Tropic Isles: 1957 - 1960

We never had to worry about "bad people" when I was growing up. There were no locked doors, and we could walk the streets into the wee hours of the summer nights. We were pretty much country. We played softball in a field nearby and Charlene’s horse sometimes doubled as backstop. We built intricate forts in the woody brush - hacked out the chaparral with machetes, cleared the ground. The girls furnished theirs with rugs, chairs, and cozy nooks. The boys' forts hid Playboy magazines.

We'd tie ropes to the tops of the trees and swing from tree to tree. Once, I thought my little brother had killed himself. The rope broke, and he landed flat on his back from 15 ft. We liked to never got that kid breathing again. He was 10.

Our property was in a subdivision that sat on canals dug from the Laguna Madre. From the Laguna, there was the Main Channel, and smaller channels branched perpendicularly from it. Laguna Shore Drive is a narrow road that runs alongside the Laguna Madre and over the Main Channel by way of a narrow bridge.

As kids, we'd stand on the edge of the bridge and act like we were hit when cars drove by. We'd scream and then fall off the bridge, swimming quickly underneath to see if the car stopped. The bridge is 15 or 20 ft above the water and the water was 5 ft deep. No matter how fast we doubled up when we hit the water, we'd sink into the silty mud.

There were 3 channels on each side of the main channel. We were on the 3rd, and last channel; it had 3 houses on each side and one at the end (Charlene’s). Then, the first channel had 3 houses on it. That's all the houses there were for about 2 square miles - maybe one or two isolated fishing shacks along the Laguna. At one point, there were 23 kids in the 6 houses on our channel. Probably 15 of those were pretty much the same age. (Note from 2010: I must have figured this number out in 1995, but I’m not sure it’s right.)

We all had little boats of some kind. My brother and I had a little wooden racing boat that Dad had fiber-glassed so heavily, it must have weighed as much as a cabin cruiser. It had a 2.5hp motor that broke down regularly. We got to be pretty good mechanics. On summer mornings, we'd all head down the channel in a row - rowboat, canoe, platform skiff... it looked like one of those Anything That Can Float races.

We decided to make the canoe into a sailboat. Someone had a 20ft joint of cast iron pipe that we fitted on the crossbow in the center of the canoe then tied sheets to it. Amazingly, we got that thing all the way down our channel and all the way to the bridge before it capsized, nearly hit Jimmy Scott on the head, and sunk. Guess it didn't hurt him much. He’s on Facebook making wisecracks on a regular basis.

Thinking back, the kids in that group have accomplished some amazing things. One was ABD in physics by the age of 24 . He traveled to Russia, China, well..all over working with scientists and patenting technologies. Then Jimmy is doing his academic thing. Others have successful businesses, or are doctors, or adventurers of different sorts. I think the freedom we had to invent and explore stayed with us. We'd spend our days in the Laguna Madre. There were spoil islands everywhere from Exxon's drilling, and we named each one: Skull Island, Bone Island, ... We were readers and debaters and philosophers. We were good kids. Mday 4/5/95 & edited 3/2010

Mary - On her 14th birthday, Oct 4, 1961.
You can see the Scott's canoe on their slope across the channel.

Mary - Age 14, 1961.
Charlene's house is over my shoulder & across the channel. You can see the boat house at the water. It was filled with frogs!