Galveston Oh Galveston

Dickinson Bayou
Texas City, Texas

If you didn’t already know that Galveston meant the oil business, then let me describe the ride there from Texas City, Texas. You drive down a bumpy road, past shacks and small homes, then turn onto a four lane road bordered by auto stores, gas stations and convenience stores, then pick up the expressway south. On either side of the expressway lie more malls than you have seen in your life, and heading into them, a traffic lineup the likes you haven’t seen since rush hour on the FDR in Manhattan.

There appears to be no serious shortage of cash down here. Retail is booming. The clerk at the Verizon store told me that he had arrived at five in the morning for the launch of the Storm phone, and people were already lined up for the store’s opening at seven. He said it had been the worst day of his life.

After our brief stop at Verizon and back on the road at around three in the afternoon, we saw in the distance the reason for the strange clash of abundance and poverty that seems to identify this area: refineries. Not just one or two, but an endless landscape of enormous tanks, pipes, strange-looking structures I have no words for, and parking lots filled with the cars of the workers there. No Cadillacs in the parking field. Just working class cars. And no people. Just steel structures. And effluvia, thick and acrid, filling the sky.

Once on the bridge to the island (Most of the city is not on the mainland), we saw an orange-grey cloud, and it appeared to cover the entire city. We thought at first that it was pollution but the smell of fire soon convinced us otherwise.

As we came into the outskirts of town, we remembered that they had been hit with a ferocious hurricane this fall. We were smelling the cleanup. Now we understood why all the billboards were down, and all those tall fast-food and gas station signs along the highway seemed to have been ripped out of their frames. We were seeing the place that took the biggest hit from the winds right off the ocean.

Our noses were running and our eyes tearing by this time, but we decided to look further. The RV campground we’d planned on staying at was a few miles ahead, another beach stopover.

Typical tall beach houses surrounded the canals that dot the outskirts of the city, and these appeared relatively unscathed. Then we noticed the broken windows, and torn fences, the debris littering every yard.

And the boats. Not little dinghys, but big sailboats and cabin cruisers, not in the water, but alongside the road, with signs on them warning the curious to keep away. The water rose, the boats floated onto shore and now lay on their sides, damaged, some permanently, beached whales that might never see the sea again. We probably saw 30 of these as we drove along.

Turning into the road for the camp, we saw small houses and apartments, their complete contents emptied into their yards, waiting for the trash trucks to haul them away and set them afire. Most windows were broken, most doors were ripped off hinges. Fences were gone or at best, bent over. A whole block of apartment garage doors were dented inward at the same level above the ground. If that was water damage then they had had about two-to-three feet of flooding.

The campground was another story. Every single RV was damaged, and none of them was livable. Some were overturned. A row of hastily erected tents housed the people who were obviously trying to salvage their possessions and clean up the site. John looked at me and said, “Well I guess we won’t be staying here this week.” You got that right. We decided to leave, since by now neither of us could breathe normally and our throats were burning. We never did see the dumpsite or the fire, but it was obviously one hell of a blaze.

As we began to appreciate the depth of the destruction, we began to notice the resilience of the town’s people. Hastily erected signs – Sir Speedy, or whoever the town sign maker was, must have been working around the clock – announced OPEN FOR BUSINESS, and WE’RE STILL STANDIN’, and KITCHEN OPEN AND WE’RE STILL HOPIN’ and BACK SOONER THAN YOU EXPECT. Obviously one little hurricane wasn’t going to stop Galveston, not here in Texas where everything’s big, including hope.

On the way out of town and back to breathable air, we saw one image that seemed to typify the story, and made me kick myself for not having brought my camera.

There on the side of the road was a beat-up old camper. Half of one side had been torn away and its contents were obviously in a state of ruin. New rust stains dotted its chassis, some of its windows were broken and its single remaining windshield wiper was sticking forlornly out at an angle. There on its side, facing the traffic, its owner had spray painted his message: FREE.

Betty