Sea turtles can grow to five hundred pounds and range widely over the world’s oceans.
They mysteriously return to lay eggs on the same beach where they were born and man has been one of their biggest enemies since their meat is tasty, their shells can be fashioned into ornaments, their body parts dried and ground into Oriental medicine.
A sea turtle rescue center operates on South Padre Island’s Gulf Shores Drive. Volunteers staff it, donations keep it alive, and injured or sick turtles inhabit a series of lined swimming pool tanks inside the rehabilitation center.
Some turtles have been victims of boat propellers, some were injured in fishing nets, some lost a limb to sharks. Life as a turtle has dangers but when the turtles are recovered from their setbacks, they are released back into the Gulf, tagged, monitored, and celebrated.
Allison is a current resident turtle with a prothesis. Losing her tail, she has been fitted with a new rubber one that lets her glide in her small tank like a Gulf War veteran with new robotic legs. Victims of carelessness, malice, chance, turtles are easy to love and people support the turtle cause by buying turtle memorabilia in the gift shop.
Man too has his own tragedies to overcome.
Our safety tanks take the form of halfway houses, hospitals, psych wards, jails, and churches.
There are plenty of days we aren’t ready to be released into the world again, either.
Sand is the most common material on the beach.
While we walk on it, draw initials or hearts with arrows through them, there are those who use sand to sculpt fantastic visions.
Outside Pier 19 in South Padre Island there is a sand sculpture. There is sand art in front of the visitor center on Gulf Shores Drive. Even some creations done on the beach ,by anonymous hands, take ideas further than a small bucket, a plastic shovel, and a kid’s hands and imagination can ever go.
There are those who say we humans are sand, but gifted with mobility, speech, and the breath of life. We are walking dreams, puffs of smoke, fireflies on a dark evening, mermaids doing the backstroke on a midsummer night’s swim. Shakespeare, as a writer using sand instead of words, would have built incredible sand castles surrounded by moats and topped with colorful flags. On the plains outside the moat would be raging battles ,and, in the highest towers ,huddled men would plot while women played lutes and whispered court scandal.
Sand in Michaelangelo’s hands would turn into lightning bolts flung from the hands of God’s.
This mermaid and porpoise make good companions. Flowing lines are always more peaceful than straight ones. This couple defines contentment and commitment.
They are waiting for the Sorcerer that froze them in time to relent.
South Padre Island is accessible from Texas highway 100 via the Queen Isabella Bridge that connects Port Isabel, Texas on one end and South Padre Island on the other.
When you hit the beaches here you have miles and miles to walk and on most mornings men and women carry Wal- Mart plastic bags to hold their seashells. South Padre is a favorite haunt for Spring Break revelers as well as us retired folks.
Pier 19 is a local restaurant and tourist center where you can have breakfast, schedule fishing or dolphin tours, buy in the gift shop, fish off the pier, look at photos and memorabilia from past decades.
Out front of this eatery is a huge shark caught by Captain Phil Cano on February 30, 2004. Its mouth is open, blood drips down the sides of its jaws, teeth are pointed and ready to bite again. You can see the monster from blocks away.
The problem is February 30.
Once the date is suspect it is easy to start questioning the rest of thIs fish story.
Truth doesn’t matter much in a place where weather changes often, time stretches, and you only need shorts, a T shirt, a ball cap and sneakers to be part of the gang.
In April, college kids arrive, prices escalate, parties go late into the night. Pier 19 will be booked solid and some libertine will hang a bra on the shark’s front tooth.
That will make a Texas size story, but, for now, this post is all imagination waiting for reality to catch up.
Clines Corners is a travel center on I- 40 east of Moriarty, New Mexico.
It opened in 1934 at the intersection of what was then Route 66 and highway 85 going north to Santa Fe or highway 85 south to Roswell.
1934 was long ago, at the end of the Great American Depression, written up in history books, documented in stark black and white photos of dust whipped people with belongings piled into pickup trucks heading for California’s Garden of Eden. Some say those days are coming again, with great billowing clouds of mid west dust and stockbrokers jumping off big city balconies.
As you draw closer to the Corners, their billboards promote cheap coffee, clean restrooms, authentic Indian moccasins, salt water taffy, cheaper gas. Inside the center are trinkets, enough to buy five Manhattan’s. The postcards are catchy, the candy tempting, the restrooms clean. I don’t buy anything but linger at a rack of postcards that reminds me of Scotttreks, my digital postcard rack.
1934 is an eternity ago in a century of exponential change.
How do young feel when confronted with a generation of elders who grew up with black and white tv, rotary phones, Phillip Morris cigarettes, Schlitz beer, the Little Rascals and Post Toasties cereal? How will the young be looked upon by their children who will ride in cars that are driver less, have their moves documented by security cameras and do school on computers with a virtual teacher who never gets mad, always is prepared, and doesn’t have to deal with bad behavior or inappropriate clothes?
Even though we look amused at the past, we too are going to be in someone else’s rear view mirror.
The 31st of December begins quietly.
As the day moves forwards it changes like your favorite radio station whose volume keeps increasing as the variety and quality of the songs gets better and talk gets more inflammatory.
As night falls there are effigies being burned, in front of a hotel, by the flower market, on your corner. There are satires performed, bands play, and revelers dance in the street. As dark comes, city folk in masks and costumes parade the streets in gangs looking like escapees from a Michael Jackson Thriller video.
New Year crawls in and the Old Year creeps out.
This year has not been bad so I don’t have joy in seeing it burned up.
The old year goes with a whimper and the New Year lies before us like a baby in a manger.
This affair starts early.
Usually, people wait till dark to do their exorcisms, but this bunch has already laid their body in the street in front of a business and are stuffing papers down its pants.
In a world of camera phones, nothing goes un-noticed and un-reported. These participants don’t care if people are watching. It is probable this is a replica of their boss and they are, as a group, telling him what they think of him. It takes a few matches before smoke comes with fire close behind.
There is something eerie about seeing a body set on fire, even if It is a make believe body.It calls up images from the Mid East where real people are set on fire, heads cut off, and people blow each other up with explosives..
This bloodletting will be over tonight and tomorrow shops will close, streets and sidewalks will be hosed down, and people will spend time with family.
Exorcisms are best finished quickly, and remembered for a long long time.
Ecuador doesn’t celebrate Halloween but they have New Year’s Eve to take Halloween’s place.
Today there are bad spirits about.
They are atop cars, seated in chairs in retail stores, looking down from balconies, slumped on curbs and grouped near churches. Some are fully dressed and have ears and noses and eyes and mouths. Others are misformed aberrations that somehow have survived termination. The tradition is to stuff them with messages, good and bad, light them on fire in the street, then jump over them to make your wishes come true.
The effigies have been appearing early. In a spirit place like Cuenca, with churches and crosses in every part of town, one has to accept that there are Demons as well as Angels.
Getting rid of bad has good consequences.
In a place where there were only five murders last year, there is still a reservoir of pent up anger that has to be released.
We need our rituals and traditions.
Certain things in our certain world are unpleasantly uncertain.
You go down Luis Cordero all the way to Calle Larga, make a right, go mas y meno two blocks and look right, and you are at the Sunrise Cafe Cuenca.
The Sunrise Cafe Cuenca is a hangout for ex-pats. It is a comfortable mom and pop place with good prices, basic local and American eating, and people coming and going.
In the back is a huge room where friends get together on Saturday mornings to socialize but the room is open to anyone who wants to take a seat.
Breakfast is huevos rancheros in a way I haven’t had them before.
They serve their plate with a scoop of guacamole, diced onions, fried potatoes, eggs over easy on a tortilla covered with homemade salsa.
Frank, the waiter from Cuba who sells Cuban cigars on the side, keeps coffee coming and a lady next to me is studying lines for a radio play she is reading tomorrow.
There are families and kids here, as well as married couples and singles. Some of the old guys have gray hair, pony tails, and talk Bernie Sanders. Some of the women are grandmothers and talk about last night’s smoking date.
In Cuenca, you do like Cuencanistas do.
This lady in red, walking in heels and checking her phone, is lucky. The sidewalk here is negotiable.
Her bumps, even from across the street, don’t appear to need repair.
Panama hats have oddly enough always been made in Ecuador.
From the 1600’s, the weaving of hats out of the leaves of the toquilla palm has been done, at it’s finest level ,on the western coast of Ecuador.
These best hats are called Montecristo’s and are from the village of the same name in the province of Manabi. These hats are light colored, lightweight, breathable and have long been popular in hot climates where protection from the sun is essential . The price for Montecristos varies from hundreds of dollars to thousands.
It can take a skilled Ecuadorian craftsman up to six months to make one of these Panama hats. When you pick up a fine hat, it is light. You can roll it up in your suitcase and it returns to its shape when you take it out. The finer the weave the more expensive the hat.
President Theodore Roosevelt popularized the Panama hat when he wore one at the Panama Canal. A grandiose man, he was a President with an ego too large for whatever hat he was wearing.
It is said that a fine Panama hat will hold water and pass through a wedding ring when rolled up.
Machine made and cheap is the mantra of our times.
Turning men into machines and making machines do the work of men are themes of our day.
Walking, you see odd stuff.
This Museo and Cafe is on a walkway, just down from one of the tortuous staircases that lead you from Cuenca’s Historical District to the Tomebomba river.
The first time I tried to visit this curiosity, its front door was closed. The second time the front door was actually open. A sign on the next door inside said to ring a buzzer and admittance was one dollar and fifty cents. I rang, but no one came to let me in.
This third visit a tall lean kid opens the front door, says nothing as I am standing on the sidewalk behind him, goes through the interior door and slams it without saying a word. He is too thin to be Pugsly.
Sometimes you have to let stuff go.
For now, their website is my only entry into their world.
Sometimes places are prohibited for good reason.
If I enter through these locked and bolted museum doors, I might become one of the exhibits.
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