By Dick Gregg, Jr.
I watch the horizon of the bay as I write. Pelicans galore,
seagulls chatting on the piers, terns a-twitter. The osprey rules
them all – he who must be obeyed. They hope he moves on
again. Wave tops gently tumble, awaiting a squall in a little
window in the upper right hand corner of the screen at April
Fool’s Point. Fishermen, tankers and freighters are busying
themselves, and, as usual, we are chock-a block with sail craft
including my favorite – a haughtily spinnakered three-masted schooner
with rust red sails that tacks and prances around every weekend
– righteously observing its kingdom and ignoring the lesser vessels. It
is similar to, but better qualified to strut than, a 19th Century English
Lord from the privileged class, confident of his perceived superiority,
not earned, just born that way. It was that sense of noblesse oblige that
made our ancestors leave Europe and come to these shores for the
promise of something better.
Somebody was already here. Little dudes. Karankawas. These early
Texans had no zoning and shared no corn. They ate seafood, mostly
mollusks. There was a freshly dug archeological site, a grave, in the
early ’70s on the banks of Mud Lake at the Harris County Park on
Nasa Road 1. The occupant was no Yao Ming. He was more the size of
Mother Teresa. A Diamond matchbook would have served as a hope
chest for his loincloth. A few of our heftier mosquitoes could have air
lifted him to a sand bar or to Goat Island when it used to poke its head
above water like a turtle. Maybe he could talk to them, like St. Francis.
Who knows?
I was thinking about what those early inhabitants du jour must have
observed when they stared toward the horizon. Birds. Waves. Blue sky.
Mullet. No tankers. No rigs. No cruise ships. Surely they skipped flat
stones or shells along the surface of the sea. They must have noticed
that the sunrise moves with the seasons, up and down (left and right)
along the horizon. They must have noticed the migration of the hawks and some of the birds of the bay.
They must have had some appreciation
for the compass of some variant text of the seasons of Ecclesiastes deep
within all of us – manor born or wharf rat – abiding there. A Minotaur
of circadian rhythm inhabits our blood, from Yao Ming to Tiny Tim,
and gives us signals and warnings when hurricanes are coming and a
keen sense of well being when the seas are calm. It pulls us like the
moon that pulls the tide.
My childhood summers were spent a little further north along this
shore from my current perch. My great-grandfather, my grandfather
and later my mother had a farm where the Bayport Cruise Terminal
will reside. It once was wild and free. So wild and free that I walked
the shore, in my loin cloth gym shorts, barefoot, armed only with my
imagination, south past Red Bluff and El Jardin to where I am now.
Hours passed alone. It changed from shell beach to mud, to red clay,
back to shell beach and then to reedy wetlands. You begin to know
yourself when you list and amble along the shore, on the beach or
in the shallow water, without a deadline. Mother figured I was okay
– and I was. I was just walking with mullet and gulls, occasionally tailed
by a curious stingray, startling the little black sidewinder fiddler crabs
that inhabit the rocks and scatter and skitter to safety. I was gathering
interesting shells and driftwood and storing fine memories. Conjuring
pirates and savages, snakes and snarling dogs, I had not yet learned to
be a little wary of the folks that looked like me and wanted to tell me
what to do or how to name things. The world was my mollusk. I can
still recall and identify, upon a whiff, the source of the smells of the bay,
when back they come, riding on the wind, out of the blue.
We do not have any higher claim to this land than did the
Karankawa, Columbus, La Fitte, Mexico, The Republic of Texas or
the Confederate States of America. We are simply today’s Pilgrims in
charge, with a novel system of government that says it takes all comers
and sets another place at the table on this abundant shore.
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