Building at the creek

I know you probably thought this series had ended but just when you least expect it, here is another episode.

The Builder Chapter 4


In the early 1950’s my grandfather wanted to have a place on the coast so with input from my dad and my uncle he purchased a lot on Caney Creek. Once again the Builder was enlisted to build the house and my uncle was involved as well. From that time we spent every vacation and many weekends down there so they could work on the house. It was about 30 feet on each side and very primitive. There was no bathroom and the outhouse was about 25 feet from the house. In winter it was pretty uncomfortable. There was a screened porch around 2 sides with board shutters in case of storms. The mosquitoes were terrible and each evening we would spray the sleeping area with mosquito spray. It was effective but it was pretty stinky stuff and I didn’t like it at all.

My uncle had a boat and many mornings he and dad would go exploring in the bay and of course that involved fishing. I wanted to go along but for those trips it was men only, no children ever went with them. To make up for that my brother and I found an old flat bottomed pram kind of boat that had been abandoned. It leaked like a sieve but we didn’t care. We patched it up as best we could and used it to explore the creek banks in both directions, bailing as we went. We had no motor of any sort so poles and oars were the accepted form of power. This boat provided hours of fun exploring our new surroundings and it lasted a couple of years before it finally rotted to the point that we could not use it. By that time the house was finished. Dad had purchased a used boat with a very old outboard motor and quite often our whole family would go fishing, in those days there was no license required for salt water. All five of us would be up at about 4 AM and by daylight we would be sitting over a favorite reef with lines in the water. In later years dad seemed to think that 8 or 9 AM was early enough but that was after us kids were grownups. These fishing trips usually resulted in a war of sorts because the fish were always biting on one end of the boat but not the other. In other words one of us kids, usually my sister, would catch fish and I would not. It was totally unfair and happened pretty regular.

Sometime around 1956 or 57, my dad decided that this house with 3 families most of the weekends was too crowded so he bought another lot about a mile and a half further down the creek. Dad moved an old house that we had in Houston and set it up on the new lot. That lot is the same one that we own today and spend a lot of time working on. The house we have now is different though since that original house that was moved from Houston was destroyed in Hurricane Carla in 1961.

By this time my brother and I had an aluminum boat with an old outboard motor and we were able to expand our range for exploring. The intracoastal canal which runs from Brownsville, TX all the way to Florida was less than a mile away and we could see large tugboats with barge loads of stuff traveling along this route. Matagorda Bay was huge in our eyes and now we were able to see and explore some of the same places that dad and my uncle had explored. It was fascinating to say the least.

Mom used to take us kids down there for a week at a time in the summer while dad had to work. He would join us on weekends. My best friend, Jimmy would sometimes join us and on one such occasion we three had taken the aluminum boat and were out in the bay fishing. The trip came to an end abruptly when a fish hook got lodged in the back of my brother’s neck. We were unable to get it out so we returned to the house. Mom was pretty upset about it and she also could not dislodge the hook. So she loaded us all in the car and we went to Bay City for the emergency room. Fortunately they were able to remove it and other than the pain, my brother was none the worse for wear. He may not agree about that but that is my side of the story.

I think this is getting too long, I have at least one more story from the fifties but I will share it in the next episode.