Galveston

I was out at the edge of the swamp last evening when the sultriness almost knocked me over.  I thought, ‘I know where this came from.’  Hot and heavy air from the Gulf Coast had literally blown all the way up to New England to find me. 

I grew up between Houston and Galveston and left that hot and humid place the first chance I got.  Reading about survivors of the storm wading through salt water and sewage thick with mosquitoes and water moccasins reminded me of my own experiences riding out hurricanes as a kid.  I don’t do heat very well, or rising water, or poisonous snakes. 

But while the images in the newspaper increased my concern for friends and relatives still living down near the Gulf, the sensations in the air filled me with nostalgia.  At the beach in New England, we bask on the sand hoping to store enough heat to see us through a quick dip.  At Galveston, we would spend the whole day in surf the temperature of bathwater because the sand was too hot to walk on.  I remember as a kid the seemingly interminable causeway across the bay, the blinding glare of the sky when we got on the island, and then that first glimpse of the ocean, followed by the overpowering smell of heat hitting salt water, and suntan lotion on cheap rubber flotation devices. 

Galveston was for me a place of wonderfully mysterious textures.  There were grand old houses from the Victorian era when the city rivaled New Orleans, the seedy Pleasure Pier with its shops selling seashells and other tourist junk, and along the beach, a fortress from the Spanish American war.  On the flat and empty two-lane blacktop where I lived, there was nothing but ditches and weeds and heat that literally melted the asphalt.   

Ironically, decades after I moved north to pursue “the life of the mind,” I now live on a two lane black top with ditches and, actually, a fair number of weeds.  As a kid, I used to ride up and down our road on my bicycle talking to myself.  I also spent a considerable amount of time walking along the ditches with my wagon, picking up bottles for what was then the 2-cent deposit.  I laugh when I find myself out doing the same thing now, only now the motivation isn’t pocket money.  I own five acres and a 17^th century house along this swamp road, and as Wallace Stevens might have pointed out, it doesn’t look good to have junk in the weeds.  I think about how profoundly lonely I was as a kid, in the heat, with no one to talk to, and no one else who seemed interest in textures, and history, and old fortresses along the beach.  Today, as a writer, I’m just as physically isolated most days as I was as a kid.  But now I belong to so many communities that I care deeply about—including the physical community of the little town in which I live—that I can enjoy the luxury of solitude without the debilitating pain of loneliness. 

My heart goes out to any kids down on the Gulf today trying to find someone to play with. 

  Bill