As someone who spent his entire life living within smelling distance of the beach, I did not know what to expect upon moving to South Texas.
After dropping off my girlfriend at the airport in Houston my
phone died on the drive back to Victoria. For nearly 90 miles it was just me
and the music to pass the time driving through cities that seemed to get
smaller the further south I drove.
There were no palm trees, or reminders to visit a beach to
keep my attention. It was just the countryside. Clearly, this was going to be
different. Outside of spending one summer on internship in Shreveport, La, I
had never spent more than three weeks away from Florida.
Initially, when I told people I was from Florida it was as
though I named some exotic and foreign place. (Candidly, that is what I thought
about Victoria when I first moved here, which was why I titled my blog at the
Advocate the Foreign Floridian.)
When the quizzical looks subsided what I found were friendly
people who preferred good news above all else. Negativity was frowned upon, but
tolerated if disseminated without spite or a sense of an agenda.
As I pack up and return to Florida this weekend there were far
more positives than I ever imagined when I drove along that seemingly desolate
highway 21 months ago.
Any conversation with Gary Moses; challenging a pair of
gentlemen to a tennis match; covering a canoe race; the story of how my
cell phone became waterlogged covering said canoe race; the passion of the football
fans in Port Lavaca; the excellence of the 2011 Refugio football team; the
time I wrote a story about a boy who loved football and his mother left
three dozen cookies on my desk as a thank you; the Twitter banter with students
and athletes at Victoria West high school—special shout out to my hype men
Qualian Bryant and Jonathan Vahalik, who retweeted many of my comments – and the
conversations in the press box at Victoria East football games are just some of
those positives.
Two years ago I had no clue what Shiner Bock was, or where
it was brewed. I still haven’t tried it, but I can say that people in Shiner,
Texas follow the golden rule, which is to say that they treat everyone well.
Of course there were people and things that irritated me. As
time goes on those things will be forgotten, the memories that remain will only
elicit smiles.
Esther Perez became a dear friend. Through the Advocate I
met Camille Doty, who is not only a friend, but the person responsible for
introducing me to my church home while in South Texas. And a special thank you
to my college classmate Gheni Platenburg. Without her encouragement, I never would
have accepted an offer from the Advocate.
If there was one thing I learned about life in Texas it was
to give people a chance. Frequently, when I went on assignment I didn’t know
anyone. But people were always willing to open up and share with me.
On my
first week, I underestimated the distance between Victoria and Yoakum… while my
gas light was on. Were it not for Yoakum resident Paul Ebner, the Sports
Information Director at the University of Houston-Victoria, telling me there was
a gas station right around the corner, unbeknownst to me, I likely would have
been stuck walking in the wilderness on a sweltering summer day.
No matter where I was, I always found a gas station and a
Whataburger. Those two things were just as important to my random journeys as a
notebook and digital recorder.
As I write this I am sipping on a root beer from another
late night run to Whataburger. There are a few
Whataburger locations in
Florida, but it’s not the same. Whether I was in Refugio, Portland, Goliad,
Port Lavaca, Cuero, Corpus Christi, Schulenburg, San Antonio or Kingsville I
always knew where to find a Whataburger because on Friday nights the restaurants
became a mobile office.
As much as I enjoyed covering other sports, and sporting
events, my passion was catching soccer games. Whether it was UHV, or one of the
area varsity teams, I found any and every excuse to write about the sport.
This March one soccer player told me “I didn’t know you
played soccer.” Her coach looked at her, looked and me and said “He’s plays
every weekend. Hey, Will, why aren’t you leading this goalie drill? Aren’t you
a goalie?”
Indeed I am. Within a month of arriving in Victoria, I found
a soccer team to play with. It didn’t matter that my Spanish was limited. It
was a chance to play and release some energy. When word leaked out that I
played on weekends my attempts at being a “portero” was a way to connect with
local soccer teams.
The Victoria Advocate published for more than 160 years
before I arrived. The newspaper will continue to publish long after I return to
Florida. But, I will always cherish the connections I made and the friends I
found in the time I was here.
Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb
p.s. Anyone who
enjoyed my writing, or my work, should thank Advocate photographers, page designers, copy editors, like Esther, as
well as my former colleagues Mike Forman, Clay Whittington and Albert Alvarado
on the Sports desk.
