can't question his journey to fun, huh? Everybody does silly stuff in their lives. One night we got in and finally a club employee figured out that we did not belong. They called the police on us, and the cops arrived to take us to our houses. Jerry managed to escape, and stayed at the bar at the club and apparently had a few drinks bought for him by the drunk old-timers. We told his dad where he was, and off he went to go collect him. We never let him live that one down either.

yacht marina

Another time, we were taking turns playing Houdini and escaping from being tied up with a phone cord. My wonderful friends tied me upside down on a low tree limb and left me there to my own methods of escape. I guess they got busy playing Atari or something because they left my ass out there for about two hours. I worked myself up on top of the limb by the time they came out. They untied me and then ran like hell because my Irish temper was unchecked back then, and I was ready to kill somebody after two hours of that. They neglected to ever do that again because I caught up with the kid wearing Huskies and beat the shit out of him. Maybe those two hours on that tree limb taught me the infinite patience I have now, huh?



Some days we would load up all the kids in my mom's 1973 Thunderbird or my Aunt Judy's 1975 Dodge MaxiVan:






, and we would head out to go to the beach in Galveston. We would set up our chairs and blankets, and then we would take off for the water. I spent many summer days on the beach there on the Gulf of Mexico, and there are many awesome memories. One Saturday, however, the good memories had a bad one join them. That was the day I got stung by a jellyfish twice on the back of my leg. You don't know pain of getting stung by something until a jellyfish lights you up. I will never forget that feeling for as long as I live. To this day I avoid jellyfish at all cost when we go to the beach, I just can't shake my fear of them.





What are some memories of how ya'll spent your summers?