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Death of Rollover Pass somewhat an exaggeration?

It seemed like a done deal. One day I would wake up and take a drive on Interstate-10 from Beaumont to Winnie, then head south on State Hwy. 124 to High Island, and finally take Texas 87 onto the Bolivar Peninsula where I would find … nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. You see, the Texas General Land Office (GLO) has planned to fill in the popular man-made cut between the Gulf of Mexico and East Galveston Bay called “Rollover Pass.” Money had been appropriated from the stingy Texas Legislature and Jerry Patterson, Texas Land Commissioner, said it was a done deal.

 “Patterson took one of the last remaining steps required by the Legislature to close Rollover this week by posting his declaration in the Texas Register that the pass causes increased erosion and needs to be closed,” a GLO press release from December 2011 declared.

But deal it is, maybe just not a done deal.

Rollover has been a popular, free fishing spot for anglers who otherwise might not find a Texas Gulf fishing place. The less-moneyed and the wheelchair bound fit into those categories. It was built for recreation and it has given back plenty. But studies say the artificial channel has caused severe beach erosion. All one has had to do over the years is walk around to the west of the pass to see some significant desedimentation. The last time I had a really close look at the erosion was about 15 years ago and that was before three hurricanes and probably a tropical storm or two came calling.

The state land office, headed by retired Marine fighter pilot Lt. Col. Jerry Patterson, is charged with caring for Texas beaches and GLO plans to build a 1,000-foot pier for anglers after filling in Rollover. Patterson is also a considerable Texas pol, having served in the Legislature and who plans to run for lieutenant governor in 2014.

A February editorial in our local daily newspaper, the Beaumont Enterprise, said it was time to piss on the fire and call in the dogs at Rollover. Well, they didn’t put it exactly that way.

But the property is owned by the local community association, as well as the rod and gun club, which includes conservationists among its number, whose members say: “Hold on for one cotton-pickin’ minute!” The club says it has plans to help enhance the spot and, basically, says Patterson can take his pier and stick it up his leather neck.

Bolivar of years past was pretty much the egalitarian Upper Texas coastal spot even up to the time much of Crystal Beach and other sections of the peninsula were flattened in 2008 by Hurricane Ike. One can only look at the rebuilding going on and surmise that the “Phoenix” version of Bolivar — raised from the ashes — will be much pricier. The beach itself changed in tenor over the years after Galveston Island, across the bay, outlawed alcohol on its beaches. Thus, Crystal Beach became the “party.”

The spot adjacent to Rollover has been home to bars and bait houses in past years. At watering holes there, and at the Ship’s Wheel, one could always find the colorful characters who searched for their lives and who seemed to get caught in the sea drift. It really has nothing to do with good nor ill. It’s just another hue of beaches.

Other worries such as the pass causing changes in the bay’s salinity levels exist on top of the erosion problem, the latter which is fought all up and down the beaches along the now washed out Hwy. 87, from McFaddin Beach to High Island.

Scientifically, I couldn’t say what would be the best answer to the question: Should the GLO should go ahead, fill in Rollover Pass and build the pier? I feel like the growing Houston-area population and money could very well turn Bolivar into a continuation of Galveston, which can be accessed by a very charming and energizing ferry ride. That’s not to say Galveston is not without its charms. I love the town. But it isn’t Bolivar of yesteryear.

The GLO and other entities across our country are fighting beach erosion. It doesn’t just happen on the Upper Texas Coast. It seems like where there is a will to save Rollover Pass, then a way to mitigate its problems must be found and that doesn’t include just pouring money down a hole. Almost $6 million was allocated to close the pass and build the pier. Estimates to thwart the effects of Rollover are for as much as $1 million yearly, according to some figures. Of course, the pier will need upkeep. It will have to be built tough to survive future storms and might not at that.

So as Houston Chronicle outdoors writer Shannon Tompkins says in his piece I have linked, there is a “pass impasse.” Call it what you want, it is more than just about fishing.

 

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On saying good of the dead

Josh McMahan and Mike “Flathead” Blanchard probably never met.

But in death they are “bros” without the necessity ever coming between them of having a conversation, beer or even a fist fight. This is due courtesy of paid obituaries in two different newspapers in two different American cities which provided more truthful glimpses of their lives than the normal such notices that “God has another angel.”

I dare say obituaries are a passion of mine but have long been required reading. It’s not just that I am aging. Of that, it is true. I want to find out who died and if it is anyone that I know. And I say died as a lesson learned long ago from my gruff but prescient journalism professor who taught that clarity is essence in news writing.

“You don’t say, he passed-a-way,” Dr. Francine Hoffman said in her near phonetic delivery, “You don’t say, he en-tered the sweet, loving-arms-of-Jesus. You say-he-died.”

Of course, news stories or news obituaries are rarely a nutshell look at the departed — with a standard “he loved little kittens” thrown in — that is the paid obit. If one pays, practically anything within reason, good taste and libel standards, are fair game. I never saw the official obituary for Dr. Hoffman, who died only a few years after retiring from Stephen F. Austin State University, but perhaps it could be forgiven if an extra modifier was used to help describe a remarkable teacher.

Understand that obituaries, like funerals and memorial services, are not for the dead but for the living. Although, the notice may be the only time one gets his or her name in the paper. That first, perhaps, maybe second to making the local police blotter. One may also never realize until reading the obituaries that people you’ve seen in your town but don’t know lived an incredible life or did great things.

But it is even rare to read in a news story on local homicides that the victim was a “scoundrel” or a “skank.” The victim seems to be perpetually feeding the elderly or had a winning smile. This topic was once discussed among friends around a campfire after I had worked in the news business for awhile. We determined the perfect response for a reporter’s query about a victim of a shoot-out with police should be: “He was really quiet. He sat around cleaning his guns all the time.”

The two candid obituaries were found on a journalism news Website thus someone in the business figured others in the business would find them newsworthy, if not amusing. True, the obits for Josh and Mike solicit a laugh at a time in which our society, for the most part, would find inappropriate. We aren’t supposed to laugh about someone dying, especially when they might have put themselves there prematurely. Most of all we are to avoid truth at all costs when speaking of the dead. Didn’t your mother teach you: “It’s not nice to say bad things about the dead.” To which your smart-ass brother replies. “Joe Blow is dead. That’s good.”

It seems that same society tolerates the honest epitaph a bit better such as when little Johnny walks among the tombstones with his parents and spots a particular headstone. It reads: “Here lies a lawyer and an honest man.” To which Johnny remarks: “Mighty small grave for two men.”

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Hunger: Two exclamation points for the price of a Lu Ann’s Platter

Food. That is what is on my mind brothers and sisters.

Eat up!

That is what I plan to do. Because I am hungry.

Never let writing stand in the way of hunger and vice versa. Food is a needed component of writing. Although, writing doesn’t need food to survive, the writer does. Put that in your computer and smoke it!

I should wear a sign: “Will work for exclamation points!!!!”

 

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Pentagon details hypersonic ass hauling

You don’t hear the term “haul ass” too much these days.

During my younger days my Dad and brothers liked to used the term and its associated forms: “Hauling ass,” “hauled ass” somewhat but not as much as haul ass and hauling ass.

We certainly weren’t talking about actually hauling asses. Perhaps hauling a jackass would fit in the category.

“A local man was injured Saturday morning in a two-vehicle accident on Route 12. Police say Joe Blow was hauling ass when he struck a guava tree. The jackass walked away unharmed but could not be located.”

Ummm, I don’t know just doesn’t seem to work as well as just saying: “He was hauling ass when he hit a guava tree which resulted in Blow’s injury and losing his ass.”

Oh, in case I forget it completely, by “hauling ass” I mean going fast by some method or the other. There was also the joke about a man so large that if he had to haul ass he’d have to make two trips. Not so funny once you get fat enough to have your ass hauled on two trips.

What brings the topic up is that the Pentagon has released information about its experimental unmanned flight last summer of the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2.) An artist conception of the vehicle released by the military shows something that would sure as shooting your your right, first toe off would pass for some kind of genuine unidentified flying object. Except it couldn’t be a UFO if somebody could identify it, which someone can — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), to be exact.

An artist conception of the military's Falcon HTV-2 Ass Hauler.

The HTV was supposed to fly for about a half-hour after being launched on top of a rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., before crashing into the Pacific near Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands. Instead, the vehicle peeled like a promiscuous pear and crashed after only nine minutes of flight. Nevertheless, DARPA said the drone reached speeds of about 13,000 mph, or about 20 times the speed of sound. That is why they call it “hypersonic,” because it was meant to travel more than five times the speed of sound. HTV-2, the first one also crashed early, did surpass Mach 5 and then some.

DARPA said this was the last test flight of HTV-2. If so, why didn’t they call it “HTV-The Finale?” Or “HTV-Into the Deep?”

What DARPA didn’t say was that the speedy ship was definitely hauling ass, at least in my siblings and Dad’s terminology, and mine as well. And it only made one trip.

 

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A prom queen and World Peace

The perpetual beauty queen cliché says all she wants is world peace.

Really? Probably not if she is speaking of Metta World Peace, at least not today.

Metta, as we shall call him, is the Los Angeles Lakers power forward once known as Ron Artest. It doesn’t take a math major, as Artest once was at St. John’s University in Queens, to calculate an answer to why he chose such a name. Perhaps it is irony, but it is of little wonder to those whose minds run cynical.

The NBA handed the once Ron Artest of the Indiana Pacers an 86-game suspension in 2004 because he jumped into an Autumn Hills, Mich., crowd and began beating upon Detroit Pistons fans. Bad boy, bad boy, what’cha gonna do … ? Artest, or so my cynicism says, did what any great athlete who wants to keep his day job does. He transforms into a saint doing charity work. After all, “Metta” is a Buddhist term for loving-kindness.

Unfortunately, the 6-foot, 7-inch, 260-lb. Laker might have ignored “Good St. Metta” poised on his left shoulder — visible only to World Peace — opting instead for “Mean St. Metta” on his right. Metta says it was an accidental blow Sunday night when his elbow decked Oklahoma City’s James Harden. The Thunder’s guard suffered a concussion, which World Peace said happened, when his elbow slipped after a celebratory chest thump. Loving? Kindness?

Well, that just kind of stinks, provided World Peace intentionally elbowed Harden into a concussion.

Metta will likely receive a suspension but a real, sort of, beauty queen may receive more severe punishment. No, she wasn’t wishing for world peace, not even Ron Artest Metta World Peace. Actually, she wasn’t even a beauty queen but rather a prom queen. Hey it’s a queen! At least it wasn’t RuPaul.

It was one of those heart-warming stories I see every Saturday and Sunday evening on the local TV news where the one reporter working that day apparently has to cover every fund-raising, analeptic that will fill the 10-minute hole of “newscast.”

A 19-year-old Angie Gomez of the El Paso suburb of Horizon City claimed she was dying of cancer and managed to collect more $17,000 in donations.  Gomez professed that she had only six months to live. Angie also said she had to miss her high school prom because of cancer treatments. Her classmates were so touched they threw a prom for her which did double duty as a fundraiser. There turned out to be a problem, however. The prom queen wasn’t sick with cancer.

Wait, it’s a miracle!

It isn’t a miracle that she was charged with felony theft. It is strange that her mother didn’t know about the “extent of the fundraising,” according to numerous stories today. What does that mean? What did her mother know and when did she know it? I mean, the El Paso Times ran a story and everything! Well, maybe her Moms doesn’t read the paper.

What a wonderful world full of inspiring people. It’s enough to make one want to wish for, well, maybe not world peace but perhaps a little karma.