Inside the Moon
Waco Witness Tells All A3
Potential Bull Shark Record A7
Father's Day on the Island A9
The
Issue 584
Island Moon
The voice of The Island since 1996
June 25, 2015
Around The Island By Dale Rankin
Powder Puff A11
Live Music A18
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Photo by Steve Coons
Fire in the Sky on the 4h of July
Statesboro Revue Returns for Third Year at 4th of July Parade Watch Party Viewing Areas
editor@islandmoon.com
Things are drying out a bit on our little sandbar. The water in our bar ditches has gone back to the sky or found its way to the sea. The high water marks along our beaches and roadways are notated by the flotsam and jetsam left behind. So far the wetter than usual season has kept tourist numbers down; down being a relative term. A count of cars coming down the Port A Runway (State Highway 361 for OTB readers) last Sunday morning found 1030 cars per hour jamming up the 361/ SPID/Commodores intersection. The JFK Causeway and ultimately the 361/SPID/Commodores nexus is the primary gateway for almost 100 miles of beaches from the Mansfield Channel to Port Aransas. As the state’s population grows so does our traffic load. The old crowded is the new normal.
Sanding Packery One of the side benefits of the wet weather we have had this year is it has deepened Packery Channel in two ways. First, the wet sand doesn’t blow into the channel which is a main cause of silting; and second, the outgoing rain water has taken with it 15,000 cubic yards of sand that was clogging the mouth of the channel, according to the people at Texas A&M CC who monitor the channel, during the period from September through April. More up to date figures are unavailable at this time but with the heavy spring rain that trend likely continued through the spring. Boaters report a depth of about ten feet at the mouth of the channel; less that the fourteen foot design depth, but plenty of water for pleasure boats.
Houses going up The Island is filling up with houses. According to numbers presented at the Padre Isles Property Owners Association meeting this week there are 79 waterfront homes currently under construction and 16 going up on dry lots. For the past several years there have been about 70 houses under construction at any given time, that number now is closer to 100.
Twenty percenters Officials from the local emergency management office made a presentation at the POA meeting and said that statistically speaking when a hurricane hits our shores and the order for mandatory evacuation goes out eighty percent of the people will leave but twenty percent will ignore all warnings and stay put. As our Island population approaches the 10,000 mark, we were 9200 in the 2010 census and have been building houses at a steady pace since, that means about 2000 souls will ride out the next Big One here on The Island. The last big evacuation was Hurricane Rita which hit the Upper Texas Coast and, according to the emergency management office, it was not problem getting people to leave because that storm was hot on the heels of Katrina which took out New Orleans and people had a healthy fear of storms. But in 1999 when the word to evacuate went out, unnecessarily as it turned out, many people ignored the warning and the power was turned out leaving them in the dark about where the storm was going. Anyone who lived in this area when Hurricane Celia came through won’t stick around when a storm is headed our way.
Thank you We want to send a thank you out to the Corpus Christi City Council who this week approved $169,000 to stop the foul order which has been emanating from the sewer pump station at Cruiser and Whitecap for
Around continued on A5
No Boat Traffic after 7pm
Island Blast
As we approach the 16th annual 4th of July Watercraft Parade and third annual Island Blast 4th of July Fireworks show the questions are turning to details; where to watch the fireworks and how to enter the parade. Here’s everything you need to know. First, for the third year in a row Island favorites the Statesboro Revue band will play the parade party at the judge’s stand at the homes of Harald Myers and Ann Weber at 13762 Three Fathoms Bank. The party spans three houses and decks and the public is invited to come early for the parade. Muster for the parade begins at 6 p.m. in the canal at the Padre Island Yacht Club and the parade kicks off at 7 p.m. from that location. The fireworks will be launched at 9:15 from the same location as in previous years, the vacant lot at the end of Whitecap between the Yacht Club and the Wastewater treatment plant. Some areas of the canals around the Yacht Club will be closed to boat traffic at 7 p.m. (see map) and the restricted area will be marked by buoys. Jerry Watkins who originated and manages the fireworks show said Wednesday that crews from the Flour Bluff Fire Department will attempt to burn the vegetation on the spoil island which caught fire during the fireworks show last year but are not sure it will burn due to recent rains and the resulting verdant growth. “If the firemen can’t burn it then the fireworks can’t either,” Watkins said. When Statesboro Revue first played the 4th of July party three years ago they were still in the beginning stages of their career, but now a short three
Statesboro Revue will play the parade party years later they have established themselves firmly in the Americana and Texas music scenes and their late announcement that they would return for the parade performance this year was due to their recent arrival back in the country after a two-month European tour; their third. Spectators may attend the show either by car from Three Fathoms or by boat in the main canal (just follow the music). It’s time for the Mother of All Deck Parties folks. We’ll see you there!
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A Flight in the Open Air
By Dale Rankin The first thing you notice when you settle into the front seat of the open cockpit of a Boeing Stearman Model 75 airplane is that you are not separated from your surrounding environment. Even in a small personal aircraft when you get in you are in a cocoon that insulates you from the rushing air and noise outside. In the Stearman you are at one with it. I went on a flight last Saturday with recently retired U.S.A.F. Major Jason Towns who flies this Stearman based out of T.P. McCampbell airport in Ingleside as part of the Texas Coastal Bend Squadron of the Third Coast Commemorative Air Force which recently opened a museum there. On this day we flew out of Mustang Beach Airport in Port Aransas. The Stearman Model 75 was used as a military trainer and more than 9700 of them were built in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. It served as a primary trainer for the
USAAF, as a basic trainer for the Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force Kaydet throughout World War II. If you flew an airplane in World War II chances are your first time up was in a Stearman. After the conflict was over, thousands of thesurplus aircraft were sold on the civil market where they became popular as crop dusters and as sports planes. They are a conventional biplane with a large, fixed tailwheel undercarriage, seats for a student and instructor in open cockpits in tandem; the student, in
this case the passenger, sits in the front seat while the instructor is in the back. Both seats have a control stick and pedals which move in unison. A solo pilot sits the rear seat. During WWII there were long lines of Stearmans at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi and they were a familiar sight in Island skies. Many Stearmans are painted yellow like this one after the Red Baron Stearman Squadron, N2S Known colloquially as the "Yellow Peril."
Wings continued on A6
A little Island history
Mystery of the Fate of German Submarine Which Attacked Local Ships Solved 72 Years After the Fact
Editor’s note: We received this note from Pat Richarde on our Facebook page, theislandmoonnewspaper, this week:
by more than one or two German submarines. Even if there is no evidence of any of them making a landfall here, it seems likely, given the small type of subs they were.
“There are at least two bunkers that still exist in the National Seashore, PINS. At least two, that is . . . maybe three as I recall it, but if so, the third one is outside of PINS, and although it’s been a few years since I've flown over them, I'm thinking it may be within the Kleberg property.
That is, that they would probably come ashore for water, some food, as in deer, squirrel, rabbit, and if it was summer, perhaps at least one or two of the previously far more plentiful, now endangered, Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle. But come to think of it, that would have required a daytime landing, as the KR's only go ashore during the daytime briefly, to lay a clutch of eggs.
They appear to have been mostly mounts for relatively heavy cannon, with crew berthing and ammunition space below, which also had machine gun-type narrow sideways windows. Regardless whether two or three, I was told by a very experienced old time local Texas law enforcement officer, who was continuing on as a similarly experienced federal PINS Ranger, that they were built during WWII, to defend this part of the coastal bend, from potential German attack, primarily. No one ever disputed that whatsoever and it seemed fully likely to me, as I read that our shoreline here was indeed visited
Above: The U-166 on the floor of the Gulf today
Regardless, summer or anytime else, the deer are very visible frequently on the shoreline or dunelines of PINS, even these days. I imagine they may have been at least equally as plentiful, back in 1943, or so. Here’s what we know Pat. We are not aware of any World War II era gun emplacements on PINS; we will continue to check. There was a bombing range on PINS during the war and a Coast Guard station around Mile Marker 41. The Navy and Coast Guard both patrolled local beaches to guard against German landings. There was a gun emplacement in Port Aransas in the dunes behind I.P.
Left: Admiral Jonathan Greenert awards the Legion of Merit award to Herbert Gordon Claudius Jr. on behalf of his father as commanding officer of PC-566 which sank the enemy submarine U-166. Magee Pier where the mounds of earth can still be seen. The guns had a range of two miles and were there to protect the entrance to the Aransas Pass. There is also the hulk of the
ship the Lady Ann which was torpedoed at sea and towed into the Lydia Ann Channel where she was scuttled.
History continued on A16