Somehow, summer disintegrated into fall, but there was no way to tell by way of the weather. Labor Day weekend came and went. It left Port Aransas with truckloads of drunken trash all over the beach. Dad was in charge of the beach crew, they would spend an entire week picking up the mess of empties, lost clothing, random items that did not belong on the beach, and who knows what else.
News reporters came out to the island to report on the aftermath. Spring Break, and holiday weekends, they were all alike. Our island of 2000ish people exploded into as much as 600,000. The TV crews always acted Ike this was unexpected, or maybe they just had nothing better to report.
My Dad understood that being an employee of the city, you might end up with your picture in the paper now and then. This he tolerated. The one thing that was not going to fly, was being on TV news. When KIII in Corpus Christi reporters stuck a camera and microphone in his face asking about how many people there were out on the beach working at the cleanup effort, he made sure that he would not be on television. In doing so, he also helped them to see how stupid a question it was that they were asking.
Joe looked blankly at the camera then turned and looked out at his crew, slowly pointing to each one, one at a time. “One, Two, Three, Four” Another blank stare at the camera, then a smile, as he pointed to himself: “Five!” Needless to say, he did not end up on the evening news. Just the beach truck, the workers out picking up the trash with the narration, “five-person crew working to get things back to normal…” Dad was pretty proud of this.
Dad was clearly happy to have me with him now. It was a very common thing for people to wait until he walked away to use the restroom or somewhere out of the room. They would suddenly zero in on me and say, “You have no idea how much your being here has changed your father!” You could tell, the change was significant. I heard this so many times, it was clearly true.
I met a lot of people through Dad. Some were friends and workmates. His circle of friends was actually interesting. It was the people that we met together that were a bit more Twilight Zone-ish. There was a couple living in our friend Jeri’s 1950’s mobile home. I recall helping them with something that felt like either a stakeout or a heist. I could never be sure.
I met Johnnie. She was a pianist. She had studied classical music. I would bring my Stratocaster over to her house and we would try to play together. She was always struggling to meet me in the rock and roll genre, and I was certainly not anywhere talented enough to meet her classical expertise. We always had fun talking and playing music together even though we seemed worlds apart.
We met wayward people on the beach living in a bus. It was always amazing how you encountered people in Port Aransas, and for that day or night, they were like special guest stars in a television show. Then, we never saw them again.
A Auto Supply was drying up on me. The city had started doing its own split rims and with summer tourists gone, Charlie could not continue to keep the tire shop open. I had very little job experience at this point in my life. I put applications in all around Corpus Christie. We, like other islanders, did not have a phone. I left A Auto’s number on applications as I went. Nothing was coming of it though.
Dad and I moved into Jeri’s 1950s mobile home in late September to get ready for Grandma and Brooke’s visit. It was not all that fair to Dad. We moved into a place that was $50 more a month which was 25% higher and now I was not employed.
The weekdays were long and strange for me. I missed my friends back at Lone Oak. I had lots of time on my hands so I played guitar all the time. I created these recordings called Rock and Roll Strange Tapes which were collages of music I played, songs I wrote, radio plays I wrote and enacted, with sound effects, game shows, and simple audio letters. These I sent to my friends up north.
In October, the EMS Chili Cookoff took place. It was fun to be at an event in Port Aransas that really modeled it as a small town. Dad seemed to like the henna tattoo artist and the kids there were all excited as they would choose tattoos for him to get and the artist would do them. It was that sort of payday happiness I loved about Dad. I always remembered how he loved the ZZ Top song Just Got Paid, and there it was on a beautiful October Saturday on our little Island, deep in the south of Texas.
As the weeks continued, the lines blurred on who I felt I was, not working can do that to you. Missing friends back home and not finding my rightful spot except with my Dad wearing on me. He was handling everything financially and that too made me feel bad. I worked on the house and did chores. I needed definition, and the guitar gave me something.
When I was 14, I began writing a book called Lost in a Strange Life. In the next few years, I rewrote the story two more times. Now, since I was not working, I began to write it again, this time, for the final time.
So I had two lives now, the one who loved hanging with my father nights and weekends and the other who was a recluse, missing friends, lost in my book and music, sort of living an alternate existence. The lines were getting more blurred all of the time.
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