The beaches we can drive on in Texas have been reduced dramatically over the years, almost gone is the convenience of backing your car up to the surf and having everything you need right there; the beer cooler, the music, the chairs and the shade. Down here in Dumbutt we now have to drive about 40 miles down the coast to San Luis Pass to enjoy that and even there it his reduced to a few miles with all the high end condos staking out the beaches.
I still gather my fishing gear and get down there a few times a year to always find at least one big black pickup truck with wheels as tall as I am and a ten foot banner atop the cab with the AR 15 and the words COME AND TAKE IT. Of course I don’t have to tell you all occupants all have camo hats, camo boots, camo coolers and I am sure more guns in the vehicle that fishing poles.
On the last occasion I was pleasantly surprised to find none of that. I had little kids so I pulled next to another family with kids the same age. It happened that all the women in the family wore Hijabs. The kids played together and ran around in the surf and I talked the parents about Hijabs and how colorful they were and pleasing to the eye adding some feminine beauty of their faces.
Then I saw it coming, not that same truck, never the same one, but one of the many just like it. It pulled next to us with the camo boys first putting the bamboo poles in the bed holes and raising the 10 foot banner with the AR15 and the COME AND TAKE IT.
As I watched my newly befriended family hurriedly pack up to leave I couldn’t help but look at the camo boys and think, what a bunch of disgusting pieces of poop.
As so often happens living in Texas it goes beyond the Dixie Chicks embarrassed to be a from here, but embarrassed to be and an American.