Grandpa Doode's Last Vacation, Sam Bass, and Swimming Pigs

When I was about 12, we took a family trip to Padre Island and Corpus Christi.  My mom, dad, two sisters, Grandpa Doode, Grandma Lucille, and me all piled into one vehicle and took the trip from north Texas down to the coast.  I'm not sure what vehicle we took, those were the pre-minivan days.  For that many of us, we must have taken Dad's old International Harvester Scout.  I do remember a trip that LeAnne and I fought over who got to ride in the cargo area of the Scout.  So that must've been the trip.  I can't imagine any other vehicle where the seven of us and our luggage would have been able to travel the 400+ miles.  The cramped conditions are probably what prompted Grandma to inform us that this would probably be Grandpa's "last vacation."  The statement and her certainty about it shocked all of us, including Grandpa! 

We drove through Austin and saw the Capitol building.  I was impressed because it looked just like the pictures in the textbooks.  If my memory is accurate, we drove through on a weekend, so there were no tours.  And I definitely remember that it was a very seedy looking neighborhood.  I expected to see Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch on the street corner.  That may have been the real reason we didn't park and take a tour.

It's been a week without a football story, so here's one.  The son of Huggy Bear plays running back for the Oakland Raiders, or at least he did.  I think he may have been released after this past season.  He played on the national champion USC team that beat Texas in the Rose Bowl.  Oh wait, the LONGHORNS won that game!  It must have been another year that he played.

From Austin, we went south to San Marcos and Aquarena Springs, a small amusement park built around the San Marcos river.  The river is spring-fed and was perfectly clear.  We took a glass bottom boat tour and heard about the giant catfish that used to live in the park.  He escaped during a spring with heavy rain and was next seen on the front page of the local newspaper, the victim/trophy of a local trotline fisherman.  Sometimes the grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence.  The real highlight of the park was Ralph, the swimming pig.  The audience sat in bleachers and watched Ralph dive and swim with his human friends.  The bleachers were at and below the level of the water and behind a plexiglass wall, so you could see Ralph's little pig legs paddling like mad when he hit the water!  Cathy and I lived in San Marcos in the early 1990's.  When we visited Aquarena Springs, there was no Ralph.  Since the park was being run by the University, Ralph was probably retired due to political correctness.  He has used his retirement years to learn computer skills.  He now has his own Facebook page.  I bet Grandma Lucille never dreamed she would see the day when a swimming pig had his own page on the internet!

A little further south in San Antonio, we visited the Alamo.  It's hard to imagine the scene of the battle right in the middle of downtown in one of the ten largest cities in the country.  The Alamo compound was a church, not a fort, so other than the famous arched church front, none of the site looks like you would imagine.  When the city was repairing the streets downtown in the 90's, they did a lot of archeological studies, looking for the Alamo's well and of course the required lost treasure that always goes with such legendary sites.  I learned that the site of the actual final battle at the Alamo was at Wendy's, a couple of blocks from the shrine.  Some myths should not be burst.  One of my most vivid memories is of the old Buckhorn Saloon down the street from the Alamo.  It is an old west type saloon filled with mounted big game trophies from all over the world and a huuuge collection of antlers.  

Our San Antonio visit was only a few years after the World's Fair was held in the city.  The HemisFair tower was a reasonably new attraction in the city that we had to experience.  An elevator ride to the top of the tower took us to the rotating platform where you could see the entire city and look down on the Alamo.  My youngest sister, Lori, stepped between the warning signs and dropped a bobby pin over the edge to watch it fall.  Mom lectured us all on the dangers of dropping something as small as a dime from such a height.  She could've dropped that hair pin on Grandma Lucille (she and Grandpa Doode didn't go to the top, Grandma doesn't like heights).

I don't remember much about Corpus Christi or Padre Island.  I have never been much of a beach person.  It's hot, humid, the sand never feels as good on your feet as you think it will, and it smells like dead fish.  So, no, I'm not impressed, although years later, I did like the Oregon coast with its redwood tree driftwood.  No redwoods in Texas,so the only thing I remember liking was the fried fish at the little shack on stilts right on the beach.  And I was probably more impressed with the shack on stilts than I was with the fish!


The part of the trip everyone remembers most was the drive between San Antonio and Corpus.  Lori was maybe three at the time, and she had had enough fun for the day.  She started a hundred mile tantrum and for such a little girl, she could wail. 
Finally we reached a point where even Grandma Lucille had run out of patience (I think Grandpa Doode had turned off his hearing aid).  Dad pulled over and Lori and Mom went for a "walk."  Mom's walks didn't involve much walking and definitely didn't leave you in a mood for sitting afterward, if you get my drift.  As an aside, never trust her when she asks if you want to go see the horses during a church service either.  Lori came back much subdued and we actually enjoyed a little peace at the end of the drive.  As we neared the end of the trip, Mom said, "well that whooping seemed to have done a little good."  Lori said, "yeah, but I might still need another one later."

 On the return trip, we went to Longhorn Caverns near Burnet.  It is not a large cavern, but it was a fun trip.  The guide told stories about the Comanches using the cavern as a hideout when the Texas Rangers were chasing them.  It was also a speakeasy during Prohibition, complete with dance floor and chandeliers hanging next to the stalactites.  The guide informed us that it was also a hideout used by the infamous murderer, stagecoach robber, and gunfighter, Sam Bass.  Grandma Lucille was embarrassed, but still needed to tell us that Bass was a distant relative to her side of the family.  She did not hesitate to tell us of the relation, probably because if she didn't Grandpa would.  And he would say it loud enough that someone else might hear.  Then she would really be embarrassed.  She would never understand the modern need of people to air their dirty laundry on national television.  

It seems like we did a lot on this trip.  It might also have been the trip that we spent a day with Grandma's sister and visited the space center in Houston.  Lilly worked for Texas Instruments and they had just come out with the portable calculator.  Portable for the 1970's, it was sized somewhere between a Blackberry and a netbook, only about twice as thick as either.  Lilly's husband showed us a trick with a riddle whose answer was ShellOil.  When you did the math on the calculator, the answer was 71077345.  Turn the calculator upside down and the red LED numbers spelled ShELLOiL.  Primitive nerd humor.  Being kids, LeAnne and I soon figured out that if you left off the S and the oil, you could spell hell on the calculator.  We probably spent an hour giggling over that, all the time watching to make sure Mom didn't catch us.  We were definitely the rebels!

Quite an eventful trip for Grandpa Doode's last vacation.  Well last if you don't count those trips to Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and South Dakota and stops in between.  Even Lori survived to take a couple of more vacations.