Houston Metro Area – South of Town: Notes and Scenes from Texas' Upper Gulf Coast

Sehon Warneke, the Legend of Lake Hardware

When I was growing up in Houston’s industrial suburbs, “town” meant Houston and more specifically, the downtown district. You know – tall buildings. After relocating to Lake Jackson in 1982, I never lost that almost automatic reference to “town” as my way to refer to Houston. And it was easy to tell old friends that we had moved south of town to a place called Lake Jackson, hence this journal goes under the heading of South of Town, Lake Jackson.

Lake Jackson was a bit of a culture shock. After all, I was nearing forty and had never experienced life in a small-town on an extended basis. People were polite. They smiled as they took turns, even at the uncontrolled intersections in its curvy, crazy little downtown.

But the single most shocking thing I saw happened in a little store three short blocks from my house, the Lake Hardware store on Oyster Creek. (It’s no longer there. Fire took it a week ahead of 9/11, but they quickly re-located and re-built.) You need a lot of little things when you move into a new residence. There were all the little things that broke, new things that needed to be installed, and the tools and supplies to handle all the jobs of homeownership. I had quickly learned that Lake Hardware was the place to go.

Enjoying a Good Memory on a Bad News Day

There’s not much fun in reading the news these days. But I did find a bright spot this morning.

The Washington Post had an article today about a home run that Frank Howard hit in the Seattle Pilots home park in 1969. A 10-year-old kid named Jim Flinn was sitting in the cheap seats beyond center field and he watched Howard’s home run go out of the park, at least by his memory. That would have made it at least 600 feet, given the height of the wall encompassing Seattle’s Sick’s Stadium.

If Sick’s Stadium and the Seattle Pilots don’t ring true to your MLB fan ears, it’s because the Pilots only stayed a year in Seattle before moving on to Milwaukee to fill the vacancy left there when the Braves moved to Atlanta. They are best known for being the team Jim Bouton pitched for when he wrote Ball Four.

But here’s the thing. In the world both before and after StatCast, no one has managed to propel a baseball that far with a bat AND be able to produce credible witnesses and measurement. Except for young (now 62) Jim Flinn. He knows what he saw. And it provided him with the memory for a lifetime.

It reminded me of my own similar memory. I saw a home run that, for me, was every bit as memorable as that Frank Howard shot and maybe even a few feet farther in its travel.

In 1957, I was 13 years old and just beginning to be sold on baseball as “the beautiful game,” at least in my culture and in my life. I was an avid fan of the Buffs, the Houston entry in the AA Texas League. That summer my dad took me to a game between the Buffs and the loathsome Dallas Eagles. The Buffs were a St. Louis Cardinal farm team. The Eagles were affiliated with the New York Giants. And any team from New York got hisses and boos in Texas, even before the Mets existed.

It was a matchup against the Texas League’s two best teams. Matching up over the whole season, Dallas led the league by 5 games over the second place Buffs. But minor league ball determined league championships through a system called the Shaughnessy Playoffs. It was pretty much the same design the major leagues use now with the top four teams doing elimination rounds. Houston won the Shaughnessy playoff, and thus the Texas League crown, four games to three over the Eagles. But none of that matters to the memory I have of that season.

My memory is about a ball I saw going over the center field fence in Buff Stadium. Any ball going over that fence was impressive in that it was 440 feet from home plate (the legendary Polo Grounds was only 442). The right and left field fences were 12 feet high. They added another six feet to the 440 foot center field fence. It was rare to see a ball clear that center field fence. It saved money on baseballs, no small thing in the minors.

But that night the Eagles started a 19-year-old first baseman named Willie McCovey. I remember little else about that game but my memory is of seeing a ball he hit leaving the park over the center field wall on a straight line that was still rising when it disappeared into the darkness.

After he hit that home run, I noticed the crowd gasping even when he would swing and miss. His movement was like velvet and oh so powerful. Still a teenager, McCovey hit .281 for the Dallas Eagles that year with 11 home runs. That isn’t huge production for a double A ball player. But I saw one of those eleven home runs and it was unforgettable.

That was the only time I ever saw Willie McCovey play in person. And McCovey never made it to the New York Giants. By the time he made the Giants two years later, they had moved to San Francisco.

Twenty-nine years and 521 home runs later, in 1986 he was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I saw him hit one of the longest home runs ever hit in organized baseball. No video recorded it. There was no StatCast to give us accurate, scientific measures.

But, like Mr. Jim Flinn, I know what I saw. And I thank him for jogging my memory.

G-Droppin’ with Greg

Politicians will do crazy things to try to connect with some part of the electorate whose votes they crave but whose life and culture may be foreign to them. The Democratic candidate on their first hunting trip is a favorite. Only Ann Richards was able to pull that one off persuasively. With her big hair, Texas drawl and a deer rifle in her hand, she let them know that she would probably hold her own in a bar fight with any of them two-steppin’ cowboys. And it probably wasn’t her first hunting trip, either.

My all-time favorite was when an incumbent Texas Secretary of Agriculture named Reagan Brown decided that he could connect with Texas’ farmers and ranchers by jamming his hand into a bed of fire ants while the photographers stood by drooling. Cowboy types were not impressed. His opponent wasn’t only a Democrat, he was about as progressive as they come. Thank you, Reagan V. Brown for giving us a few good years with Jim Hightower.

A bit less showy than the faux hunting trips and the fire ant challenge (too bad there were no social media in 1982), there is the practice of what I call G-droppin’. Candidates for statewide and national offices typically have been educated with bachelor’s and law degrees, often from Ivy League schools. They have learned how to speak proper English and they speak it with a precision that often makes their home folks think of them as “puttin’ on airs.” Put these folks in front of a judge in a courtroom and they speak the king’s English.

But a roomful of voters at the American Legion Hall in Clute will have them droppin’ Gs from their present participles. Even President Obama did it. He dropped Gs with the worst of them. But it never sold the way Ann Richards sold her NRA-appealing hunting trips. With Obama, the G-droppin’ seemed like the opposite of puttin’ on airs, at least to me. He was just too honest and too good for that kind of panderin’ to the willfully ignorant. It never seemed natural.

But Greg Abbot has handed me one that tops the Reagan Brown performance. But there is no way that I can wring any humor from it.

In order to establish kinship with folks in the Trump cult, he has endangered all our lives and put our children at the head of the line. By issuing an executive order forbidding local governments from mandating masks and vaccines, he no doubt hopes he will be able to pick up the support of the leftover dregs of the Trump “base” in Texas. And as the evidence builds that his edict is probably going to cost lives and create more drag on the economy, he does what DJT would do. He doubles down. How utterly stupid and mean.

Fortunately there are some leaders at the local level who aren’t having any of it. Call it civil disobedience. Call it leadership. They see their jobs as protecting their citizens. Lina Hidalgo’s doin’ it. Sylvester Turner’s doin’ it. Some school districts are doin’ it, too.

In your face, *re* Abbott.

Homeward Bound, Kyle Albertson and the St. Luke’s United Methodist Church Virtual Chancel Choir

Something unbelievably beautiful from the St. Luke’s Sunday morning service: Homeward Bound.

St. Luke’s is doing some remarkable things with technology to reach their congregation during the days of pandemic distancing. Click the link and you will hear a most amazing voice, an outstanding choir, and a beautiful arrangement of Homeward Bound. (This is not the Simon and Garfunkel song.) And the solo part by Kyle Albertson is very moving. And, yes, he is a member of St. Luke’s who sings opera professionally.

He’s pretty good. He has done cover at the Met for a guy named Bryn Terfel.

In the quiet misty morning
When the moon has gone to bed
When the sparrows stop their singing
And the sky is clear and red
When the summer’s ceased its gleaming
When the corn is past its prime
When adventure’s lost its meaning
I’ll be homeward bound in time

Bind me not to the pasture
Chain me not to the plow
Set me free to find my calling
And I’ll return to you somehow

If you find it’s me you’re missing
If you’re hoping I’ll return
To your thoughts I’ll soon be listening
In the road I’ll stop and turn
Then the wind will set me racing
As my journey nears its end
And the path I’ll be retracing
As I’m homeward bound again

Bind me not to the pasture
Chain me not to the plow
Set me free to find my calling
And I’ll return to you somehow
Bind me not to the pasture
Chain me not to the plow
Set me free to find my calling
And I’ll return to you somehow

A Sign of Things to Come: Opening Day at Enron Field, April 7, 2000.

Photograph from Federal Bureau of Investigation public domain collection posted on Flickr.

Houston’s heart has been broken by corporate scandal twice just twenty years in the 21st Century, once last week by the Houston Astros and in 2001 by the Enron Corporation. If you felt no grief for Enron, then you didn’t know personally any of the people who worked there. They were engineers, clerks, and HR folks like you would find at any other company around Houston. They stood out as innovative, productive employees and good citizens. Most of them had the reputation of being smart, generous and kind.There were only a few bad apples and they worked at the top of the chart.

Our hearts were broken again by our Astros. The sign stealing scandal has forever stained our memories of the beautiful gift of a World Series championship for a city that had suffered a Category 4 hurricane and catastrophic floods in August of that year. It was the year of Harvey and this was a team that brought joy to a hurting city. They were beautiful to watch on the field. They played with excellence and they behaved like the nicest kids you would ever know.

At least we thought so. Continue reading “A Sign of Things to Come: Opening Day at Enron Field, April 7, 2000.”

November 21, 1963

Late November in one of my happiest years:
 we wrapped ourselves in the soft thrill of friendship 
not knowing how rare it was and how hollow - 
for lack of it - would be the days and years ahead.

  Chattering with the sophistication of underclassmen 
we crossed a vacant city lot grown over with weeds, 
toward the road that exited the airport. 
The young president and his wife had landed and would 
pass here on their way to speak in Houston.  
His red hair flamed
 in the late afternoon Texas sunlight.  

He waved and each of us stored the memory 
of an instant as the car sped by,  
the woman at his side,  his shining hair, 
the slightest wave of his hand,  
the memory – a still photograph in each of our minds.  

In less than a day, he was dead; 
hit by two rifle shots. His wife was returning, 
spattered with his blood
to the emptiest of homes, the White House. 

Another memory – but this one with the remove 
of miles and overwritten with the static snow 
from our  early technology television sets.  

Those same sets had been on that morning before he died 
as we searched to see if there would be news of his visit.
Maybe a camera had caught us as well 
and our friends would see us so close to history.
Instead, we saw four floppy-haired singers 
from Britain who were planning a visit to America.   

A few hours later, there was only the news  that the man 
on whom we had hung our hopes was dead. 

Friendships that we thought were the most precious 
gifts  in our lives that day, 
faded with the years.  
Each of us had lives to live, purpose and gifts to give.  

The floppy-haired Brits gave us the happy crutch  
we needed to weather war and loss, 
and, not least,  the death of that soft thrill of friendship
we still had heart to feel 
on November 21, 1963.