May 14, 2020 | Issue
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Inside the Moon Island Beauty A2 Business Briefs A3 Turtles Nesting A7 Fishing A11 Three Chords and the Truth A16 Photo by Lu Ann Kingbury Issue 839 The 27° 37' 0.5952'' N | 97° 13' 21.4068'' W Island Free The voiceMoon of The Island since 1996 May 14, 2020 Weekly www.islandmoon.com FREE Around The Tuesday May 19 Island Canal Work Begins! Free COVID By Dale Rankin Testing at Port It’s a strange spring on area beaches First portion of Water Exchange Bridge Project these days. The Law of Unintended Aransas City Consequences has covered our By Dale Rankin beaches alternately with salt water Survey crews this week began work and tourists. Hall at the site on the canal connecting For lack of a better term we will the existing Island canal system to You must register call it The Time of the Hurricane the Park Road 22 Water Exchange Without a Storm. As we navigate Bridge. beforehand Around the Island and see closed or Stakes marking the course of the People with symptoms of the partially closed businesses it seems canal are in place in anticipation of COVID-19 virus can get a free drive- like an evacuation before a storm excavation crews who will be onsite through test on Tuesday, May 19, but the storm never comes. We got starting Friday. While the excavation from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Port Aransas the high water on the beaches, we work is underway separate crews will City Hall. got the surfers, we got shortages of begin work on the bulkheads for the this and that, what we don’t have is County Commissioner Brent canal. a storm. The open-ended evacuation Chesney’s office is organizing the just keeps on keeping on and while The canal project is funded by the event along with County Judge pushing people to their beaches may private landowners and is the first Barbara Canales, Texas National not have been the motivation for the step in the process of building the Guard, the City of Port Aransas, the stay-at-home order that is the effect long-anticipated $13.9 million Water Port Aransas Chamber of Commerce, it is having. Exchange Bridge. Work on the canal Sheriff J.C Hooper, Precinct 4 and bulkheads is expected to take Constable Bobby Sherwood and First In hindsight it seems to make about three months. Title Company. perfect sense that as people got tired of sitting around the house and they It is important to note that you must couldn’t get on an airplane they register beforehand to be tested. were heading our way; after all we Zoning We repeat: You must resister are a driving destination. But the Islander Finds beforehand to be tested. sheer volume of the people on the beach from Port Aransas to PINS in Approved for To register go to TXCOVIDTEST. the middle of the week continues to Message in a Bottle ORG or call 512 883-2400. astound the locals. Corpus Christi New Residential City Manager Peter Zanoni told the From the Caymans to Kleberg in five years city council on Tuesday that a check Development Legal Definition with local businesses last week Longtime Islander David Hoffmann found that business on a single day was walking along the beach in Twenty-four new of “Sickness” in the middle of the week was almost Kleberg County when he saw equal to a three-day Fourth of July something glass on the beach. homes at Porto Could Impact Weekend in a normal year. Certainly “When I see glass on the beach I the crowd size is comparable. What is always pick it up,” he said. Villageo on State most different about this early season November is the beach traffic during the week. If But this time it wasn’t a bottle left Highway 361 people can’t work why not go to the behind by a careless tourist, it was a By Dale Rankin Election in beach? It’s what we locals do year- clear glass bottle with a note inside. round. Hoffmann took it home with the Texas intention of giving it to his daughter The high tides this week changed who teaches third grade so she could The first thing that jumps to mind Absentee vote the beach traffic patterns as the beach open for her kids but then the COVID is how many three year olds can south of Bob Hall Pier is a tourist trap. virus got in the way so this week he write? The second is that there is no process is the Drive your KIA down there and good broke off the wax seal and found the contact information. Note to self: If luck getting out as the wet sand butts note inside. you launch a message in a bottle put a subject of a lawsuit right up against the foot deep blow return address… sand. The beach south of Whitecap “Hello, The legal definition of the word But David made the good try, even over the weekend was narrow enough “sickness” could have a major impact My name is Avery Posner. calling the Grand Cayman Tourism that there was only room for one on the November General Election I am 3 years old. I put this Association, but there was no way row of cars parallel to the dune line, across Texas. bottle into the ocean on for them or anyone else to track a a driving lane, and a line of beach The Corpus Christi City Council On one side of the legal case now Grand Cayman on June 7, message in a bottle launched five chairs along the waterline. That put on Tuesday cleared the way for the winding its way through the state’s 2015. years ago. But that’s okay, David has the driving lane between the parked development of twenty-four single- appellate courts are the plaintiffs in a story to tell about how he found a cars and the beach-sitters and made Please let me know when family homes at the Porto Villageo the case, The Texas League of Women message in a bottle that made its way for treacherous driving. and where you found my development just inside the Corpus Voters and the state Democratic to Kleberg County all the way from bottle and note. Christi City Limits on State Highway Party who filed the lawsuit claiming As a result the beach traffic pushed the Cayman Islands, and that’s a 361. that the threat of contracting and north from Packery Channel all the Thank you.” pretty good Island story. way to Port A. If things continue as Dale Rankin they are on through the summer it's Villageo cont. on A4 Absentee voting cont. on A4 going to be a big year for tourism on our little sandbar. If the old Chinese proverb is right – it is truly an ill wind A little Island history that doesn’t blow somebody some good – maybe all this trouble will guild the lily on the post-Harvey era. Author with Island Connection We noticed that the parking lot at Joyride Rentals on Whitecap had nary a golf cart in the parking lot over Chronicles Infamous Texas Feud the weekend. Instead of carts it was “I molded a bullet for your daddy, principal characters in a deadly trail The Big Thicket filled with cars left behind by visitors and I’ll mold one for you too!” of vengeance known as the Guedry- Big Thicket's astonishing tale who traded them in for golf carts. Bruce Pitzer was shocked to hear Booth feud. A.J. even cited the famous unfolds against the sweeping this line, 45 years ago while still in Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie, who backdrop of Texas history. It brings Bob Hall high school. He and his family sat wrote a brief passage of the feud in the Booth-Guedry feud to life against enthralled listening to his grand- his collection of stories, “Flavor of larger events in Texas history like uncle A.J. Guedry‘s account of Texas.” Pitzer soon discovered his the War of Independence, as well the infamous feud between the third-great grandfather, Ursin Guedry, as glimpses of the Republic and the Guedry and Booth families of East was murdered by John Booth. Civil War. Texas back in the mid-1800s. A.J. That night, Pitzer swore he would Guedry was a published historian A.J. Guedry's copious notes began someday honor his grand-uncle by The overcrowding on Bob Hall Pier and genealogist who had traveled by describing the Guedry and Booth writing the tale of his ancestors' that was a problem last week has been from East Texas down to San families as friends. The Guedrys had early history in Texas. "Forty-five resolved. A check this week found Patricio County to relate the tale. settled along the Sabine River after years later, this pandemic forced fisherpersons well-spaced. There is He had spent years researching Texas became a Republic, next door me to revisit the manuscript I began also a new sign warning beachgoers The Guedry Family histories to the Booths. After Mr. Booth died, years ago. I knew this was the time to be careful under the pier. That and public records, tracing their Ursin Guedry agreed to be appointed to finally finish telling my grand- was the site last summer where lineage back to Arcadia, Canada in guarantor of the Booth Estate to their frustrations, an argument uncle's tale of the times and lives of severe rips currents caused problems.