Goodbye Bolivar, by Sherry Antonetti
Thursday, September 18 2008 @ 12:00 AM MST
Views: 709
Views: 709
It's not every day we see a piece and ask the author to allow us to post on our site as well. But this work is both timely and significant. We hope you're as deeply moved by the memories and imagery as we are. Fiction Editor
Goodbye Bolivar, by Sherry Antonetti
The Bolivar Peninsula is no more. A family friend flew over the land and saw that virtually none of what was, even remains in piles. Most people never heard of it, so they won’t miss it. But for me, Caplen, Gillcrist, Crystal Beach and Galveston, they represent not just whole summers but three to four generations of memories that have just now literally been washed out to sea.
People who lived at the beach year round were easy to spot. They wore clothing that had been line dried to the point of fading and most of them smoked. Most of them had tattoos that were politically incorrect, and had them long before they were trendy. The women wore nail polish but no makeup. They had leathery tan skin that if you touched felt unspeakably soft. Men wore shorts and t-shirts 99.9% of the time and baseball caps. They were lean but not thin, strong but not muscular and frequently unshaven. These were people who lived by their hands, painting, sewing, baking, fishing and selling all they made. They cleaned whatever they caught and ate it. They invoked Jesus’ name and cursed with equal ease and didn’t think much of people who came to the beach but didn’t want to get sandy or know how to handle tar (baby oil works great), or who wanted to know where the nearest “Wi-fi” connection might be found. (Try Houston).
Their homes were often pink and grey and they would own at least one boat, one dog, one trailer and a pickup truck. They could fix air conditioners but most didn’t bother to own one, as fans worked best year round. Phones came to the peninsula grudgingly, (1984) and few bothered with TV or cable, much less computers. All that salt air and moisture made electronics beyond a good stereo a real waste of time.
That none of the businesses or homes still exist, even as piles of debris require that I remember them as they were. There was the obligatory shell shop for souvenirs, Milt’s Fish Market for bait and fresh caught goodness, and Claud’s, a store which sold everything one could possibly need at the beach except food. These stores had been here since my Grandmother was young and there were even hand written notes mentioning them as places to go for goods posted in the beach house that served as a summer place to survive with 9 kids before air conditioning for my family’s family since the 1920’s.
Then, there were the “newcomers” like Mama Theresa’s Flying Pizza (1985), which quickly became mine and my brothers and eventually our children’s favorite spot on Fridays, the Gulf Mart, (1995), a grocery store so that going to the beach no longer meant packing food for a week before going, and the waterslide (1982). A second waterslide tried to muscle in on the territory (2004), but beach goers of the Bolivar Peninsula were terribly loyal and annoyed whenever anyone tried to one up anyone else, so the second place struggled along until the first place announced that it was okay and that they were actually friends. Danny’s Donut Shoppe kept fighting to survive, selling Kolaches which the few in the know people swooped in on Sunday after mass at Our Mother of Mercy to purchase. It went out of business at least three times a summer. Maybe the guy was out fishing, but at least three trips out of five, the shop was closed during hours it was supposed to be open. The beach was like that.
Maybe we should have known that the peninsula’s days were numbered, that everything at the beach gets worn down and eventually destroyed but there was a permanent feeling to that thin stretch of Texas Coast. Whenever someone sold their beach house to someone not family, there was a feeling of shock and concern…that the next people would not be beach people. Most people who came to the beach, became beach people or sold. They didn’t like the fact that there were only three radio stations one could get in clearly, that cell phones were essentially useless and that people didn’t have answering machines. As far as I knew, there were only three atms along the entire strip and they were inside stores with a sizable service fee.
When people opened new businesses, everyone would look on with amazement to see if they could stick. Some did, like the Sand Piper (on the bay side, great fish), and some didn’t, like the Pier, which when Hurricane Rita wiped out the Pier, left the large stumps of the pier itself, standing in the surf.
What I will miss though, are those experiences that were uniquely East Texas Coast Beach. I know I could go riding in the back of a pickup truck along the shore to gather driftwood for a bonfire almost anywhere, but there was something to it here.
I’ll miss hearing the old church lady imitating Kate Smith at the end of mass on 4th of July, singing God Bless America and beach combing while remembering which house was the one where we saw an alligator that had swum down into the gulf, sunning itself. I’ll miss the neighbors that would walk up to introduce themselves because your bonfire looked fun and the beer was cold. I'll even miss the crazy beach lady on her tractor mower who would get grouchy if your flipflop touched her property line when walking back to the house.
But mostly, I’ll miss the memories of bringing new people to the beach house and watching them discover that despite the seaweed and jellyfish in the brown warm surf, the tar on the beach, the stickaburrs in the grass and the fire ants and mosquitoes, that standing out on the wooden deck, staring at the ocean, sipping a freshly made drink of something, they would breathe in the salt air and marvel at how much they loved this place.
Now I know places can be rebuilt but here, we just don’t know if there is anything to build on yet, or even how to begin. It’s too soon to know if any of what we knew could be restored. By all accounts, there's just nothing there of those 85 years of memories but memories. For now, I just miss that place that described my childhood summers and almost every birthday until I was 24 and hope that in Heaven, I get to drive down highway 87 and turn onto Martha's Vinyard and find a strong southeast wind and a grey house up on 18 foot piers with family inside it sitting at my grandfather's butcher table, chopping up the ingredients for Gumbo.
Goodbye Bolivar, by Sherry Antonetti
The Bolivar Peninsula is no more. A family friend flew over the land and saw that virtually none of what was, even remains in piles. Most people never heard of it, so they won’t miss it. But for me, Caplen, Gillcrist, Crystal Beach and Galveston, they represent not just whole summers but three to four generations of memories that have just now literally been washed out to sea.
People who lived at the beach year round were easy to spot. They wore clothing that had been line dried to the point of fading and most of them smoked. Most of them had tattoos that were politically incorrect, and had them long before they were trendy. The women wore nail polish but no makeup. They had leathery tan skin that if you touched felt unspeakably soft. Men wore shorts and t-shirts 99.9% of the time and baseball caps. They were lean but not thin, strong but not muscular and frequently unshaven. These were people who lived by their hands, painting, sewing, baking, fishing and selling all they made. They cleaned whatever they caught and ate it. They invoked Jesus’ name and cursed with equal ease and didn’t think much of people who came to the beach but didn’t want to get sandy or know how to handle tar (baby oil works great), or who wanted to know where the nearest “Wi-fi” connection might be found. (Try Houston).
Their homes were often pink and grey and they would own at least one boat, one dog, one trailer and a pickup truck. They could fix air conditioners but most didn’t bother to own one, as fans worked best year round. Phones came to the peninsula grudgingly, (1984) and few bothered with TV or cable, much less computers. All that salt air and moisture made electronics beyond a good stereo a real waste of time.
That none of the businesses or homes still exist, even as piles of debris require that I remember them as they were. There was the obligatory shell shop for souvenirs, Milt’s Fish Market for bait and fresh caught goodness, and Claud’s, a store which sold everything one could possibly need at the beach except food. These stores had been here since my Grandmother was young and there were even hand written notes mentioning them as places to go for goods posted in the beach house that served as a summer place to survive with 9 kids before air conditioning for my family’s family since the 1920’s.
Then, there were the “newcomers” like Mama Theresa’s Flying Pizza (1985), which quickly became mine and my brothers and eventually our children’s favorite spot on Fridays, the Gulf Mart, (1995), a grocery store so that going to the beach no longer meant packing food for a week before going, and the waterslide (1982). A second waterslide tried to muscle in on the territory (2004), but beach goers of the Bolivar Peninsula were terribly loyal and annoyed whenever anyone tried to one up anyone else, so the second place struggled along until the first place announced that it was okay and that they were actually friends. Danny’s Donut Shoppe kept fighting to survive, selling Kolaches which the few in the know people swooped in on Sunday after mass at Our Mother of Mercy to purchase. It went out of business at least three times a summer. Maybe the guy was out fishing, but at least three trips out of five, the shop was closed during hours it was supposed to be open. The beach was like that.
Maybe we should have known that the peninsula’s days were numbered, that everything at the beach gets worn down and eventually destroyed but there was a permanent feeling to that thin stretch of Texas Coast. Whenever someone sold their beach house to someone not family, there was a feeling of shock and concern…that the next people would not be beach people. Most people who came to the beach, became beach people or sold. They didn’t like the fact that there were only three radio stations one could get in clearly, that cell phones were essentially useless and that people didn’t have answering machines. As far as I knew, there were only three atms along the entire strip and they were inside stores with a sizable service fee.
When people opened new businesses, everyone would look on with amazement to see if they could stick. Some did, like the Sand Piper (on the bay side, great fish), and some didn’t, like the Pier, which when Hurricane Rita wiped out the Pier, left the large stumps of the pier itself, standing in the surf.
What I will miss though, are those experiences that were uniquely East Texas Coast Beach. I know I could go riding in the back of a pickup truck along the shore to gather driftwood for a bonfire almost anywhere, but there was something to it here.
I’ll miss hearing the old church lady imitating Kate Smith at the end of mass on 4th of July, singing God Bless America and beach combing while remembering which house was the one where we saw an alligator that had swum down into the gulf, sunning itself. I’ll miss the neighbors that would walk up to introduce themselves because your bonfire looked fun and the beer was cold. I'll even miss the crazy beach lady on her tractor mower who would get grouchy if your flipflop touched her property line when walking back to the house.
But mostly, I’ll miss the memories of bringing new people to the beach house and watching them discover that despite the seaweed and jellyfish in the brown warm surf, the tar on the beach, the stickaburrs in the grass and the fire ants and mosquitoes, that standing out on the wooden deck, staring at the ocean, sipping a freshly made drink of something, they would breathe in the salt air and marvel at how much they loved this place.
Now I know places can be rebuilt but here, we just don’t know if there is anything to build on yet, or even how to begin. It’s too soon to know if any of what we knew could be restored. By all accounts, there's just nothing there of those 85 years of memories but memories. For now, I just miss that place that described my childhood summers and almost every birthday until I was 24 and hope that in Heaven, I get to drive down highway 87 and turn onto Martha's Vinyard and find a strong southeast wind and a grey house up on 18 foot piers with family inside it sitting at my grandfather's butcher table, chopping up the ingredients for Gumbo.