By Linda Elissalde
Nostalgia: A sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
Over the turn bridge and around the curve. The Gulf of Mexico with sunshine, wide beaches, freedom and sand dunes. Crossing Roll Over Pass where folk fish for free. Riding on inner tubes through waves while swallowing gallons of salt water. Staying in a little house with beds all around one room. Getting up at 4:00 AM to go fishing/crabbing with daddy. Mother frying fish and German style potatoes. Baking in the sun with best friends. Bourre played for toothpicks. Visiting The Breakers. Playing around Fort Travis’s broken up barracks. Finding a Galveston slot machine buried in the sand. Chaperoned college beach parties. Always carrying a board in your car in case you become stuck in the sand. Taking HWY 87 eastward to Sabine Pass and enjoying red snapper at Granger’s Restaurant. What memories!
Oops! What about those massive mosquito attacks that could cover a small child? Daddy having to take garbage away. Lugging big bottles of clean drinking water up stairs. Turpentine to remove tar from your feet. No air conditioning. Arguing over who’s turn for the fan. Black and white blinking TV with aluminum foil covered antenna. Lights out so that people could sleep. Using a flashlight to try to read a book. Staying awake because sunburned blisters hurt. Lots of baloney sandwiches. Hurricanes – Carla changed the landscape. Blowing away houses. Blowing away sand dunes.
Nostalgia creates pictures of a time when everything was better. Children of today may look back at their moments here and remember them in golden lights long after we are gone. However, nostalgia often leaves out the less beautiful parts. There have always been storms. Hurricanes come with Bolivar Peninsula’s location. Houses are built; Houses blow away. People build again. Sand dunes abound; Sand dunes wash out with high tides. WHERE HAVE ALL THE SAND DUNES GONE? They wash back to the sea, and then like humans, sand returns to rebuild again, and again, and again.
[LCE: Jul-2-2024]
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