CorpusChristie: Aircraft Carriers, Fishies and Houses Edition

We began our second day here with a tour of the one of the city’s premier tourist attractions, the USS Lexington, which claims to have seen duty in every major naval engagement in the south Pacific in World War II. It was interesting and well done though Sharon and I, left-wing commies that we are agreed that we felt like athiests in church. But, arguably, we have the freedom to debate these issues of national security because there is a national security state out there guarding us. Or something. It’s complicated.

 

Fish are less complicated. After a break for a fine lunch (fish) at Pier 99 a much more authentic crab shack than Joe’s, we walked over to the Texas State Aquarium. It’s not the Monterey Bay Aquarium (one of the best in the world), but it was a lot of fun.

We ended up the day at Corpus Christie’s preservation park. This area has given refuge to about a dozen, maybe more, historic houses.  Normally, as a preservationist (oned of my many prior careers) I disdain such places. Cities should preserve neighborhoods, not isolated structures torn out of context. But that’s not the way they do it in Corpus, a city that seems ambivalent toward its past. In some ways it reminds me of San Diego in the 1960s, a beach city on the make, but the city seems to lack not so much development as focus. It wants to grow up, but it’s not sure what it wants to be when it grows up. Hopefully it will keep what’s left of its funky charm.