Pelicans

There have been very few people in my life that I feel have contributed as much as my step grandfather Charlie.

As much as I hear people say things like, "so and so was really from an older generation".  Charlie was a man that was from at least one generation previous; and in my estimation, he must have been from two generations previous.

As a kid, I would sit and listen to his stories for days.  Not minutes, not hours, not all day, but for days on end.  My parents were divorced and my Dad moved out of state, so the decision was made that I would go to my grandpattie and Charlie’s house every other weekend.  There was usually nothing I looked more forward to than going over there to be with Charlie.

That is not meant to take anything away from my Grandpattie who was an amazing person in her own right, but Charlie was like a legend in my eyes.  He lived a full life and had a limitless capacity to tell stories that were better than anything I could read in school.

The best I can figure, Charlie started his life somewhere around Corpus Christi, Texas in the 20’s.  I would tell you his age, but he died without knowing his true age.  I still remember him trying to get social security benefits and being unable to prove his acutal age.  We went on a trip to the Lamar, Texas courthouse to find his birth certificate once and were told that the courthouse burned sometime in the 50’s and there were no records saved.

He grew up on and around the ocean.  He built boats, captained boats, worked on boats, and at times, lived on boats.  He knowledge of the water and seamanship may not have been equaled by any living person within several states.  Of course, as a young kid, I thought all of these things and knew they were true.  However, only when he died was I able to understand that Charlie really was everything he talked about and really did live the life in the stories.

Of all the time I spend with him, I never talked about education.  The only thing i ever knew was that he skipped school quite a bit to be out on the water.  Generally with his crew of friends.  He would always talk of them as if they were all equal in terms of truancy and nautical knowhow.  Only later in life when I met one of his friends did I find out that Charlie was the main leader and biggest offender of the group.  In all reality, I would doubt he graduated high school and maybe not even middle school.

Aside from boating, the other main passion in Charlie’s life, as far as work went, was automobiles.  He spent quite a bit of time fixing up old cars, collecting car parts, and restoring old cars.  And by old cars, I mean Model T’s and Model A’s.

It would seem that the car restoration would be where Charlie aquired quite a compilation of mechancial skills alongside a group of unbelievable friends.  Every where in life Charlie had found and befriended people that elude most people.  Granted, most of Charlie’s friends would purposefully be eluded if you spent any time with them, but as crazy as it sounds, I have never seen any of the kind of people in the world that Charlie talked about.

They all had their names and places in the history of his life:  The Newton Brothers in Corpus, Kanasas Jack from the military, Jack Davenport from Houston, and One Eyed Jack from late in life.  Those are just a few of the more memorable friends that clung to Charlie.