My personal life…

I live in Galveston, Texas, in the winters, and in Colorado in the summers. This is how Galveston used to look; it’s been developed a bit since then. The New York Times described it as “crumbling but achingly beautiful”, which captures it pretty well (To download the article, click here.) It also has a fascinating history.

The Galveston seawall, built to prevent flooding after the hurricane of 1900.

A brief historical digression: (To skip this, and go to section on boating, cars, traveling and other interests, click here.) As far as I can tell, Galveston first came to attention in the 1500s as the place where the explorer Cabeza de Vaca was stranded, and lived among the Indians as a slave for several years. In the 1600’s, the French explorer Robert Cavelier La Salle never bothered to visit Galveston, but nonetheless claimed it for France and named it St. Louis. Its current name is derived from Bernardo de Galvez, an eighteenth century Spanish governor who sent his assistant Jose de Evia to explore the Gulf of Mexico. The faithful de Evia found an area near the mouth of a river, which he named Galveston Bay in honor of his benefactor. Galvez died shortly after the island and city took the same name, never having set foot on the place, and to this day, just about nobody has ever heard of de Evia. Subsequently Galveston has twice been declared an independent country, first in 1817 by the pirate Jean Lafitte, who, like me, thought it might be a nice place to retire to. It was the site of naval battles during the Texas revolution and the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation was read to the townspeople on the steps of a church not far from our house. Galveston later became a kind of “little Ellis Island”, a major port receiving immigrants from around the world. Until the devastating hurricane of 1900, it was one of America’s largest ports, and a center of commerce for the Gulf. As far as I can tell, it never fully recovered after that, though its history in the 1920s and thereafter is pretty impressive as a resort city. In the Balinese Room, a night club built on a pier, the likes of Duke Ellington, Guy Lombardo, and Frank Sinatra performed. It is said that the margarita was invented when Peggy “Margaret” Lee asked for a mixed tequila drink. In any event, the Balinese Room still stands, and we go there to hear music on occasion. I’m not sure that a lot of history has happened here since those venerable days, but it remains a lovely island surviving because of its beaches, its role as part of the larger seaport of Houston, and a maritime culture which continues to fascinate me.