A4
December 29, 2016
Island Moon
Zahn cont. from A1
Padre Island National Seashore Distributes MADD’s Red Ribbons
record stating that Exxon Company wanted to revise the permit drawings to include heavier culverts “due to heavy rig loads they will require to transport via the road.” This falls in line with the fact that a well pad was constructed on the north side of Zahn road before you get to the beach. In fact, the well pad is still there today; buried under 100,000 cubic yards of sand that is the dune mitigation for Tortuga Dunes.
Padre Island National Seashore is teaming with MADD this December to distribute red ribbons to visitors, in honor of the 30th Anniversary of the Designated Driver and Red Ribbon awareness campaign, Tie One On For Safety.
Construction was then supposed to start July of 1981, but it didn’t again for some reason. The permit was transferred to Devco International by request of Charlie Zahn in November of 1982, with the same permit application drawings referenced. Construction was supposedly initiated in December of 1982, with the final authorization of transfer to Devco in February of 1983. The road doesn’t show up on GoogleEarth until 1985 though. The road was later deeded from the County to City, likely due to the area being incorporated by the City. I am missing some pieces to the story though, and I know it. Maybe some of the old timers could fill me in sometime.
Beach roads
Mothers Against Drunk Driving
Caesar Kleberg in the Norias Ranchhouse
But anyway, while it seems like a simple thing, constructing a road to the beach, things evidently aren’t that easy around here. I mean, it took 55 years to get Packery Channel dredged, from inception to Hurricane Emily popping it open prematurely. I’m hoping that it doesn’t take anywhere near that long to re-build Access Road 3A (north end of the seawall). But we’re all going to have to have a little patience during construction, which hopefully should start here in the next couple of weeks, and be finished by spring break. Access roads to the beach around here are very important things.
feuding but instead a campaign of guerrilla warfare being waged by people from the Mexican side of the river.
Well, that’s it folks. 2016 is in the history books. I hope you all had a blessed year, and will follow up with a blessed 2017. Drop me a line at tarponchaser@mail.com and I’ll see you all on the rocks more often next year.
The next night it was the Texans’ turn to strike. They surrounded the house of one of
The very next day fourteen bandits swept across the river into Sebastian and looted a store then raided a corn sheller being run by a pair of farmers one of whom was A.L. Austin the president of the local vigilante Law and Order League and his son both of whom they executed. The next day they took a pot shot at a random automobile near Los Fresnos wounding the driver and then shot the night watchman in the town of Lyford. It was open war.
Around cont. from A1 We reported a few weeks ago that Beach Access Road 3A at the end of Windward Drive is about to undergo a facelift after years of neglect. When the project went to the city council for a vote last week it was revealed that about half of the money spend on the project was for design and permits meaning that there will be about $400,000 of actual improvements made to the road. The council approved the use of $340,389.04 of the money that came from bonds passed in 2014, the rest from other sources in the city budget. Maybe that’s normal but it seems like a lot of pencil pushing for an access road improvement project. Construction is set to begin in January.
and while the ranchers were trying to figure out their meanings the Mexicans opened fire with 7mm Mauser rifles at 250 yards. The sixteen defenders were outnumbered four to one and two of them were immediately wounded and the ranch’s carpenter George Forbes was shot through the lung as the group raced for the cover of a nearby railroad embankment. The raiders charged from three sides but their initial onslaught was stalled when a King Ranch cowboy named Lauro Cavazos shot the bandit leader’s horse from under him. But in a whimsical twist that was a sign of the changing times straight out of a Roy Rogers movie the bandits forgot to cut the telephone line to the house. The ranchers called Kleberg who was in Brownsville and one can only imagine how the call must have gone; “Hello, operator we’re calling from the King Ranch and we are being attacked by Mexican bandits.” “Mexican bandits? Okay, hold on while I connect you.” Kleberg explained that there were no locomotive captains willing to take the risk of running a train to their rescue and his failure to act was said to be a sore spot with the cowboys for years afterward. After two solid hours of fighting – about 8:30 p.m. – the raiders “yelling like Indians” mounted a full charge at the headquarters but cowboy Pinkie Taylor shot and killed the bandit leader at forty yards and when five other raiders were hit it took the momentum out of the raiders. They strapped their wounded on horses and rode off south leaving their white flag behind.
Get ready for 2017 everybody, and say hello if you see us Around The Island.
Difference cont. from A1 It declared the Díaz regime illegal and called for revolt against Díaz starting on November 20, 1910 and the revolution was on. Pancho Villa and other rebel leaders “liberated” Juarez across from El Paso and revolution spread like wildfire along the Texas border. Over the next five years The Border was an uneasy place. The Coastal Bend became a transshipment point for arms into Mexico and local tales of intrigue and boats headed south in the night abounded.
The only fatality suffered by the Norias contingent was an Hispanic woman whose husband worked as a section hand on the ranch who was captured by the bandits and ask how many gringos were on the ranch. She cursed the bandit chief and was shot in the mouth and killed.
When in doubt shoot
We were here!
In 1915 that things escalated. Captain Henry Lee Ransom commanded Company D of the Texas Rangers headquartered in San Antonio but billeted in Harlingen. Just five days after he took command of the Rangers cross-border raiders, later found to be connected to Madero forces – struck against a the forty-two-foot bridge of the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railroad near the Valley town of Sebastian destroying it, cutting telephone and telegraph lines and isolating Brownsville from the rest of Texas. Ransom managed to identify one of the raiders and arrested him at his house where he gave up the names of several other raiders. Ransom was in charge of security for Nueces County and his method of law enforcement was stated clearly and left little room for nuance, “When in doubt shoot.” He believed in shooting bandits on the spot and that included “those who looked like bandits.” As he put it, “A bad disease calls for bitter medicine” and he unleashed his bitter medicine and racial profiling down the barrel of a gun which only served to heat up an already simmering border environment. His instructions from Texas Governor Pa Ferguson, an anti-prohibitionist Democrat, were to “clean it up down there if he had to kill every d--- man connected with it.” Governor Pa promised to pardon every man who had to do the dirty work. It was a declaration of war. On July 24, 1915 raiders connected to Madero robbed S. Saenz’s store on the American side of the Rio Grande at Progresso, the favored border crossing these days of Winter Texans in search of cheap prescription drugs. Two raiders were killed “resisting arrest.” Then on August 3 twenty-six cavalrymen of Troop A, 112 Cavalry were called to the Scrivner Ranch twenty miles north of Brownsville where it was said that a Madero supporter was harboring the same group of raiders on his ranch called Los Tulitos. The group of about fifty raiders managed to hold off three troops of cavalry but the fight brought the borderland into open warfare.
King Ranch the Sebastian raiders in a house near the main crossing of the Arroyo Colorado and killed the occupant and one of his sons, riddling one body with seventeen bullet holes. The next morning as the Rangers searched the house a surviving son fired a point blank shot from his hiding place under a bed which left powder burns on a Ranger’s nose before the Ranger returned fire and dispatched him.
Raid on the King Ranch
The Army sent troops along with two companies of Rangers to the Ranch including a former Ranger named Marcus Hines who weighted over 300 pounds. When the troopers arrived at the headquarters of the Norias Ranch which consisted of a two-story frame ranch house located next to the railroad tracks that cut across the ranch, they found that the Rangers and several of the King Ranch cowboys had already left the house in search of the bandits. They were sitting around the ranch house at six o’clock that evening trying to plot their next move when they saw riders approaching
Business leaders in South Texas decided they must act. They met behind closed doors in San Benito on August 5 and while there are no minutes of what was discussed the outcome was the realization that the recent violence was not of the typical form of South Texas political
Rangers from across the plain. They figured it was the Rangers returning until they got close enough to see they were about sixty of them wearing large sombreros and heading for the ranch house in a dead run. One of the leaders was wearing a Mexican Army uniform. The guerrillas carried a white flag of truce and a red flag of no quarter
“We hope community members will help make our roads safer than ever this holiday season by planning ahead for a designated non-drinking driver if celebrations include alcohol,” said Colleen Sheehey-Church, MADD National President. “We’re honored to join with The National Park Service to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Tie One On For Safety and the critical role played by designated drivers.”
With 3,000 DWI arrests made this year alone in national parks, this partnership is vital to both MADD and The NPS.
“We are thrilled to partner with MADD to kick off a safe holiday season in our national parks by distributing red ribbons to visitors,” Charles Cuvelier, Chief of NPS’s Law Enforcement, Security and Emergency Services. “We hope to remind everyone to designate a nondrinking driver if their plans include alcohol, with the Tie One on for Safety Campaign. The following parks will be distributing red ribbons this holiday season: •
Acadia National Park in Maine
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Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and Virginia
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Chesapeake & Ohio Canal national Historical Park in Washing DC, Maryland and West Virginia
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Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in New Jersey and Pennsylvania
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Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas
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Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama
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Padre Island National Seashore in Texas
The holidays are one of the most dangerous times on our nation’s roadways, with more people traveling, an increased number of festivities where alcohol is served, and a surge in drunk driving. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve in 2015, there were 973 drunk driving fatalities across the country, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. With so many options today such as Uber, taxis, public transportation and alcohol-free friends or family members, there is no excuse to drink and drive.
To order a free Tie One On For Safety red ribbon or donate for a window decal, visit madd.org/toofs. For safe party tips, visit madd. org/safeparty.
About Mothers Against Drunk Driving
After Ranger Captain Ransom let fly with his version of how things would have gone down had he been present Pinkie Taylor could stand it no more. “Listen, we were here – we did not get a man killed – and we were here when they came, we were here when they left, and we are still here,
In order to cover up the double game they were playing the Madero representative in San Antonio issued a statement saying that the bandits operating in South Texas were American citizens. But that claim was put to the lie when on August 8 the manager of the King Ranch, Caesar Kleberg learned that raiders had been seen on one of the ranch’s five divisions, the Sauz Ranch just south of Kingsville. The fight was moving north.
Horses and automobiles Once again, on August 4, telephone and telegraph lines to Brownsville were cut and the railroad bridge on the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railroad line was burned three-three miles north of Brownsville isolating that city and making Corpus Christi the southernmost functioning city in the United States.
The Rangers had missed out on the fight and when they returned after 10 p.m. they began to offer gratuitous advice on what they would have done had they been there for the fight.
(MADD) popularized the “Designated Driver” concept starting in 1986. The concept changed the culture of drinking and driving in America and created an understanding that impaired driving is socially unacceptable. As a part of the campaign, MADD is asking drivers across the country to show their commitment to protecting the public from drunk driving by displaying MADD’s Tie One On For Safety red ribbon or decal on their cars available at: madd.org/ toofs and at select national parks throughout the country.
Founded in 1980 by a mother whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver, Mothers Against Drunk Driving® (MADD) is the nation’s largest nonprofit working to end drunk driving, help fight drugged driving, support the victims of these violent crimes and prevent underage drinking. MADD changed American culture by popularizing the “designated driver” and related red ribbon awareness campaign Tie One On For Safety® now in its 30th year.
Norias Ranch Headquarters and I don’t know what you all would have done if you had been here, but I know THERE WAS NOT A @#$%#$% SON OF A (*%*! OF YOU HERE!”…less like a Roy Rogers movie than a Mel Brooks one. One raider survived the fight but “died during questioning” but not before telling his captors that the raiders expected to find only three or four cowboys at the ranch headquarters and they planned to loot the place to obtain money, rifles, ammunition, food, and saddles from the ranch store before burning the headquarters to the ground then stopping the next train and robbing the passengers, then burning the train. The bodies of the guerrillas were lassoed and dragged into a pile for burial and photos were taken of Rangers posing with the skulls of dead men. It caused an outrage in the Hispanic community which led to another raid on Progresso in which an Army private was captured and taken across the river where his ears were cut off and his decapitated head placed on a pole where it was visible from the American side. Decapitations on the Mexican side of the border; not much has changed in the last 100 years.
Next time: Martial law in South Texas?
MADD’s Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving® is marking its 10th anniversary and reducing drunk driving fatalities by 25 percent since its launch. MADD supports drunk and drugged driving victims and survivors at no charge, providing a service every four minutes through local victim advocates and the 24-Hour Victim Help Line 1-877-MADD-HELP. Power of Parents® and Power of Youth® programs reduce underage drinking. Learn more by visiting madd.org or calling 1-877-ASKMADD.
Charter Boat Owners and Operators Wanted for new location on Packery Channel
Packery
Flats Floating Cabin Repairs Large Boat Slip (22’ x 40’) available good for either repairs or rebuilding
Located under the JFK bridge on Packery Channel Call for lease terms
Packery Flats Marina
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