The 50th Anniversary Nostalgia Tour

Shortly after Barb and I began dating, her parents moved from Houston to Port Lavaca, Texas so that her father could assume the duties as the pulpit minister - indeed, the only minister - at the Church of Christ in that coastal community. Thus began a series of trips to Port Lavaca to visit her parents, and later, after Barb graduated and moved home to start her teaching career in the nearby tiny community of Austwell, a series of too-brief week-end journeys on my part to see her. When the time came, we were married, by her father, in that church, fifty years ago.

The trips to south Texas continued of course; first to Port Lavaca, then to Bay City, El Campo and Three Rivers as the years passed and Barb's father took other preaching positions and we came to visit, just the two of us at first, then bringing babies to show off. Time marched on, and eventually we no longer traveled to south Texas to see family.

I don't know when we began going to Port Aransas - it was after the kids were grown - but that became our get-away destination, and that is where we went to celebrate our 50th anniversary. I mentioned to Barb that we were only 70 miles from where this all started, and maybe we should make a memorial tour.

It is a fairly straight shot from Port Aransas to Port Lavaca, along Highway 35. Not Interstate 35, but Texas 35, through Rockport and across the causeway that divides Copano Bay from Aransas Bay. This is the route we took, in reverse, from Port Lavaca to Corpus to go on our honeymoon. When we went through Rockport, I wondered which service station we stopped at to dump all the rice out of our clothes and the car. I do remember it being a lot of rice.

Things change in 50 years, and Port Lavaca was no exception. When we married, the church was way out from town on the bypass. Now State 35, the bypass, is almost the main street through town, teeming with commercial development. We did locate the church (no help from Google maps, which put it across the causeway in Point Comfort) and the little house next to it, the original preacher's house.

 

By the way, Shan Jackson, the current preacher, was in the youth group when Barb's dad preached there.

 I say original preacher's house because during that period Barb's family moved to a new house in a brand-new suburb - which we could not find! We went down what we thought was the right street, but we did not find a familiar neighborhood.

We did find the Viking Inn Motel, now a somewhat seedy place doing business under another name. Here's the pool where I hung out on my wedding day (and got sunburned). Funny. I thought it was bigger.

And the motel restaurant where we hurried to to change place settings is now doing business as the "Taqueria Mazatlan."

Oh, and the place card change must have done the trick: less than two years later Barb's sister and my ex-roommate were married in the same church building.

Another landmark we failed to find was the location of the original Shellfish Restaurant, site of the wedding reception. There is a new version on the highway near the causeway, but we were unable to locate the original building. A lot of changes in 50 years.

We drove back to Austin along a route we had not traveled in many, many years - Port Lavaca to Victoria to Cuero to Gonzales to Luling - but we saw things that brought back memories, and we talked about times and places long forgotten, and other roads we had traveled.

And while you may not be able to go home again, you can have a sweet time remembering those days gone by.