I remember the chart room in Port Aransas, this was a bar. There was a guy named Joe who was a mechanic sometimes, a politician sometimes, and a guitarist and lead singer in a band sometimes. He used to play there.
I remember Dad dancing with a woman there. I usually did not see him without a ponytail or his hair stuffed up under his hat, but tonight, that blonde hair flowed down most of his back. I thought he would be with us forever. It felt that night like this life would just never end. The band was on the stage playing Proud Mary. Things were perfect.
I was working at A Auto Supply earlier that day. I had put battery acid in someone’s battery. I was drinking a beer in the Chart Room on Saturday night and noticed my jeans were disintegrating. I’ve never seen anything quite like it!
I loved the Chart Room. It is one of the places that I think reminds me of the year I reunited with my Dad. It did not make it out of 1984, so that is probably why. The Chart Room was one of two bars we went to the day I turned 19. I thought it was a bad idea to make the establishments aware that I had been drinking in know that only today was I finally legal to do so. Of course, this is Texas, a child could drink with a parent or legal guardian in bars. That was a real law.
That night, much to my embarrassment, my Dad had figured out a cheat code for making fried dough. He actually brought them to the chart room and the Gaff with us to offer to others. At 19, I guess that is weird. Decades later, I think the idea is actually quite cool. Looking back, I love it.
I loved the Station Street Pub. All of our crew would go there to have a couple of beers and some pickle chip appetizers after a long day at the parts store drinking beer and throwing darts. The porch area was screened in, ceiling fans spun hard above us and the front grilles of all of our cars faced us from the other side of the screens. Charlie was there drinking Lone Star. He was a wonderful old guy who owned the parts store. A long lanky man whose face just seemed to smile all of the time. Mike, who worked the counter for Charlie, Budweiser, was always full of stories. Tom from Canada, Schlitz was his beer. Ended most sentences in 'eh". Rick, the shark hunter, captain of the charter boat Orca. It was a nice stop before heading home for dinner.
We would sometimes go to the Sail Club. It was more expensive than the rest, it was more trendy than the rest. It was one of the few on the island that regularly featured live bands. It was also nicknamed the Jail Club because rumor had it that if you stayed till closing, you were going to jail. I always played the song Leila from ZZ Tops El Loco album when I arrived there.
I loved all these places. I think the Gaff was my favorite and the most controversial for me in a coming-of-age sort of way. We would walk into the Gaff and order up a couple of long-neck Lone Stars and Dad would walk over to the jukebox, drop a quarter in and BB King's The Thrill is Gone would start playing. He would gesture to me and I would walk over and play Betty Lou's Getting Out Tonight. It was on the B-side of Bob Seger‘s You’ll Accompany Me.
I met a girl named Sylvia there. She worked at Whataburger. We became friends. Before the night was over someone would play Seven Spanish Angels. It was inevitable. On December 23 Dad and I went and we took the Dodge. Sylvia wanted her keys and I got them for her. Dad came out into the parking lot and tried to get me. Without warning, some strange unresolved anger in me came forward and pushed him away. I do know that it surprised him. I can only briefly remember screaming at him on the way home that night for being so absent in my life. A moment later I woke up on the floor of our living room with a blanket over me. It was the next day. I asked Dad what I was doing on the floor as he was sitting at the kitchen table contemplating something deep. “Between words of suicide, you passed out there.” He then told me that I drove home so badly that it scared him which was not an easy thing to do. The bad thing about getting that drunk and then having somebody tell you something about your life that is so deep is they may not remember the next morning so unfortunately my dad had to reveal a secret to me again this morning as well. I felt bad that he had to say it twice.
It would seem that I would learn a lot about myself in all of these bars. Many of the most defining moments came from lessons learned or experiences that happened in the smoky dimness of these places. In a way, my heart will always exist in them.
When my father turned 39, we had some friends over and it was going pretty well, but I did not pace myself. I ended up out in my room in the late afternoon. Dad and our friend Nancy’s boyfriend somehow ended up in a very physical fight. The fight woke me up. When I walked out into the living room, there were so many things knocked over the TV was barely teetering off the end of its stand. Dad and Nancy’s boyfriend were bleeding and now sitting on the couches with little energy to move. They soon were passed out and I asked Nancy if she wanted to go to the Gaff. She did and so we went. Once we got there we sort of mingled independently.
I saw a young woman sitting at a long table. I was at the other end, she was just looking around. So I said hello and we began to talk. I learned that her name was Sandy, she was 15 and lived on the island. I told her that my sister who is also 15 was coming for a visit in less than 2 months. What neither of us knew at that moment was that in 3 months, my sister would actually move to Port Aransas, start school there, and become Sandy’s best friend.
Her stepfather saw me talking with her and clearly got the wrong idea. He challenged me with a choice of leaving the table or things were going to get nasty. It was funny. For the first time, I did not have my father with me. It made me realize that with him, I had this incredible force field with me because no one would ever mess with him. I gave the guy a purposeful look like I was trying to decide between a vanilla or a chocolate ice cream cone, which made him angrier. I just wanted him to know, he did not scare me, but at the same time, there was a 15-year-old kid sitting here. She certainly did not need anything like that. I respectfully excused myself and told Sandy, it was nice to meet her.
One thing is for sure about the Gaff. Over the years I had good moments and other times disastrous ones. I did stake my claim years later, however. In 1989, when I quit drinking, I walked back into the Gaff, only weeks after my lowest night ever there. This time, I had a 32-ounce Ice Box coffee with me. Dad and I played darts. I needed to do this. Like the song says, if I can make it here I’m gonna make it anywhere. This was particularly true of the Gaff and Port Aransas. I know some may look at my life and wonder how I could be content with my long string of random chaos, but it is how I learned and grew. It taught me that I can still make choices.
All those times in the bars with Dad, people thought we were best friends and not father and son. They would marvel at our relationship when we told them he was my Dad. I am so grateful that I had these times with him. It was a crash course into who I was to become. I was mostly raised around a large number of women, so it helped me understand them more than the average male, but something was missing. Here in Port Aransas, I was being fire tested because you know, I never do anything nice and easy.
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