#118 Port Arthur TX Lets go find Uncle Henry Camped at Port Author city run RV park

When I started thinking about our travels I knew that at some point we would be in Texas and I have an uncle that I have not known but known of. My grandfather had four children and whenever they were quite young and they were little stairsteps probably 2 years apart. My Grandmother has become restless and decided that she could no longer handle being married to Grandpa and left him. He was a little bit of a prude I suppose a real fundamentalist religious guy. Maybe I should go back a little bit. When they met he was still a moonshiner my so he was potentially a lot of fun then. His family had made moonshine to get through the depression. I think he went to a tent meeting and got saved. I think maybe what happened is he went from being kind of a fun guy to Super not so much fun when he got religion. At some point, she was having kids every two years and I think she just really was becoming miserable. I've seen pictures of her from back then and she was quite pretty. There was a picture of her with a big black boa and she just kind of looked a little like a dance hall girl on any given day. She reminded me a little bit of Mae West. When I was growing up you got to understand grandma was like 60 years old she looked like a grandma. It was not like you could ever imagine her when she was 23. I think she became dissatisfied with the married life and wanted to do some fun stuff. She got a divorce but honestly, grandpa never accepted it and swore that she was still his wife because he never signed the papers. I heard these stories all during my growing up. There were four on my Mom's side. Uncle Lee, Henry, my aunt Blanche and then there's my Mom Helen. They all grew up in Schoolfield Virginia near Danville Virginia Everybody worked at the Dan River Mills. My grandpa quit school in the 4th grade and went to work at the Cotton Mill and stayed there until the age of 65. He never worked anywhere else but he did have to go abroad during the great depression working in the CCC camps to survive. The basic story is everybody grows up and World War II is in full swing and the boys are old enough to go off and join the Navy or something. Sometimes even when they were 16 and 17 they got away with it. Both uncles were in the Navy. Henry left the Navy by 1948. I guess you go home and having grown up in a tiny little town then seeing the entire Pacific Fleet and Japan and everything. It's hard to go home. Henry said he was in the Coral Sea in the Philippines and then San Diego he said it changes you so much you begin to wonder if you can even go home. He went home the North Carolina and he told me he had every intention of making a go of it. I think they were probably pretty conservative and I think the Navy was not. I think he had been so used to drinking and girls and having a big time. To work in a little town in North Carolina or Danville Virginia just didn't seem possible.

I remember Mama talking about how Henry drank heavily and that's pretty understandable after being in the Navy because everybody drinks in the Navy. He was probably acting like a raging alcoholic and getting into trouble because that kind of goes with the neighborhood. People were probably pretty judgy like, What's your deal man? Well, thank you, mam, and he kind of left town a little mad. He knew some people in Texas and stayed with them for a little bit. Everybody in town was friendly and little by little he just started like him in the Corpus Christi / Port Arthur area. He ended up joining the merchant marines and did cargo handling pretty much his entire life. One day he kind of just retired and stayed in Port Arthur from then on he's in his eighties. I'm not sure exactly how things were never patched up but he has never stayed in touch.

I might have seen him when I was 4 years old or something when he came into town for a visit. I think he was still a raging Alcoholic. I really don't remember him. During that stay were all over at my Aunt Blanches house. Henry and my other uncle Willard (Smitty) tied one on. We had to leave early because apparently the two of them were staggering up the dirt road she lived on. They apparently were trying to give a horse money to get a ride into town. That was my childhood memory of Henry. I don’t think he ever came back to North Carolina after that.

I remember whenever I was in the Navy boot camp they take a traditional picture of you with your Cracker Jacks on. When you look at that picture of me and you look at Henry's Navy picture we are identical twins and I have heard that all my life.

I mentioned that I liked visiting with family. Back when we were in Greensboro for Thanksgiving I went to visit my uncle Henry. It was a great visit and we hung out for a couple of hours. Before that, I had visited with Blanche my aunt in Georgia. I thought if it was possible to look up Henry and try to visit him that would be great, maybe. I had no way of knowing how he would receive my offer. I had talked to Blanche and got his address and phone number. When I was about a week away from his place I tried to call and there was no answer, disconnected number and such. Eventually, I found out the number I was dialing was about one digit off. I called and said hello and I guess he said hello and I said, Is this Henry?

He said yes, it is, can I help you? I started telling him my story and I admitted it was just pretty odd for somebody like me to call out of the blue after 40 years. That's what I did and we arranged to meet and he was receptive and I was glad because I don't like rejection and he might have said I don't want none of you or yours.

We settled at a Port Arthur RV park operated by the town of and it's called Walter Umphrey State Park and it's down there way down at the end of nowhere near an inlet called Lake Sabine.

We found it on RV park reviews and when I called the number I got a lady at the courthouse called Precinct 3. She had no idea what I was talking about she said I know that they exist because they pay a bill but I don't know that much about it. She said it was all good and we went down there and we stayed for two nights.

I would like to go backward 24 hours I guess and we had left Lafayette and there were two ways to get to Port Arthur. One would be the scenic route that follows the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and so forth and a whole lot more laid back which should be my choice. It requires a ferry called cut beach. I called ahead and looked online and it said they certainly handle vehicles, tractor-trailers, and such. I thought it would be a lot prettier and cooler to do that. There was the alternative which would be going out from Lafayette on Highway Interstate 10 which is fine but it's just hectic and predictable.

As went down the scenic way the GPS insisted that I was blowing it. The GPS wants to take the interstate so we just agreed to disagree. After maybe two and a half hours I got to the ferry landing and there was a big old fat sign saying so we are closed for repairs. and after you've been on the road for a while this is not the sign you want to see. There was another temporary ferry but it could only handle normal-sized passenger cars. No matter how much I don't want this to happen I've got to go now North from here to Lake Charles Louisiana get back on I-10 and go back down to Port Arthur the way that the GPS wanted me to. Now instead of it being a 2 ½ hour day, it's like a 6 hour day. It was a bit of a drag but we got there we got settled in at about dusk

which is about as good as it gets for my world. I called Henry the next day. I called a few times but didn't get through so I figured well at this point I'm just going to go. It was 10 miles or so away. I went up there and got to where the house was and just kind of nosed around trying to be sure I was at the right house. A guy walked out from a neighbors house and I thought he looked to be about 60. I said are you, Henry? He said no he's right here next door. It turns out this is a fellow that had become such a soul mate to Henry he now has a power attorney. I assume they’ve just become good friends over the 20 some years they have known each other. I knocked on the door and the neighbor guy introduced me and the first thing I would have to say is that my Uncle Henry is a hoarder. Although he has lived apart from my Grandpa who was a hoarder, my uncle Lee is the biggest hoarder. I am, my Mom was and my Aunt Blanche and cousin Kathy are. I still can’t say whether hoarding is genetic or learned. My Uncle Lee has it bad and I suppose he's got a little better. There was a time when you couldn't walk to his house except to a narrow path through stacks of old magazines that made an 8-foot wall throughout his house. He just always liked to pick up things for yard sales and auctions. He went through a period where he was dumpster diving and he told cut me that he could get some of the coolest stuff and dumpsters. He said that if you can go to an apartment complex on a Monday morning after they've been a big party or a divorce there were all kinds of cool stuff to people throwing away just out of anger.

I'm sure this writing really belongs back at Thanksgiving in Greensboro with Lee. It just seemed like it was a sibling kind of a story. Henry’s house was about identical to his brother Lee. I let myself in a little bit and it wasn't easy to find a place to sit because there wasn't anywhere to sit. Finally, I figured it out a little bit and I pulled a kitchen chair over to where he was in the living room. Even the chair was difficult to move because it had all kinds of grocery bags tied to it and there was something heavy in all of them. My best explanation for hoarding although I'm not going to get too deep into what it means for everybody is when you go through the Great Depression and survive it changes you. They didn't have anything and so after you get on the other side of that you get a little bit of money you kind of want to have a few things. You don't want to be without, so that might be how hoarding gets going.

We sat there and talked and just kind of caught up and learned about each other's lives. I just thought it was good to have the opportunity to try. I made sure he knew I wasn't looking for anything and didn’t need anything. I had just thought it would be nice to visit. He was watching a little tiny black and white TV which was sitting near a brand new TV. All that was sitting in front of a giant TV from about 15 years ago. He told me that the old TV had gotten so old that the TV guy said it would cost more to fix than it was worth. He bought the brand new TV at Walmart but had not figured out how to program it. He showed me the box it came in but he said it didn't have directions. This kind of stuff is hard for older people but it isn't too bad for me. In fact, it's about the identical TV I have in my RV. One thing that was slowing him down a little was he hadn’t connected the Cablevision to the back of a new TV. That is a nice starting point and then hit menu and channel scan and next thing you know I was like a magician. He was amazed and thrilled at my technical abilities. He was tickled pink and wanted to know how I did it. I just said I'm good at this kind of stuff. There was a yellow sticker thing on the right side of the TV screen that would tell you what the energy usage was for one year. I pulled off the energy guide tag during the process of programming. He said I think that when you pulled that yellow thing off it let more TV stations come in. It must have been blocking them or something. I wouldn't dare make fun of him so I told him that he might be on to something there. I still think the biggest variable was plugging the cable into the back of the TV. We had a nice visit for an hour or so and then I went on back to the RV park. I enjoyed watching some oil tankers go by and it didn't take long for me to remember that this is where all the oil refineries are. We are not that far from Houston and I couldn't help but think about Janis Joplin because Port Arthur Texas is her hometown. I remember seeing a billboard about a museum of her life and death