Inside the Moon
St. Andrew by the Sea A4 Issue 664
Apron Attack A6
The
Island Moon The voice of The Island since 1996
January 5, 2017
Around The Island
By Dale Rankin You could tell time on our little sandbar this weekend by which direction the Booms! were coming from. If they were coming from the Laguna Madre side it was morning. If they were coming from the Laguna and the Gulf side it was evening. In the morning the duck hunters woke us up pursuing their winged prey, in the evening they were joined in the Island chorus by the fireworks shooters along the Michael J. Ellis Seawall. This is the first year in memory when New Year celebrants sent their powder skyward along the seawall. In the past it has been Kleberg County where the fireworks shooters scooted around the far edge of the regulated world, but this year apparent fear of Bobby’s boys from the Constable’s office which took over patrol on the six miles of Kleberg Beach this year, pushed the shooters north to take their chances inside the Corpus Christi City Limits. One advantage of the new launch site is less likelihood of a housethreatening grassfire on the south end of the The Island. One disadvantage is that many of the people along the seawall have little yappy dogs – and in one case a formerly sleeping but soon yelping newborn – that don’t much like the sound of fireworks, another is they don’t seem to know how to clean up after themselves and left fireworks remnants all over the seawall. There were complaints about fireworks on the beach at the National Seashore as well. Seems like we might need a designated spot for fireworks shooting hereabouts. Maybe on a spoil island with the duck hunters – now that would be pretty cool, unless of course you are a duck or a yappy dog.
Winter Texan Round-up A14
Black Eyed Pea Off A13
Fishing A11
Free
Weekly
FREE
Combat Vet Takes the Plunge Over Port Aransas on New Year’s Day
Duck soup!
Group of Island Homeowners want City to Ban Hunting on Spoil Islands By Dale Rankin A group of homeowners on the fingertip lots facing the Laguna Madre say they will ask the Island Strategic Action Committee to recommend that the city ban hunting on spoil islands adjacent to Island neighborhoods. The controversy arose after resident Rick Hunts who lives at the end of King Phillip Court complained to city officials that a hunting guide had set up two blinds across a canal from his house and began dropping off hunters three times daily.
By Jason Towns USAF Major, Retired After a record breaking year taking over a thousand folks for their first skydive in 2016, our little parachute operation in Port Aransas, Skydive South Texas, had absolutely zero bookings for the first day of the New Year Sunday.
That is until a man wearing full duck hunting garb - an ensemble I used to wear almost daily - walked in the hangar door. His name was Mr. Ben Mallon, owner of Hell or High Water Outdoors, a 503C corporation dedicated to getting the disabled out for duck hunts on the Coastal Bend. Taking three months a year off from his real job, Mallon promotes
Island Luthier
“They are just over 1000 feet from his services mostly to disabled my deck,” Hunts said, “and they veterans but pretty much anyone with put their decoys between my house a handicap can set up a trip with him. and the blinds so they are shooting right at my deck. They are so close "If somebody wants to get their I can hear them talking in the blind.” deathbed into a duckblind, we can After years of controversy and at the make it happen", he said, describing urging of the ISAC the Corpus Christi some of the ingenious contraptions City Council passed an ordinance he's managed to construct out on the in February 2012 making it illegal water. to hunt within 1000 feet of Island Skydive cont. on A2 houses. Due to dry conditions that year duck hunters migrated to freshwater ponds located near houses
If He Builds It, You Will Jam
Winter Texans have arrived When the Polar Vortex moved southward with Santa Claus a couple of weeks ago it flushed out a flock of Snow Birds – or as we like to call them Winter Texans – who began finding their way from OTB soon after. They were out in force for the New Year and a covey finds their way each Sunday night to Island Italian on North Padre for bluegrass and on Wednesday night to Port A for the double-whammy when Edwin offers all you can eat shrimp at Kody’s and then the Port A Rockers get them out on the dance floor at Bernie’s. These aren’t your grandpa’s Winter Texans folks, that generation tended to retire with the evening sun but these guys close the place down. We began our Winter Texan Section this week as Frostbite Betty reported from Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, and the Winter Texan Roundup kicks off for the season. Welcome to The Island you guys!
Heads Up! Two words of warning this week – technically four…Sneak Thieves and Creepy Crud. The Sneak Thieves hit our Island right after Christmas burglarizing several cars up and down The Island. They seem to be criminals of opportunity so lock your cars and close garage doors. They also seem to like to haul off boat trailers. The Creepy Crud is creeping its way around these days too. It lasts for several days and victims liken it to a light pneumonia. So wash your hands and, as they say around the stockyards, don’t put your hands where you won’t put your face. Reverse your ceiling fans everybody, the cool weather is on the way. In the meantime say hello if you see us Around The Island.
See the special Winter Texan news on pages 15-16 in this issue!
Two duck blinds located near homes are cause of controversy. as their prey was denied wetlands further south due to lack of rain.
By Dale Rankin When Islander Kent Meek moved to The Island three years ago he brought his love of music with him. Meek had been playing guitar professionally for nearly twenty years so he knew all about the things that guitar players learn as they go. The mechanics of a guitar like how to set up the instrument, its action (distance
of each string above the fretboard), getting the strings placement and tension just right for the best tones, the electronics of an electric guitar, and all the other subtleties that over the years gave rise to the oldest guitar joke on the planet: “How many guitar players does it take to screw in a light bulb…three. One to screw in the light bulb and two to stand around and say ‘I can do that!”
But Meek is not your ordinary three chords guy. He was a Private Studio Musician at Texas State University in San Marcos, has years of professional experience performing solo and with various jazz groups in Austin and has been giving private lessons for years. He also provided the music for the 2007 movie Westacre. He came by
Luthier cont. on A2
The City Attorney’s office fended off attempts by homeowners on Primavera to ban hunting in that area by claiming that the applicable state statue (see below) prohibited the city from taking action to stop the hunting because the area was not annexed before September, 1981 when the statute was passed by the legislature. One homeowner showed up at an ISAC meeting with a handful of
Ducks cont. on A5
A little Island history
Nueces Strip Erupts in Violence as Raiders Seek to Separate it from Texas
Editor’s note: In the last issue we described the raid on the Norias section of the King Ranch just across the Laguna Madre from Padre Island one hundred years ago by marauders from Mexico. But the raid was only part of the trouble that was spilling across the border from Mexico which was in open revolution. This story is based on several sources, including but not limited to The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution, by Charles Harris III, and Louis R. Sadler, and Revolution in Texas by Benjamin Heber Johnson. The books remind us that only one hundred years ago the Texas Borderland was territory still very much in dispute. By Dale Rankin The raiders who hit the King
thought was a factional fight between political interests in South Texas had turned out to be a full-fledged border war with raiding parties made up of both Mexican Nationals and some Hispanics of American origin mixing together to form the roving gangs that now had struck within a day’s ride of downtown Corpus Christi. The Wild Horse Prairie was on fire with rumors and wild stories – some of which might have even been true.
Ride to the sound of the guns American troops of the 16th Infantry in camp. Ranch were sympathizers of the reform movement in Mexico but by this time the Mexican Revolution had Balkanized as more than half a dozen factions in various parts of the
country claimed to be the keepers of the revolutionary flame and the country had descended into chaos. What
U.S. Army
leaders
had
The day after the raid on the King Ranch Cameron County Judge H.L. Yates telegraphed the Secretary of War “Was last night enough to bring adequate protection to the lower Rio Grande Valley, or are we still to be sacrificed again. I implore you to
History cont. on A4