"There comes a time in every man's life and I've had many of them."—Casey Stengel

12/18/17

Dear Readers,

Happy Holidays!

Things here in Petersburg are going OK. It's been unusually cold so far, and we even got snow already on Dec. 8. That was early compared to the previous two years I've been here.

My latest crush, Travis, is in the Hole. He went the last Wednesday in November. I've missed him terribly and was really upset that I couldn't write or get any word to him. I was especially upset at first when I was originally told that he would be in for 60 days. Fortunately, a couple of guys who were in there with him got out and said that he only got 30 days. So, at the latest, he should be out in mid-January (it's 30 days after your hearing). Hopefully, they'll be feeling generous and let him out a week or two early.

I was especially disappointed 'cause I was looking forward to spending Christmas with him and surprising him with gifts. I still got him presents and I guess he'll be really surprised to receive them late.

OK, one of his presents is going to be a crocheted black widow spider, which I'm going to give to one of Travis's friends in his unit to put under his covers. It's not finished yet, but it's pretty large—the body itself is 10-12 inches long. Travis is deathly afraid of spiders, so that's why I'm making it. It's my evil sense of humor. I'm getting him other things too that he'll really love, so I'm not being completely evil.

We're getting our Xmas bags this week. Every year we get a bag full of junk food for Christmas. It's the highlight of the year.

I recently finished a publishing class. I just took it 'cause I needed to have some programming classes to help get my points down. In any case, as assignments, we had to write three things:

1. a one-page description of a place (I did our patio/pool area at our last home)
2. a description of a town, 3 pages (I did my hometown of Corpus Christi)
3. a 5-page short story (I did a memoir of when I moved to Austin).

So... I'm including my description of my home town, Corpus Christi, Texas. I hope you like it.

I wish you all a blessed and prosperous 2018!

Love and blessings,
Kelly

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Publishing
11/14/17

Queen of the Night

Corpus Christi, Texas will always be my home, even though we moved away just before my tenth birthday. It's motto is "The Sparkling City by the Sea."

Corpus is located on the Gulf of Mexico, between Houston and Brownsville. There are three... docks, I guess you would call the, thrusting in the bay off of Shoreline Drive. They're there for personal use, as the main port of Corpus Christi is a little farther north where the Nueces River spills into the gulf.

In any case, you can drive on these docking areas—the T-heads and the L-head, called so by their shape; I can't remember if there's two T's or one L, or the other way around—and my sister used to drive me along all of them when I was little. Sometimes we would stop and feed the gulls.

[paper is folded so some of the writing is cut off. The rest of this page is an estimation of what is written.]

The downtown area is really pretty, despite the fact that the gulf itself and the small beach downtown aren't really the cleanest. This is due to all the oil drilling in the gulf and the many refineries in the area. Well, at least it's partially due to that.

I know this sounds strange, but the smell of an oil refinery always seems like home to me. Don't get me wrong, it's not as if Corpus always smells like an oil refinery—the constant wind off the gulf takes care of that.

When we lived there, it was an area of town known as Annaville, out on the west side of Corpus near the airport. One thing that definitely sucked was that our house was on the flightpath to the airport, so you would often hear a plane overhead as it was coming in for a landing.

Our neighborhood was strange. You would drive past a cotton field on one road, empty fields on another, and suddenly come across a neighborhood situated on two longer roads with shorter crossroads between them, and that was it.

When I was little, we lived right next door to my grandparents' house, my mother's parents. My grandmother died when I was about four, so my main memories are of my grandfather living there.

We had a tradition in our family that on your birthday you get to pick which restaurant you wanted to eat at. I always chose one of two places: Old Mexico Restaurant on Leopard St. or Panjo's Pizza off of SPID, South Padre Island Drive.

Old Mexico had the best Tex-Mex food I've ever tasted. I grew up on Tex-Mex and could eat it every day.

Panjo's Pizza also tasted like nothing I've had since. Not only was the pizza outstanding, but on the weekends, they had a small band with a piano and a banjo. They would have sing-alongs with a catalog of old-timey songs everyone would sing.

Down South Padre Island Drive, you would eventually end up on the Padre Island National Seashore. We always drove down to where the road ended and even farther down along the beach.

The beach there was much nicer than the one in town, being a more secluded area and a preservation site. I used to love to hunt for sand dollars and other seashells when I wasn't playing in the surf.

Corpus Christi isn't a largely traveled city, as it's located at the end of an interstate. There aren't any major highways going through the city. The highway goes to Corpus, and that's it.

I know it's not for everyone, but Corpus Christi holds the fondest memories for me of my youth. I was devastated when we moved and miserable for years after that. It will always be "home" to me.

[teacher's grade: GREAT JOB :)]