Five days a week I get in my truck and drive the eight or so miles to my phony-baloney administrators job here on South Padre Island. In the process I drive through several communities nestled on the shoreline of the Laguna Madre, the shallow embayment behind the island, before crossing the three and a half mile long causeway spanning the Bay.

As I drive through Laguna Heights, I pass the canvas shop there where I take my sails for repair. It’s run by a genial and genuine couple, full of pride and craftsmanship. I pass Bayside Marine, the metamorphosis of CRC, the only other travel lift that we had in the area, now as extinct as the shrimp boats that it once catered to. A hand full of other businesses are located there as well, places like Reyes Seafood, where one can enjoy a sumptuous buffet with items ranging from Caldo Mariscos to  Enchiladas, or buy a pint of freshly shucked oysters. Laguna Heights, a former bustling community once know as Bayside, is now, unfortunately represented en masse by illegal aliens and drug traffic, crime and poverty  in the wake of the collapsed and almost extinct commercial shrimping industry.

Port Isabel, one step beyond Laguna Heights, is the current home of Olivia. It is festooned with the last vestiges of yesteryears commercial fishing industry, and is the home of the rotting and derelict shrimp boats that earmarked this once bustling commercial fishing town. The Port Isabel Lighthouse, it’s most prominent landmark and claim-to-fame stands at the highest point of town, on a clay loma overlooking the often blue and tranquil waters of the Mother Lagoon. Port Isabel is the last stop before crossing the causeway to the tourist haven of South Padre Island, where soon, multitudes of college children, all bent on shameless debauchery will converge for the annual super-party known as Spring Break.

Everyday at the top of the causeway, I can see to the south, the very tip of the thirty something mile long barrier island, the Brazos Santiago Pass, the only natural cut for over a hundred and forty miles north and south. The pass is lined on both sides by stone jetties that were emplaced in the early part of the twentieth century, assembled from massive blocks of pre-Cambrian red granite, quarried in the distant central Texas hill country some three hundred miles distant, transported by train, craned out into the churning and seldom placid Gulf of Mexico almost a mile offshore.

Off the end of the jetties, flanking the channel, the mixmaster, red and green whistle buoys wail their mournful song, which can be heard in times of tumultuous weather all the way to my office on the back side of the island, snuggled up against the Sea Ranch Marina.

Sometimes the Pass is quiet and serene with the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico extending far inland, west towards the Port of Brownsville. Other times, it is angry and violent, characterized by crashing waves as far back as Barracuda Bay, long rollers plunging down the channel, breaking on the north side against the beach at Dolphin Cove.

Outside the pass the open Gulf of Mexico beckons, out past the sea buoy, the anchored tankers and the nearshore rigs populating the shallow continental shelf.

Fifty miles or so out, the shelf break signals the abysmal depths of the wide open gulf. Few sailboats venture this far, most choosing to stay within close proximity of the shoreline where they can beat a hasty retreat, lest they suffer the inevitable pounding that the Gulf of Mexico with her penchant for short period violent waves and high winds doles out.  

I have been out that pass more times than I can remember, always returning to home port, here. Always returning to my phony-baloney existence.

Each and every time I drive over the causeway, see that pass, hear the whistle buoys calling out to me, I am filled with longing to simply head out there and not come back for a very long time.

With each passing day, I am drawing ever nearer that time.