I have to tell you, I haven’t spent much time with Davey through his growing up years. Being separated by 800 miles makes it hard to have family time. But Davey has grown into a fine young man. He was very sociable with us, his crazy relatives, and he told lots of funny stories.
“Crazy, Peg?” you say. “Why do you say crazy?”
Well, this photo of my two crazy brothers comes to mind.
“It’s not crazy,” Rick says. “Can’t you come up with a better word than that?”
“When I showed Momma the picture she said, ’They love each other,’” I told Rick.
“Yeah,” Rick said. “I love my family. I’ll kiss’em all! Besides, we’re not crazy, we’re Bowers!”
Speaking of love, I see nothing but love when John hugs his wife Eunice.
And when Paul is with his wife Laly.
I got a picture of David, his wife Pilar, and Momma.
Patti, Diane, me, Charles and Richard were all spouseless for various reasons. That just leaves Phyllis and I didn’t happen to catch a picture of her and her significant other together but here’s a picture of Jim, her handsome man. (Picture courtesy of Rick.)
We had two beautiful teenage girls there too, and I want to show them off!
My niece Rachel is Phyllis and Jim’s daughter.
D.J. is Paul and Laly’s granddaughter but might just as well be their daughter.
Andrew, my grandson, was very, very shy. Not only with me but with all the strangers around who wanted to talk to him and love on him. No matter what anyone said or did, he just wasn’t having any of it and insisted on being in the arms of either his mother or father.
Paul brought along his VR headset and we all took turns living in a virtual reality world. I saw a scary movie with thunder and lightening and a creepy old house and a doll that moved around every time I turned my back on her. My favorite one though was Jungle Book. King Louie was huge and you had to throw your head back to take him all in! I loved it! It is such a strange feeling to have your senses high jacked. You know you are in a living room in Texas and yet you felt like you were right there in the VR world.
Andrew likes dinosaurs. He knows the names and faces of more dinosaurs than I do. So when Paul said he had dinosaurs on his VR device, I said, “Andrew has to see that one!” I thought he would get a kick out of it and maybe help bring him out a little. But Andrew could not be tempted to even try the headset on. It was almost the end of the day and people were starting to drift away before Andrew started to warm up.
John and Eunice; Richard, Charles, Paul, Laly and DJ; Phyllis, Jim and Rachel all left Texas in the wee hours of Sunday morning. That left Patti, Momma, Diane, me, Kevin, Kandyce and Andrew.
The next morning, the day after the reunion, Diane and I had breakfast and walked a block to the beach.
An early morning fisherman, the sunrise in the background, a small bird caught in mid-flight, is what’s on my desktop right now.
In the distance we saw Fishermen’s Wharf. “Wanna walk over?” I asked my cute little red haired sister.
“Sure,” she said.
We walk down the beach, climb over the big granite rocks that lined the walkway and up onto the pier.
“Look at the birds!” I thought it funny how they were all hanging right there and I snapped a few pictures.
All of a sudden the birds... the sky rats... the gulls, all swooped down and out of the cacophony of sound and cloud of flapping wings walks a man trailing a plastic bag.
“He dumped something out,” I said to Diane.
PLOP!
“Oh,” Diane exclaimed and stepped back. There at her feet, narrowly missing her head, sat what I can only guess was a big ole honkin piece of fish guts.
“Let’s back up a little,” I suggested. I wanted to be out of the drop zone.
As soon as we stepped back a gull swooped in to pick up his dropped treasure. He didn’t go far before he dropped it again and a couple of his compadres dove in to help him out.
It didn’t take the gulls long to clean up their breakfast.
Midway down the pier you enter a store. “$2 Upper Deck. $10 Lower Deck” declared the sign at the door. Inside were trinkets, fishing lures and bait, coffee and snacks.
“We want to walk on the upper deck,” I told the clerk and paid the fee.
“That includes a drink of your choice,” she informed me.
“Coffee?” I questioned.
“I’m just now making it.”
“Let’s get it when we come back down,” Diane suggested.
On the upper deck sat lots of birds looking for a handout. They were so used to people that they let you get quite close to them.
The feathers of the black ones were iridescent and changed colors in the sunlight.
Diane leaned against the railing, the morning sun striking her beautiful face, and we talked about the reunion and God and our savior Jesus Christ.
On our way back to the beach we stopped at the counter and picked up our coffee.
On the beach I watched with fascination as a young man tried to catch the wind for some wind surfing. Here the sail was filled with wind and pulled him to the ocean before he got his board on.
Once he had the board on the wind died down and left him on his knees in the surf.
“Ready?” Diane asked, way over the fascination before I was.
“Yep. I was hoping to see him surf a little but we can go.”
On down the beach we went and we walk past an extension cord. What do you do with an extension cord on the beach and who leaves one behind anyway? Those things are expensive! If I could have put it in my carryon suitcase I’d have taken it home to Mike!
We made our way back to the steps the would take us up to street level and a group of young men were playing football on the beach nearby.
“You wanna sit on the wall and finish our coffee?” I asked Diane.
“Sure.”
It was about a six foot drop straight down onto the beach and I had a flash in my mind’s eye of an old lady sprawled out on the beach, a camera still around her neck and a cup of coffee spilled open near her outstretched right hand…
Yeah.
It didn’t stop me from sitting on the edge of the wall, it just made me more careful in my approach to the edge of the wall. It’s harder to fall when you are on your hands and knees.
I snapped a few pictures of the guys as they played football...
and when I looked up I saw a sail. It was our wind surfer dude and he was surfing.
“Is that a ship in the background?” you ask.
Yes it is. There were lots of oil tankers out there. I guess there was an oil rig platform out there in the Gulf someplace too.
Diane and I walked back to the hotel and she took her leave to get ready for Sunday Mass.
I joined Kevin, Kandyce and Andrew at breakfast and visited with them while they ate. Andrew was still being really shy.
“Mumble, mumble, mumble,” Andrew mumbled quietly to his mom.
“What?”
“Mumble, mumble, mumble,” Andrew repeated. “Kevin, what’s he saying? I don’t know what he’s saying.”
“What buddy?” Kevin asked.
“Mumble, mumble, mumble,” Andrew said this time to his dad.
“Ahh. He wants to ride the roller coaster.”
Kandyce laughed. “Oh.” Then she turned to me. “We saw it yesterday when we were driving around.”
“I saw it too.” It was hard to miss as it stuck right out there in the water not far from Fishermen’s Warf.
“Kevin, you wanna take Andrew out to the pier before we leave today?” Kandyce asked.
“We could,” he replied.
“Can I tag along?” I asked.
“Sure,” Kandyce said without any hesitation. Nothing like inviting yourself along, is there. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to go with us anyway.”
I should have been patient and waited for an invite but I wanted to spend as many minutes with them as I could before they left for home later that day.
Parking along the seawall there on the island of Galveston is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. This dude drives along and tags your car.
Then you go online and pay the fee. He told Kevin, when Kevin asked about it, that if you aren’t there for very long they might not even tag your car at all, but it’s a dollar an hour, eight dollars for all day or twenty-five dollars for a season pass.
At the ticket booth of Pleasure Pier we were told that because of the wind, the roller coaster wasn’t running. We bought walking passes. I wasn’t interested in riding any of the rides anyway and you could purchase tickets for single rides if you wanted to.
Here are the beautiful faces I love so much.
Andrew and I made a selfie while we waited for Mom and Dad outside the restrooms, which is no small feat considering the size of my Canon camera.
Then Kevin made a picture of Kandyce, Andrew and me.
Picture making over, we walked on.
“It looks like they’re stuck on the log ride,” Kevin commented.
“Boy I’d really be upset if I bought an all day pass. The roller coaster isn’t running and now the log ride is down too.”
Andrew threw darts and between him and his dad managed to win a lizard.
“Thank you for my lizard, Daddy.”
“You’re welcome buddy.”
Andrew really did love that lizard because for the rest of the day, there were only two things out of his mouth. “Thank you for my lizard, Daddy,” and “I want to go to the beach.” To which his mom and dad told him and kept on telling him, “We will. You just have to wait a little longer.”
At the kiddy bumper cars we watched the cutest little girl with the most infectious smile. She was just darling.
We decided to have a bite to eat at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company before we left the pier. The kids have never been there and they loved the old license plates on each table.
“If you need something just flip the plate over to Stop Forrest Stop,” Ingrid, our waitress told us and showed us. “Otherwise leave it on Run Forrest Run.”
As we sat there chatting, Kevin noticed the way the glasses were made. The wait staff could carry several glasses in one hand.
“Ingrid, how many glasses can you carry at one time?” I asked her.
She did a count in her head. “Six!”
“Really! I’d like to see that, if you could arrange it.”
After a while Ingrid came out with six glasses of water in one hand. She was such a good sport to do that for me. I had only intended that when someone had six glasses she would maybe just have them stop at our table for me.
Andrew ordered french fries and they came in a bucket.
Kevin pulled them out and laid them on the table in front of Andrew and let him squirt his own ketchup onto a corner.
He started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Kandyce asked him.
Andrew, so tickled he could hardly speak, says, “It farted.”
You never saw such glee, such great delight, over ketchup farts in all your life!!
Kevin let Andrew have a little fun, making the ketchup fart,
but in the meantime his pile of ketchup was growing and growing. “You’ve got enough ketchup now, bud. Let’s put it down.” Andrew didn’t fuss, he just did as he was told.
Outside the restaurant they have a bench set up with Forrest Gump’s iconic running shoes, socks, suitcase and of course, a box of chocolates.
Our next stop was the beach. A bird sitting close by captures my attention.
On the beach we take off our shoes and in my case, socks, and walk barefoot in the sand. Andrew starts collecting shells, washing them off and putting them in his dad’s pocket.
He waded out into the water and let the waves chase him back in.
Eventually — you guessed it— eventually he ended up belly down in the water and he took delight in that too.
“You’re not a bit upset that he’s getting all wet,” I said to Kevin and Kandyce as they laughed at Andrew’s antics.
“You can’t bring a kid to the beach and not expect him to get wet,” Kevin said.
“That’s right,” Kandyce agreed. “Besides, we have dry clothes in the car.”
Andrew saw how close the birds were getting to us and he wanted to catch one. He chased bird after bird but wasn’t having any luck.
So Andrew changed tactics. He tried to go slow and talk soothingly to the bird.
“Come here,” he says in a soft voice. I thought it was going to work and I was prepared to be amazed by my amazing grandson, but the bird took off and Andrew gave chase.
A young couple with a young son found a crab and were happy to share their find with us.
“How did you find him?” I asked. Kevin had shown me the air holes in the sand that indicate the likelihood of a crab, but despite digging a hole big enough to drop a semi into, we didn’t find one.
“He just ran in front of me,” the young woman said as she held it in her hands trying to get her son to take an interest in it. The crab took off and she lost it as it dropped onto the sand. Kevin blocked it with his foot. After a while we gave them their crab back and moved on down the beach.
All too soon it was time for the kids to be getting on the road. Andrew picked up sticks as we headed back to the car and dragged his feet through the warm soft sand.
In the car, Andrew says, “Look Mimi.”
He was fascinated with the way the sand had dried on his foot.
I reached in the back for my things and found his lizard.
“Here’s your lizard, Andrew,” I said.
“Thank you, Mimi,” he said as he took the lizard. “Thank you for my lizard, Daddy,” he said yet again.
“You’re welcome buddy.”
“You sure do like that lizard, don’t you Andrew?”
“Yes,” he agreed.
“Kiss your lizard,” I said and Andrew gave his lizard lots of kisses.
Back at the hotel, Andrew had a bath and a change of clothes before the kids hit the road.
Kandyce wanted a picture of four generations when they said their good bye’s to Momma and this is the picture that found its way on my camera.
The day isn’t over yet, but sadly we must call this one done.
Until next time, be well my loves.
