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The
Issue 606
Island Moon
The voice of The Island since 1996
November 25, 2015
14646 Compass, Suite 3 Corpus Christi, TX 78418
Around The Island By Dale Rankin editor@islandmoon.com By Dale Rankin It’s been a good week for beach fires and beach cruising, beach dogs, and beach firewood. The weather has been up and down but all in all everything is both hunky and dory on our little sandbar. It’s the slack time of year before the chilly winds blows the Winter Texans OTB when we locals huddle around beach fires, gather at the Boathouse on Sundays to watch football (and laugh at those crazy Cheese Heads with those funny hats), and try to figure out how to get a few more RPMs out of our belt sanders to win a few races at The Gaff.
Belt sander races at the Gaff There’s just something about the smell of fresh grass, beer, and the waft of cheap cologne that drifts from a crowd of Winter Texans trying to figure out why a bunch of crazy Texans would want to race power tools. Just be glad you weren’t here for that Great Chainsaw Race; it was ugly. The big shrimp that were in our canals and bay for the past month appear to be moving out to wherever shrimp go when they move out. We’ve had no reports of their presence for the first time in over a month. Water temperature along our shores has moved down into the low 70s this week which marks the onset of Wetsuit Season, soon to be followed by the Hide the Salt Shaker Season.
Kleberg County The Nueces County Coastal Parks Board has begun the process of introducing some order to the 3680 acres they acquired in Kleberg County this year. Parks Director Scott Cross has posted No Trespassing signs on the west side of Park Road 22 where an impromptu shooting gallery has been in place for decades and Kleberg County Sherriff and Nueces County Constables have been issuing warning tickets to duck hunters on the back, Laguna, side of the property. Until plans for the area are further developed the west side of the property is off limits for now. The east side of roadway to the dunes is accessible by foot for bird watchers. Eventually the back side of the property along the Laguna will be made accessible for kayakers and hikers, but for now if you go down there pay attention to the signs.
Of Peckerwoods and Bridgedroppers It is said that the Average Person will spend $365 this Black Friday. We’re not sure that really means anything on The Island because as we wander Around The Island we don’t really see that many Average Persons hereabouts. We got some Do-Gooders, Bridgedroppers, Ferryburners, Duck Hunters – of whom half can shoot above average – and a slew of Garden Variety Peckerwoods, but Average People. Nah, they don’t come OTB much. Remember as we head into this Holiday Season folks, at some level it just comes down to comfortable shoes doesn’t it? So go out and get yourself a pair of $30 flip-flops, you deserve it. Have a great Thanksgiving everybody and say hello if you see us Around The Island.
FREE
Enjoy Great Food and Auctions As parties go it is one of the largest on the Island and after the party is over all of the proceeds from the auctions as well as the toy donations at the door are given to the United States Marines Toys for Tots program. Once again the La Posada Foundation is pleased to invite all Islanders and Flour Bluff and Port Aransas residents to attend this amazing party on December 1st at Scuttlebutts on the Island.
Bring a Toy Kicking off the La Posada events, the Kick-off party for 5 years has been a fun way to begin the Christmas season and to welcome parties and the fantastic La Posada Lighted Boat Parades. The Kick-off party is a top source of raising funds that are given to the United States Marines for their Toys for Tots Program.
Free
Weekly
La Posada Party Kicks Off La Posada Events By Brent Rourk
Photo by Jeff Dolan
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Raising Money and Collecting Toys for Kids For several years the party has raised more money than the prior year. La Posada Foundation President Doug Seefeldt commented, “Last year
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It Wasn’t Thanksgiving: Official – An Alternative But the First Story By Dale Rankin Thanksgiving We all grew up hearing the story of Thanksgiving. You know the in America one, the Pilgrims suffered through tough winter with the help of their was Celebrated aNative American friends and then threw a big party to celebrate and on the South bang, we got Thanksgiving. Well, makes for a warm and fuzzy Texas Plains in that story but that may not be exactly how it went down. 1534 Author Richard Zacks in his book
It wasn’t an official Thanksgiving as there was no such thing yet. It was November, 1534 and four shipwrecked Spanish wanderers making their way across the prairies of what is now South Texas had little to be thankful for – at least until the end of November rolled around and their fortunes began to change.
A Moorish prediction Before 1536 there were 95 Church holidays, plus 52 Sundays, when people were required to attend church and forego work and sometimes pay for expensive celebrations. In 1536 reforms reduced the number of Church holidays to 27 and the Thanksgiving holiday as we now know it began to take shape. Days of Fasting were called for after the drought of 1611, and for relief from the plagues of 1604 and 1622; in 1588 it was the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and in 1705 the deliverance of Queen Anne, then the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605.
Who Will Clean the Seawall? Beach maintenance practices in question
LA POSADA
Lighted Boat Parade Entrance fee is at least one new toy. Festivities will begin at 5:00 PM. Plan to attend for an evening of fun. Order meals from Scuttlebutt’s extensive menu and accompany your meal with the perfect wine. Enjoy both the silent auction and the live auction where many fabulous gifts will be auctioned to the top bidder. Many party goers have started or completed their Christmas shopping at the Kick-off Party, enjoying the wide selection of gifts for all ages.
A little Thanksgiving history
By Dale Rankin
Live Music A18
“The Pirate Hunter – The True Story of Captain Kidd” tells a slightly different version.
England 1695 The story begins in England in 1695 when some of the most powerful men in the Empire put financial backing behind the voyage of ship captain William Kidd whose mission was to put to sea and raid the ships of England’s enemies for plunder and profit. Four-fifths of the cost for the venture was
At El Constante on the north end of the seawall workers have been fighting an ongoing battle with drifting sand to keep the steps clean
Sand has piled up to the top of the seawall just south of the Holiday Inn By Dale Rankin Removing sand from the Michael J. Ellis Seawall and maintaining the adjacent beach will be the focus for the Island Strategic Action Committee in their December meeting. “The way the beach in front of the seawall is being maintained by the city is causing the sand to cover the seawall,” said ISAC Chairman Greg Smith. “The problem is caused by the city but the city is requiring the property owners there to pay to remove it.” The current estimate for removal of the sand is $30,000 for each cleaning according to property owners, and it is estimated the seawall will have to be cleaned of sand three to four times per year. The fine, beach quality sand which makes up the majority of the beach along the seawall was dredged from the bottom of Packery Channel and is therefore easily moved by the prevailing southeasterly wind which pushed it up the seven steps along the seawall. In recent years the sand has covered the entire face of the seawall along much of its .8-of a mile structure.
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Million Dollar Inn Was the first Structure on the Seawall
By Mary Craft When the Michael J. Ellis Seawall was built in the early 1970 The Island was not part of the City of Corpus Christi and therefore no permits were required. The private developers soon built the Million Dollar Inn on the south end of the seawall to use to, among other purposes, to house prospective buyers visiting The Island.
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City of Port Aransas Moves to Regulate Overnight Stay Rooms By Dale Rankin The proliferation of non-registered overnight stay rooms, homes, and condominiums on The Island which offer rooms for rent, has been a longstanding and persistent problem. It is not uncommon for people visiting The Island to arrive at their accommodations only to find an empty house with a For Sale sign in the yard, or at a house which occupied by full-time residents after finding the location on an unregulated internet site such as Craigslist.
“Right now we don’t even know how many overnight stay rooms there in town,” City Manager David Parsons told the council during their meeting last week where the new ordinance was passed on the first of three official readings. “This will at least help us start to track things.”
To address the problem the Port Aransas City Council is moving to pass an ordinance to track and register, non-hotel, overnight stay rooms in the city in an effort to introduce order into what has traditionally been a laissez-faire system.
The first step in the new Port Aransas ordinance will be a call for all overnight stay accommodations to be registered with the city and to pay a $50 fee to pay for staff to monitor the system. The city will
Estimates among tourist industry planners is that there are about 4200 overnight stay units in Port Aransas, 1100 on Padre Island, as compared to about 4500 in South Padre Island.
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A little Island history
Liberated!
These were Protestant celebrations that were foreign and probably unknown to the four Catholic Spaniards who had found themselves washed upon what is now the Alabama shoreline on November 4, 1528. The men had set out from Spain in 1527 to seek their fortune in the New World. On their voyage to Florida by way of Santo Domingo a Moorish woman had predicted that few of the men who went ashore would survive and anyone who did survive would be blessed by God who would perform great miracles through them. By November of 1534 the four survivors had arrived on the Isle of Misfortune and had little
paid for by noble lords, including the Earl of Orford, the Baron of Romney, the Duke of Shrewsbury, Sir John Somers, and Lord Richard Bellomont a tall, gout-ridden, sixty-year old Irish aristocrat who was heir to a baronetcy in Ireland but broke. Bellomont managed to bring King William III of England into the project and Kidd was presented with a letter of marque, signed personally by the King which reserved 10% of Kidd’s captured loot for the Crown, and subsequent historical evidence
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Lord Richard Bellmont
Editor’s note. This is Part 3 Soviet Occupation of Stalag Luft 1 - Following are excerpts from Islander Sheryl Palmer Wegmann’s book: A Sentimental Journey—the War Years. A book written as a tribute to her parents who belonged to The Greatest Generation. By Sheryl Palmer Wegmann
My father, Leslie B. Palmer, B-17 pilot, was shot down in a raid over Bremen, Germany on November 29, 1943. He was captured and became a Prisoner of War at Stalag Luft 1 in Barth, Germany on the Baltic Sea. In the early hours of 1 May 1945, as the German guards departed Stalag Luft 1, a terrifying rumor was heard. Himmler, with an SS detachment, was located a short distance from
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A guard tower at Stalag Luft 1. This tower was always staffed by Luftwaffe personnel while the camp was in operation. This tower overlooked the shower block, parade area and solitary confinement cooler. Barth Church can be seen in the distance under the tower steps. Photo by Linn C. Stuckenbruck, May 1945