Coastal Connections
Many years distant, buddy of mine drove down, while I worked in Corpus Christi, he popped out to Mustang island, spent the day — I don’t know. One of his recommendations, “Next time we’re here, stay at Laughing Horse Lodge.” He’s never been back with me. The rest is mired in memory.
Walking down Avenue G, go towards the water, the Gulf is maybe two or three blocks? But walking back, coastal sands tracing patterns in the street, along the pavement, and the minimal curb? There’s a quality about the timelessness. Year, maybe two years back? I stayed at the new construction, big condo building, not fully aware of the location.
It as where the old Laughing Horse used to be.
Add gas station coffee from Stripes.
Coastal Connections
Walking alone, headed back to the rental, left friends and family on the beach under an awning? Walking along the sandy version of that avenue, follow it to its end and it dumps into the bay at the ferry dock. Going the other way? At my back? The Gulf.
Port A — Port Aransas on the map — is on Mustang Island. It’s the northern terminus of the longest coastal barrier island in North America, I think, separated from South Padre Island by a narrow cut, and then, defined by the shipping channel, Aransas Pass.
I first worked down here in the early nineties, and for several dozen years, it was a regular stop, once, maybe twice a year. So there’s a familiarity. Fished the bays and backwaters, the inshore fishing is almost phenomenal.
There are older images of me grinning while holding big fish. Or just holding fish.
Remembered that gas station coffee from Stripes.
Coastal Connections
Still, on this last trip, I kept having a haunted feeling, a sense, a remembrance of people and places passed, what was before, and isn’t now.
The Laughing Horse was a not fully retrofitted old tourist court, a number of cinderblock structures scattered over a small compound, pet-friendly, the one I remembered staying in? It had a corrugated sheet metal divider, held in place with two-by-fours as the shower’s screen. Interesting architectural choices.
No amenities. I mean, there was a nice covered porch, and the parking was sort of paved, aged, cracked asphalt, and in the season, riotous colors of flowers in the metal pots. Nothing of great values because there is no way to reason with hurricane season.
Looking at the sand blowing on the street, I had a shirt in hand, and sunglasses, a phone in my pocket, not much else, I remembered a girl. Woman. Person. Lover and friend? Don’t recall the real motivation, work, play, something, but a coastal trip and staying at Laughing Horse, then, the next morning, getting up and realizing there is no coffee or coffee maker in the room?
I recall walking two blocks up to the Stripes, the convenience store that was across the street, and the weirdest connection, getting gas station coffee from that place, and this must’ve been more than two decades distant.
No third generation coffee. Not even a Starbucks, and I don’t think Mustang Island’s Coffee Waves was even an idea, not back then.
Gas station coffee.
Coastal Connections
There’s a final part of this, two more pieces, one was a radio station, played Texas Country Music, and that opened a door to a store by the old Texas Surf Museum, in Corpus Christi, with rows of local musicians’ musics.
That radio, a kid crooning about a “Gulf coast romance,” and the first bands of a hurricane, blowing overhead.
Gas station coffee from Stripes.
I can’t recall the exact situation, but walking up and getting coffee, asking the person behind the counter what her birthday was, and ambling back with two cups of coffee.
Watching as waves of rain washed over the beach, dull wind roaring in the background, bands of weather roiling along the coastline, stopping for gas and some plain, gas station coffee from Stripes.
Coastal Connections
I looked it up, it was November of ’96.
1997: cowboys and surf boards
That always echoes back, at the time, it was bleeding edge technology. The world has changes since then. The beach echoes back those passed lives lived.
I kept thinking about getting a cup of coffee at the Stripes, on Avenue G, close to the beach.
Coastal Connections
Where is Kramer?
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