From La Porte, Texas to the Promised Land / December 2013
| Santa L. E. J. |
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| Santa L. E. J. Photo credit: Dave Therrien |
| Yours Truly in a Swamp |
December 2013
Leonard Earl Johnson
of New Orleans and Lafayette
* * *
From La Porte, Texas to the Promised Land
by Leonard Earl Johnson
From La Porte, Texas to the Promised Land
by Leonard Earl Johnson
Any port in a storm
The year of the last Cuban Boat Lift, 1980, I was sailing aboard the M. V. Sealand Venture, a U. S. flagged container ship running scheduled stops between Houston, Texas and Rotterdam, Holland. I served as the officer's Bedroom Steward (B. R.) -- a kind of seagoing maid. Not a glamorous rank but a joyful one owing to the large amount of shore leave it afforded.
The year of the last Cuban Boat Lift, 1980, I was sailing aboard the M. V. Sealand Venture, a U. S. flagged container ship running scheduled stops between Houston, Texas and Rotterdam, Holland. I served as the officer's Bedroom Steward (B. R.) -- a kind of seagoing maid. Not a glamorous rank but a joyful one owing to the large amount of shore leave it afforded.
A good B. R. arranges to be on such terms with his officers that all but the Captain will lock their doors in port to keep out thieves ostensibly, and effectively ending the good B. R.'s duties after breakfast. This is a kind of gratuity, a tip to the good B. R. I was a good B. R.
During that year, the Venture quit the wharves along Houston's downtown Ship Channel and began calling at a newly constructed container terminal at Morgan's Point, near the little town of La Porte. This was a spot so far out-in-the-boonies it was barely in from the Gulf of Mexico.
* * *
Now, mind you, near this new terminal existed a dirt-floored, tin-roofed watering hole known as The Little Goat Ranch. It sat promisingly in the turn at Barbours Cut, on a jutting beachhead walking distance from our new berth. Its services were mercifully available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. A hand-painted sign with white scrawling letters and random splats and dribbles so proclaimed from the mirror behind the bar, "We no Closed Never." Nice, but hardly Houston.
The town of La Porte, a meager destination if ever there was one, lay two-miles straight inland. I took a bicycle with me in those days and it was a pleasant two mile ride over new black asphalt roads separating cow pastures strewn with long-horned cattle and Spanish Moss laden live oaks.
The town itself offered the weary sailor little. There was the Space Shot Motel and Bar, for those who got lucky, a Spanish movie house, Rosetta's Fajita Cafe, and the Gulf Coast Railroad Emporium, with its back-lighted oval sign proclaiming, "Lionel Trains for All The Ages -- Toot! Toot!"
The sights of La Porte and The Little Goat Ranch were certainly appreciated, but they were dim lights next to our memories of Houston.
* * *
Our savior was found
In the Gulf Coast Railroad Emporium, one memorable Fall day, I made the acquaintance of Cowboy Castro, a fine looking blue-eyed, brown-skinned local, with a not-so-fine looking purple "pick'em up truck." Crowning the left fender, amid a lifetime's collection of dents and scratches stood a two foot tall plastic statue of Jesus holding a bleeding red heart in one hand and a chromium pigtail radio antenna in the other.
Cowboy Castro was in the Emporium purchasing tiny red lights for his rolling icon. "To light the world through the eyes of Jesus!" he said with a brilliant smile. I hired him on the spot to drive me and my bicycle back to the ship.
We followed the red-eyed beacon of Jesus down the new black top. But we did not get all the way to the ship. We stopped for "refreshing beer beverages," on Cowboy's suggestion, at The Little Goat Ranch.
Later that evening (still at The Goat Ranch), the ship's Mate, Bos'n, Chief Cook and I secured Cowboy's commitment to meeting our returning ship each voyage, and driving one or all into Houston.
Cowboy was to wait as long as it took, then round us up gurgling in the morning light, and return us dockside and, need be, help us stumble up the accommodation ladder.
Cowboy was to wait as long as it took, then round us up gurgling in the morning light, and return us dockside and, need be, help us stumble up the accommodation ladder.
* * *
Shore leave and liberty for all!
In those days Houston was a shining alabaster city undulating on a succulent pool of booming oil prices. An anything-goes Babylon of the U. S. Gulf coast. Cowboy Castro's purple "pick'em up" was our winged angel carrying us Home.
Despite loudly professed religiosity, and being on "extended break" from Texas A. and M., Cowboy performed his duties well. Even, in time, joining our romps in port out of La Porte.
Our favorite Houston destination was a long gray building, along Westheimer Drive named The Green Door. Neon tubing atop its flat roof showed chicken heads kissing among flashing red hearts and green dollar bills.
Along a low-slung front porch a row of green doors awaited the wanting visitor. Beside each door hung a lantern similar to those used by old-time railroaders. If the lamp was lit green you could enter for a price and talk privately with a scantily clad man or woman behind a plate glass window. By the power vested in money pushed through a slot in the glass, you could persuade your selection to display their charms.
Praise the Lord, it was living porn! Shocking, I guess, but with the possible exception of Cowboy, we were depraved salts and not missionaries.
Praise the Lord, it was living porn! Shocking, I guess, but with the possible exception of Cowboy, we were depraved salts and not missionaries.
Truthfully, Cowboy loved The Green Door as much as we did and always arrived screaming Biblical quotes like, "Better to spill your seed in the belly of the whore than upon barren rock!" He would then enter a door labeled "Girl" and, as he put it, "Wax philosophic with the Jezebel inside."
* * *
One Day, one sacrament too many
On a warm December night, back at the ship to meet an early sailing, Cowboy helped us up the ladder and joined me in my fo'c's'le for a parting drink. After several we passed out. As the moon rose mid sky, we awakened on the deck rocking against the bulkhead beside my bunk. The ship was gently slipping out to Sea.
"I've been shanghaied," Cowboy hollered. He cursed in Spanish and threw Lone Star Beer cans first at the Gulf of Mexico on the other side of the porthole, and then at me.
I yelled back, "You Bible thumping Aggie, you think I want a stowaway in my cabin, for Christ's sake!"
The word "stowaway" brought us both up short and sober. He ceased his fretting and we made an agreement to make the best of our situation till reaching Miami, Florida in two days. Miami was our last stop before heading out across the North Atlantic for Rotterdam.
Cowboy could walk off the ship in Miami, we figured, and catch a plane back to Houston with no one the wiser. We settled in and became comfortable traveling companions. He stayed calmly in my cabin drinking beer, watching television, and feasting on food I spirited from the galley.
At night we talked of how lonely Christmas was at Sea, and how Norwegian sailors lashed evergreen trees to their ship's foremast at Christmas time. He told of his family's immigration from Cuba, "Before Fidel," and wondered if he might see the "Crimson Devil's Isle."
"Perhaps when we sail through the Straits of Florida?" he asked. I reckoned not.
Cowboy laughed at how Florida's "gringo governor" greeted Cuban boat people, while literally mopping his brow. Then Cowboy's eyes lit up like the red-eyed Jesus on his purple truck. "Carumba!" he exclaimed. "If I can pass myself off as a boat-person, I could slap-slogan those stupid Florida gringos all the way to easy street."
I was shocked and said so, "How could you, after fleeing Castro?"
"Fleeing Castro?" He peered back at me with a prove-it expression that asked, "Are you crazy? That Castro was still in the hills when we left Cuba. This Castro," he said, pointing his thumbs at his chest, "was fleeing poverty, and still is!"
As Cowboy was saying this I felt the ship slow and go dead in the water. I left him plotting his economic salvation and went topside.
The Mate and Bos'n were walking back from a Jacob's ladder slung over the starboard gunnel. Six sunburned Cubans walked behind them. Off our stern, an unpainted rowboat with an upended oar sluiced in our wake. From the oar flapped a white cloth painted with black letters spelling, "S O S."
I followed behind them and waited outside the Captain's door till they came back out. "Excuse me," I said to the Mate, "could one of you come with me?" Both declined.
The Mate shrugged, "Sorry, Leonard, I'm facing a long ton of Federal paper shuffling."
"You best come," I said, rubbing me beard and cherishing the powers of pirates and rogues. "We're in rough waters, Mate, rough enough to beach us."
My actual power was that any ship's irregularity meant Federal paper work for the Mate, and the Mate hated Federal paper work. He came along.
At my fo'c's'le I turned the latch, opened the door and stood back.
"Hi, Mate," Cowboy grinned, lifting his beer can.
"Jesus, Moses and Mohammad!" exclaimed the Mate, slamming the door tight. He looked at me and several words formed on his lips before, "Holy Mother of Christ!" came out.
* * *
Cowboy's second coming
In Miami, officers of the United States Coastguard collected our Cubans. With the addition of our handsome, blue-eyed, un-sunburned Cowboy Castro they now numbered seven.
On our return voyage we lashed a Norwegian Christmas Tree to the foremast and strung it with yellow light bulbs furnished by the Bos'n. As we hove'round Barbours Cut and slipped up against the wharf all eyes searched the dock. But there was no Cowboy Castro waiting for us.
We found his beat up purple truck and used a key under the floor mat to drive ourselves into Houston for Christmas Day. Then, two days after Christmas, as we tumbled down the ladder headed for The Goat Ranch, Cowboy drove up in a brand new blue pick'em up truck.
Cowboy explained on the drive to Houston, "They couldn't find me a purple one." He laughed, slurped from his beer can, and handed a fresh one to the Mate. He told us he was going back to school, but not to Texas A. and M.
"You know why piss is yellow?" he asked. "And come is white?
So Aggies will know if they are coming or going!" He slapped his leg and laughed again.
He told how the Miami V. F. W. had bought him the truck and the gringo governor of Florida had gotten him an appointment to the National Maritime Academy at Kings Point. He grinned and said, "I start next Fall. After that I'll be sailing with you legal like, Mate!"
The Mate popped open his beer, rolled down his window, and screamed a wild Texas "Wah-hoo!" at three steers nosing a discarded Christmas Tree. "God bless us all," he said, pulling his head back in the cab. "Welcome to The Promised Land!"
Copyright, 2013, Leonard Earl Johnson, all rights reserved
posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 5:19 AM
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