Happy July 5th........

At the last minute yesterday, we decided to drive into Kemah to see the fireworks by the boardwalk there. The closer we got to the Kemah/Seabrook area, the more we kept saying that we were glad we didn't ask anyone to go with us. There was no place to park. Absolutely no safe place to park.

There were cars in all the gas stations, the store parking lots, restaurant lots, even the fast-food places were filled with cars. People were parking their cars in the drainage ditches. Cars were lined up on the shoulders of the road. The Kemah bridge was filled with cars, and little kids were sitting on the roofs and hoods of pick-up trucks. What were those parents thinking?-- One bump from another car, and those little kids could've landed in the bay.

We drove around some of the streets surrounding the Kemah boardwalk....... not a space to be had, unless you wanted to park in someone's driveway. Then we started thinking that all those cars sandwiched in those streets would be coming out of those streets after the fireworks were over. Let's see....... about two hours worth of a traffic jam, we guessed.

Better to quit while we were ahead. We turned around and came back to Clear Lake. We saw some fireworks during the drive home, then turned on the TV when we got here and watched the last part of the downtown Houston firework display. (Where on earth did all those thousands of people park their cars downtown?)

Fireworks just aren't fireworks when you're watching them on television. There's no noise, no smoke, no snap/crackle/pop. Most of all, you miss all the explosions of color within your entire field of vision.

The Kemah/Seabrook area used to be two tiny little towns that you would miss if you blinked. There was a waterfront area there, but no boardwalk. A few nice restaurants, but not the two dozen or so that are there now. There were a few gift and antique shops, but now there's one shopping plaza after another. Most of the little beach homes there have been bought up and torn down, to make room for either parking (which there is never enough of) or restaurants and shops (which there are too many of).

When the boardwalk area was in its proposal stage, not many people here even knew what a boardwalk was. All they knew for sure was that any sort of organized construction by one billionaire would mean the end of their towns as they knew them.

And right they were. The sleepy little towns where you could go and have a leisurely lunch or dinner have been changed into the mega-million-dollar "entertainment complex" that includes restaurants, hotels, shopping, huge carnival-type rides, and parking. (Never enough parking.)

Used to be that we could drive down to Kemah/Seabrook on any day at any time and never worry about not being able to park or get into a restaurant. Now you have to plan ahead and try and out-think the thousands of other people who go there. (Most of whom don't live in this area. Kemah/Seabrook has become a vacation/honeymoon/tourist destination, especially for Texans from non-waterfront areas of the state.)

The billionaire who benefits from this mini DisneyLand in Clear Lake is very happy about his success, I'm sure. The rest of us who live here aren't all that thrilled.

Just about every day, there's a private helicopter that goes over Clear Lake and heads to the Kemah waterfront area. Word has it that the helicopter is owned by the above un-named billionaire. We all figure that he has to take a helicopter which can land on the roof of the big hotel he built because there's no place to park his stretch-limo in the parking lots down there.