Galveston Beach Quotes

…I relied on an unpublished report by Jose Fernandez-Partagas, a late-twentieth-century meteorologist who recreated for the National Hurricane Center the tracks of many historical hurricanes, among them the Galveston Hurricane. He was a meticulous researcher given to long hours in the library of the University of Miami, where he died on August 25, 1997, in his favorite couch. He had no money, no family, no friends--only hurricanes. The hurricane center claimed his body, had him cremated, and on August 31, 1998, launched his ashes through the drop-port of a P-3 Orion hurricane hunter into the heart of Hurricane Danielle. His remains entered the atmosphere at 28 N., 74.2 W., about three hundred miles due east of Daytona Beach.

Galveston?” he asked in that amazing voice, still surprising me by keeping our conversation going. “Yeah. Staying at a beach house and everything. Totally slumming it and having a miserable time, you know?” I gave him a real smile that time. Rip just raised his brows. “I promised her I would go visit, and she promised she would come up too... What’s that face for?” I surprised myself by laughing. “I don’t believe it either. I’ll get lucky if she comes once. I’m not that delusional.” I didn’t imagine the way his cheek twitched again, just a little, just enough to keep the smile on my face. “I’m stuck making my own lunches from now on. I have nobody to watch scary movies with who’s more dramatic than I am screaming at the scary parts. And my house is empty,” I told him, going on a roll. “Your lunches?” was what he picked up on. I wasn’t sure how much he’d had to drink that he was asking me so many questions, but I wasn’t going to complain. “I can’t cook to save my life, boss. I thought everyone knew. Baking is the only thing I can handle.” “You serious?” he asked in a surprised tone. I nodded. “For real?” “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I can’t even make rice in an Instant Pot. It’s either way too dry or it’s mush.” Oh. “An Instant Pot is—” “I know what it is,” he cut me off. It was my turn to make a face, but mine was an impressed one. He knew what an Instant Pot was but not a rom-com. Okay. “Sorry.” He didn’t react to me trying to tease him, instead he asked, “You can’t even make rice in that?” “Nope.” “You know there’s instructions online.” Was he messing with me now? I couldn’t help but watch him a little. How much had he drunk already? “Yeah, I know.” “And you still screw it up?” I blinked, soaking up Chatty Cathy over here like a plant that hadn’t seen the sun in too long. “I wouldn’t say I screw it up. It’s more like… you either need to chew a little more or a little less.” It was his turn to blink. “It’s a surprise. I like to keep people on their toes.” If I hadn’t been guessing that he’d had a couple drinks before, what he did next would have confirmed it. His left cheek twitched. Then his right one did too, and in the single blink of an eye, Lucas Ripley was smiling at me. Straight white teeth. That not-thin but not-full mouth dark pink and pulled up at the edges. He even had a dimple. Rip had a freaking dimple. And I wanted to touch it to make sure it was real. I couldn’t help but think it was just about the cutest thing I had ever seen, even though I had zero business thinking anything along those lines. But I was smart enough to know that I couldn’t say a single word to mention it; otherwise, it might never come out again. What I did trust myself to do was gulp down half of my Sprite before saying, “You can make rice, I’m guessing?” If he wanted to talk, we could talk. I was good at talking. “Uh-huh,” he replied, sounding almost cocky about it. All I could get myself to do in response was grin at him, and for another five seconds, his dimple—and his smile—responded to me.

All the famous pirates operated in the Gulf of Mexico—Henry Morgan, Captain Kidd, Edward (Blackbeard) Teach. Hundreds of Spanish treasure ships passed along the Texas coast in the seventeenth century, bound for Cuba and Spain, and legend has it that pirates sometimes tied lanterns to the backs of burros and led them along the beach, hoping seamen would mistake them for passing ships and pile up on the reefs.

Engineers were regarded as the heroes of the new millennium, and Galveston’s board of commissioners voted to put its problem in the hands of three of the best known—Colonel Henry M. Robert, Alfred Noble, and H. C. Ripley. Robert, who had recently retired from the Army Corps of Engineers (and was famous for having drafted Robert’s Rules of Order), knew Galveston well. He had been instrumental in deepening the harbor, and had recommended constructing a dike between Pelican Island and the mainland, to redirect the current and prevent sedimentary deposits from clogging the channel. He had also recommended building a breakwater along the beach, a recommendation that, had it been approved, might have saved thousands of lives in the 1900 storm. But it had been rejected, beaten back by the argument that such a construction would obscure the view and play hell with the tourist trade.

To bring the city to a level that would protect it from the ravages of the sea, every house, every building, every church and school over an area of five hundred blocks had to be raised on jackscrews and filled under with sand. Streets had to be torn apart and repaved. Streetcar tracks, water pipes, gas lines, trees, and even cemeteries had to be elevated. The grade would vary across the Island, from seventeen feet at the beach to ten feet or less at Broadway: the average was about thirteen. The technology of jacking up large buildings had been used successfully during Chicago’s grade elevation: Alfred Noble had worked on that project.

The Denver construction company of J. M. O’Rourke built the seawall in sixty-foot sections, using massive and sophisticated equipment and techniques never seen before in Texas. Giant four-foot-square blocks of granite and carloads of gravel came by rail from Granite Mountain west of Austin. Forty-two-foot pilings were shipped from the forests of East Texas. Four-horse wagons delivered the materials to the Little Susie line at 15th and Avenue N, and from there they were hauled on specially constructed tracks to the excavation along the beach where the wall would eventually sit. Steam-powered pile drivers that looked like oil derricks hammered the pilings down into the clay stratum, and work crews covered the pilings with foot-thick planking that became the base for the wall. Once the materials started

At its base the wall was sixteen feet thick, tapering to a width of five feet at its top. The seventeen-foot-high wall presented a concave face to the sea, driving the force of the waves upward and back over onto themselves. To protect the toe of the wall from the constant pounding of the sea, a twenty-seven-foot apron of riprap—giant granite boulders—was laid in front, extending out into the Gulf at high tide. The first piling was hammered into place in October 1902. A year and four months later, the initial three-mile section was completed. The wall started at the south jetty on the east end of the Island, followed 6th Street to Broadway, then angled to the beach. From there it ran straight up to 39th Street. In the meantime, the federal government authorized extending the wall from 39th to 53rd, so that it would protect the army installations at Fort Crockett. This mile-long section was completed in October 1905. Over the years the county continued to extend the wall until by 1960 it was 10.4 miles long and girded one-third of the Gulf coastline.

From one end of the Island to the other—in their instinctive struggle to survive for even one more minute—people committed astonishing, desperate, heroic, and sometimes foolish acts. A nurse on duty at a home near the beach wrapped the body of a stillborn infant in a blanket, administered a sleeping potion to the helpless, pain-racked mother, and then, as the house began to disintegrate, calmly made preparation for her own escape. She put on a man’s bathing suit, cut off her hair with scissors, and plunged into the sea. From eight in the evening until two in the morning, she clung to a piece of driftwood, finally washing ashore on the mainland. Naked, bleeding, and shivering in the cold rain, she found a shaggy dog and snuggled up against him until daylight.

Two days later Father Kirwin’s face was similarly ashen. A member of his congregation came to the cathedral and told the priest: “My mother-in-law is back.” “That’s impossible!” said Father Kirwin, reminding the man that they had dumped his mother-in-law’s weighted body eighteen miles out to sea. But she was back, as were the bodies of hundreds of others: they had washed up on the beach overnight. The committee had to rethink its strategy. Since it was no longer possible to haul decaying bodies through the streets, the committee decided to burn corpses on the spot.

Starting in the spring of 1919, schooners from Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamas began running booze to the Island, up to 20,000 cases at a time. The ships dropped anchor thirty-five miles out at sea, at a rendezvous point southwest of Galveston called Rum Row, and the booze was off-loaded into small powerboats or flat-bottomed launches for delivery to spots along the miles of deserted beach. The boats usually beached in shallow water, and work crews waded out and carried the goods to shore. Each case was wrapped in a burlap sack, and two sacks were tied together for easy handling. Sometimes the goods were delivered to remote piers at Offatt’s Bayou, or to one of the coves near San Luis Pass.

Eventually, two rival gangs divided up the Island, using Broadway as a line of demarcation. The Beach Gang, so called because it landed most of its goods on West Beach, occupied the south half of the Island. It was led by an oldtime mobster named Ollie J. Quinn, and his partner, Dutch Voight. A rotund, unfailingly pleasant man, Quinn was an Island icon. On Sundays he faithfully attended services at the First Baptist Church, always placing a hundred-dollar bill in the collection plate. In secular circles, however, Quinn was the acknowledged kingpin of Galveston vice. He ran a joint at 21st and Postoffice called the Deluxe Club, and leased slot machines and other gambling equipment through his Modern Vending Company. Quinn and Voight ran a dependable, relaxed, downhome operation, known for its tolerance to competition and its commitment to peace among outlaws.