I had to go over to Anchor Marina and get a 1099 for some consulting work I did last year in association with Mark, who by the way is still in jail. I almost hate to admit this, but I gave him a chance last fall, and included him in on a wetland delineation project that I was doing.....which he almost blew.....but that's water now under the proverbial dock.

I briefly mulled over the idea of maybe moving back over there for awhile, accumulate a few more tall tales, but quickly returned to my senses and decided against it since I'm docked on a street adjacent anyway, and can just drive over there and visit people.....it's almost the same I tell myself.

Jean has been getting chemo about once a month, and has only sproadically been there, so she left the 1099 with Jack and Barb (Sea Shack). I hadn't seen them in a long time, so it was good to visit and catch up on things......like dock boys latest escapades.

Anchor Marina is in the throes of disintegration, bit by bit. Jack told me that during the last rain, Valley Girl was tied with the stern underneath the downspout of the rain gutter draining the upper deck of Marks old house-on-stilts, and so during the monsoon deluges we've been having, the thing filled with water several times once again.

He said; "Yea, it was around four in the morning and there was this hellacious storm, and I heard this knocking on the door. At first I thought it was the wind, but when I peeked out the window.....it was Rick the Moon. I opened the door, and he asked me if I had a sump pump. I told him "hell no....I don't have no sump pump"....and he went away. The next morning I saw him and dock boy out there pumping the thing out. They'd managed to find a sump pump somewhere. Anyway, I walked over there and he says to me; "Hey lookit that. That water sure is a pretty purple color". I told him; My Gawd boy...that's diesel". I looked around and the whole harbor had a sheen of diesel all over it. Well, I got out of there just about the time he went below and was coming topside with a bottle of Joy soap...."

"After a couple of more rainstorms, with the same results, they finally turned Valley Girl around and got the stern away from that downspout spigot. Pretty smart huh?. See that line on the hull? Well that's how low she sunk...."

Jack continued on:

"Yea, and now dock boy's got himself that little kids bike 'cause he blew the head gasket on his old Bronco. He asked me to do the head gasket change, and I asked him why me?  After all, he said he was the automotive engineer.....Well, he told me; "It's too hot and I just thought you might be able to do it easier".  I asked him; "What makes you think I could do it any better? I'm seventy three years old! That guy's something else."

"And didja see his latest addition?"

I told him I had seen the crude 2 x 4 frame with the raggedy blue tarp stretched over it in the cockpit of the See-Lyin'.

"Yep, he's building a spare bedroom on his boat. In case guests show up......."

I shuddered to think of what type of guests might show up to visit dock boy.

"Well, he's still up to his launch ramp scam too."

I asked Jack how in the world he could do that since recently the PVC pipe that people had deposited the launch money into, the one that was so easily rifled for dock boys edification and beer fund enhancement had been replaced by Nestor with a welded 1/4 steel, locked structure. They figured that would stop the nonsense.

"Well, he found an old thin dowel rod, and took duct tape, and wrapped it sticky side out, and now he inserts it into the money slot, and carefully fishes out the loot."

Very resourceful.

We debated aloud what might become of the place. Docks are leaning and sinking into the harbor, dock boxes have recently caught fire because of bad wiring, and all of the slips are silting in. Laundry hangs drying from derelict RV's, trailers and boats, and ancient automobiles are parked in the cul-du-sac, Easter Island like monoliths of rusted steel, mostly silent and foreboding. The restrooms look and smell like Pemex gas station restrooms in the dirtiest part of Reynosa, and the road is pot holed and badly in need of surfacing. Dogs bark, cats lurk in the shadows by the coke and ice machine, and the smells of barbeque pits mingled with the salty afternoon air create an intoxication better than dock boys infamous ever present tall boy beer.

I reckon, and hope that nothing out of the ordinary will become of Anchor Marina, at least while I'm still in Port Isabel. With all of the construction, renovation and sanitized nonesense in all of the condos, clubs and slick businesses on the Island and the Port, it is a haven for the orts and leavings of society, the flotsam and jetsam that flavors this nautical stew that I love so much.

God bless Anchor Marina. I don't think anyone else will.