This is a photo of my mother and my two older sisters taken on the sands of North Beach in the summer of 1936. North Beach is a part of the city of Corpus Christi. Access to it then meant crossing the ship channel via a draw bridge. It would have been an eighty-mile drive for my parents from the small town of Freer eighty miles west.

There was a permanent carnival that went almost to the water’s edge with many attractions and rides like a Ferris wheel, Tilt-a-Whirl, bumper cars and the merry-go-round my mother and sisters were posed in front of. The midway offered cotton candy and candied apples and the usual games hawked by carnival barkers. The sound of the waves competed with the sounds of the carnival. Going back there years later as a child with my parents in the 1950s, I thought it was a magical place infused with the scent of the sea. Maybe I still do.

The carnival is gone now and the attractions are different. The USS Lexington Museum, a WWII aircraft carrier. is docked not far from where this photo was taken. Further down the beach near the ship channel is the Texas State Aquarium.

I live about ten miles from North Beach.