The Book of Texas Bays

23. Port Mansfield

236 The Book of Texas Bays Dick Morrison and I worked together when the Galveston Bay Foundation was formed in late 1986 and have been friends ever since. His son Richard was an associate in my law firm, a young man who wanted to protect the environment as a lawyer. The three of us were headed down the coast from Houston to Port Mansfield to fish, talking all the way. I love driving down the Texas coast. I like to greet the rivers—the Brazos, San Bernard, Colorado, Lavaca, Guadalupe, San Antonio, Mission, Aransas, Nueces— checking off each one in my head, seeing which are up, which are down. I like to see what birds are out, how the crops look, what kind of shape the brush country is in. To get to Port Mansfield, we turned east at Raymondville and drove in a straight line to the water. You can tell you are close to Port Mansfield by the distinctive odor of seagrass decomposing on the shoreline, just as we had smelled it on the King Ranch portion of the shore. 23 Port Mansfield Port Mansfield The road ends in Port Mansfield. Across from Port Mansfield is the East Cut, which separates North Padre from South Padre Island. The Texas Nature Conservancy purchased over 20,000 acres at the north end of South Padre Island, land that at one time was slated for intensive development. PADRE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE SOUTH PADRE ISLAND PRESERVE LAGUNA MADRE PORT MANSFIELD EAST CUT GULF OF MEXICO 237 Dick is a lure fisherman, and he sets out with a box that must weigh fifty pounds. This is not the tackle box of my childhood, a smallish metal box with a handle on top. This is a suitcaselike canvas bag full of plastic boxes brimming with every conceivable type of lure: topwater lures with black bodies and chartreuse heads, soft plastics with chartreuse tails and white stomachs and mottled brown backs, red ones with white tips and a fat stomach—just about every color in the rainbow is present and accounted for. Years earlier, I had first heard about Walt Kittleberger through Dick. Dick and George Bolin were Texas Parks and Wildlife commissioners together, and they fished out of the Mansfield Club at Port Mansfield. George was one of the original founders of gcca and a friend of the bays of Texas. Dick called me one day, all upset about plans by American General Realty of Houston to develop the north end of South Padre Island, just across the Laguna Madre from Port Mansfield. He told me he and George and a man named Walt Kittleberger were working together to stop it, and he wanted my help. The development American General proposed was quite large, a destination resort where people would come and stay for several days, perhaps like Cancun on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Dick asked me to look at the legal issues arising in the context of this proposal and see if I could find a way to help defeat it. As Texas Parks and Wildlife commissioners, Dick and George had already opposed the widening and deepening of the Houston Ship Channel and the open bay disposal of dredge spoil that would have covered 10,000 acres of Galveston Bay several feet deep in mud. On a particularly dark day during that fight, George got a call from a prominent banker in Houston, who said all George’s loans would be called if he continued to oppose the project championed by the Port of Houston and the Corps of Engineers. The way I heard this story, George told some of the other commissioners about this threat, and one of them raced to the bathroom to throw up. The commissioners went ahead with their opposition to the ship channel project, and the prominent banker called the demand notes, forcing George Bolin to declare bankruptcy. Yet a few years later, George was once again fighting for the health and long-term integrity of the bays, challenging those who tried to dominate him into silence, bucking a system where you get rewarded for silence, for not speaking your mind, for not following your conscience. “You want a contract? Keep your mouth shut.” “You want our law business? Keep your mouth shut.” Many take the advice to heart. Few voices are heard confronting the power structure square on, and men who have it in them to challenge the overwhelmingly male establishment...