Vanishing shells

 

I was transported to Galveston in 1945.

I attended Davy Crockett Elementary School, San Houston Elementary, and Lovenberg Junior High.

When not encumbered by attendance to these institutions I traversed the six blocks from my home to the beach at 39th Street.  I fished.  I played in the surf and taught myself to swim. 

More important I began a fabulous shell collection.

Piles pf “jingle shells” — small pelecypods — were common, up to several feet in length and a foot in height.  (the piles, not the individual shells).

It was common to pick up lightning whelks of six to eight inches — so common that if a shell had a chip broken out of the lip I discarded it.  Moon shells were abundant.  Angel wings, delicate beings that they are, were usually broken; a perfect shell was rare.  Rarer still, a connected pair.  The assortment goes on —  too numerous to list. I accumulated a fabulous collection.

Mollusca, classes Gastropoda and Bivalvia.  (the latter, in the ancient times of my collecting was referred to as Pelecypoda.)

Unfortunately, the truth is demonstrated of that old axiom that “three moves are a s good as a fire.”  For somewhere in my frequent changes of locations I lost my shell collection. Much regret.

I was away from Galveston for several years — but the sand in my shoes was irresistible. I came home in 1962.

As soon as my suitcase was empty I hurried to MY beach.

“My beach” refers to the strip of sand beneath 39th Street.

To the uninitiated the beach is monotonously alike from the East end of Broadway to the inviting stretch past 61st Street.  Where the seawall ended, and the pavement of Seawall Boulevard took a precipitous dive from the top of the seawall to the sand of West Beach.

If you don't remember the seawall ending there, you are just too young.

I found my beach waiting patiently.  It greeted me kindly, and with tolerance for the tears of nostalgia that interfered with my vision.  Briefly.

For I had a lot of catching up to do.

Off with my shoes, to wade in the shallow edge of the surf.

Standing, staring silently out to the horizon — as distant as ever.

Checking the tide tables, I made a point of returning at low tide.

To hunt for shells.

I was frustrated,  Disappointed, and in subsequent trips to the beach I confirmed my sad initial impressions. 

There were no shells.

Not that they were scarce, or that the shells I found were damaged.

THERE WERE NO SHELLS.

Over the next three years I fished eagerly and intensively all around the island.

I waded into the surf, and found specs, redfish and flounder.  I waded into West bay and found oysters, but no fish.

In a home-made wooden boat I explored fishing in the ship channel; and in the open Gulf just beyond the surf; in West Bay; around the concrete ship; along the backside of Pelican Island; and even to San Luis pass at the west end of the island.

I have a host of good memories, of impressive stringers of fish  And some memorable encounters with sharks.

Some skin divers who explored the waters around Gulf oil rigs have “laid down the law,” and told their families to stay out of the water. 

“Swimming is for swimming pools.”

My own experience echoes that sentiment. I have seen sharks big enough to be dangerous in the beachfront surf where the water was just a foot deep.

I look back on my various entries into the beach waters, and realize that I was lucky.

But the scarcity of shells was an ongoing reality.

A few, occasionally, but the memory of the beach findings of the 1940's lingers. 

Now I read in the periodical “Galveston Monthly Magazine”  the plaintive query “Unraveling the Mystery of the Disappearing Seashells ... Galveston Beachcombers Wonder: Where Have the Treasures Gone?”

Where, indeed?