Hurricane Heart Ache

In a city ‘rich with opportunity’ that is often not apparent to outsiders, our proximity to the Gulf Coast is normally a huge draw for Beaumont. The brisk salty breeze off the dunes will wash away the oily sweat and grime from working the Beaumont area oil refineries, refreshing the soul and cleansing the spirit of the working man at the end of a rod and reel. Humble crabbers can grab a cheap chicken neck and string, while teens bathe in the warm Gulf waters, soaking in UV rays as if there were no such thing as skin cancer, and proving for another generation that the best things in life are, indeed, free.

While the wealthy build mini-mansions with boat docks in the bay, the working class is content with little fishing cabins, often built in family cooperatives because the expense is more than allowed on a single middle class budget. Growing up in the area, almost everyone I knew, rich or poor, had some access to a little cabin on the beach. Those who didn’t camped on the beach and fished, either in the surf or at Rollover Pass, because those were free. Escape from dirty industrial labors was defined by the peace, quiet, and tranquility found in the muddy, brownish-green water in the yellow sand dunes, green marsh, and black mud flats from Sabine Pass to Bolivar.

For our family, a one-room, rustic cabin on Faggard Slip Road in Gilchrist was beach headquarters. It took a family of fifteen, scraping together “dues” for a Beach House Club, bartered lots, and much do-it-yourself carpentry, electrical, and plumbing skills to construct the Stella Maris over the course of several summers. In 1952, a stove was acquired and the cabin declared habitable. No AC, just old-fashioned shutters you pull up and tie down with rope, hoping to catch a breeze and blow away the mosquitoes. No strict building codes to hamper Enderle family ‘ingenuity,’ we showered with a water hose in rainwater collected in a big metal cistern, which Hurricane Carla rolled into the marsh, and which was replaced by a big, white concrete water tank, the only thing standing after Hurricane Ike, besides some multi-colored pilings sticking up like short, fat fingers imploring the stormy heavens for their life. We mourn and moan in private, because so many lost so much more.

Our little piece of heaven at the beach was lost, but we are aware of the “beach folk” who stayed all year, making a home and a living by having our refuge ready for a visit. They stocked bait and ice, chilled sodas and beer, sold gas, got baked and wrinkled by the unrelenting sun and sea breeze, while we plotted our next excursion. They lost a home and their livelihood; we lost a vacation spot, so we kept respectfully silent, and wept. As now construction is strictly regulated, and rightly so, by stringent coastal building codes, the family will not rebuild the Stella Maris anytime soon. Taxes will get paid and, hopefully, a future generation will take up the project of rebuilding.

The era of throwing up a shack on the beach is over for the middle class of Beaumont. We just feel blessed to have been born in time to experience the Greatest Generation’s gift to their youth in the Golden Triangle, a sleepy little fishing village called Gilchrist, located between Faggard Slip and ‘the Cut’.

“The Cut” at Rollover Pass was once a low, narrow point on the peninsula, where pirates, Spaniards, and other ne’er-do-wells eluded customs and legal authorities for centuries by rolling barrels of rum and whiskey over the pass, into the bay. Eventually cut out and walled for free fishing, the Cut secured Gilchrist’s heyday in mid-20th Century, before Crystal Beach became so popular. Ravaged by countless storms, usurped by Crystal’s amenities, the ‘big store’ replacing Faggard’s store/church, Gilchrist of late was run-down, with owners just walking away from cabins and businesses devastated by storms, buildings just left to rot in the relentless coastal wind and rain. The beach shrank as row after row of houses disappeared into those brown Gulf waters after each successive storm. Ike finished Gilchrist off, and was the last blow for the Cut.

Come to find out, Rollover was partly to blame for the erosion. While letting salt water and fish pass through, it also took sand. Lots of sand, from the beach to the bay. As the coastal conservationists and environmentalists made their case, the Cut was tried, convicted and sentenced to doom. No more free fishing spot for the poor working class of Beaumont, go wade into the surf or the mud flats of the bay. We once thought Sea Rim State Park would be a nice alternative, but Hurricane Rita took that away already, with no plans to rebuild. That leaves Southeast Texans struck out for coastal state parks nearby.

We pen this with heavy heart for the demise of Gilchrist, and gave much thought to accepting the land commissioner’s death knell for Rollover. But after viewing Dr. Richard Watson’s Texas Coastal Geology PowerPoint photos, I was convinced. Our plea for the non-wealthy community of beach-goers is that something be installed to replace the Cut: a jetty or pier, a park or recreation area, where Southeast Texans can go at nominal expense to enjoy the beach with sanitary facilities, and to fish.

From our family experience, the nearby coastal waters offer a psychic lift from the drudgery of life in an industrial town, rich with employment opportunity, but poor with entertainment opportunity. The recreational value of the wooded lakes area to our north and the Gulf Coast to our south is Beaumont’s biggest quality-of-life lures. But if only the rich have the opportunities, no one will be there to stock the bait and ice, chill the sodas and beer, and pump the gas, day in and out, all year. If the Cut must go, it must be replaced with something to soothe the tired working man’s mind and muscle, and to provide jobs to Gilchrist’s old salts.