Toddville Road

We drove into the Kemah and Seabrook communities yesterday, which are right out there on Galveston Bay. Not a pretty sight, and within five minutes of driving down Toddville Road, I was sorry that we had gone there.

We've always loved that winding, tree-covered road. It's filled with homes overlooking the Bay-- mostly old ones that have been there for decades. Within the past five or six years, a lot of huge mansion-style houses have been built there, right inbetween all the older ones. In my opinion, the older homes always seemed to have more charisma, more character than the newer ones, which are mostly cement structures with straight lines.

However, since Hurricane Ike has come and gone, so have nearly all of those wonderful old homes. Most of them are completely gone; some that were spared have folded in on themselves like a house of cards. Still others have so much damage that you can't tell the pile of debris at the curb from the pile of debris sitting atop the foundation. It was so very sad to see, and I could have cried for every one of those houses that were lost.

The newer, cement and stucco houses that are supported by stilts are still standing. When the Ike-devastated homes get rebuilt, they will most likely be replaced by straight-line cement houses. When that happens, the history and the romance of Toddville Road will be gone.

We used to drive up and down Toddville Road looking at houses with "For Sale" signs tacked up out front. With their million-dollar views of the Bay, the newer, larger homes also had million-dollar price tags. But still, we drove up and down that road, picking out our favorite houses and saying how nice it would be to wake up to the sound of the Gulf every morning. Well, those home owners can still hear the sound of the Gulf at the crack of dawn, but they're certainly not resting peacefully in comfortable beds. Actually, mostly every home that was still standing had Gulf-flooded mattresses out on their lawns.

I doubt very much that they have electrical power out on Toddville Road yet. Come to think of it, even if they did have power, I would guess that the homeowners there have precious little left in their houses that would need power anyway.

All of the fish markets on the Bay are gone, along with all the jobs for the fishermen. As we drove by the fenced-off market streets, I didn't see even one shrimp boat. Could they have gotten their boats out of the Bay before the storm hit? And where would they put one of those boats-- they're huge... not something you could just take out of the water and put into dry-dock. Even the shrimp boats might have been lost to Ike.

When we drove as far as we could, and were just too sad for the losses of those waterfront communities, we turned around and started for home. My husband checked the mileage, and figured out that our house is less than eight miles from Toddville Road. We are closer to El Lago and Nassau Bay-- less than four miles -- and both of those communities suffered major losses from Ike.

Too close to the waterfront. Too close to the Bay. Too close for comfort.