Congratulations to the 2025 Matagorda County high school graduating classes.
Even at my extreme age, I’m always excited at the start of summer.
I’ll spend a lot of my summer in our pool, except for those laborious not-vacation-like moments of scraping algae off the sides of the pool.
And lawn mowing.
Although I sit on a mower, rather than pushing one as I did through high school, working at a Memorial Drive town house complex doing yard work when I lived with my brother and his family in Houston during summers and for the A&M grounds crew during my summer school days at Aggieland.
A lot of summers in high school and through middle age living in Kerrville, vacations always were at the beach.
My earliest memories of my sons were of them playing in the surf.
I lived at a Texas tourist destination in the Hill Country and vacationed at the Gulf of Mexico and now I live near the beach.
I have no idea of what gulf beach tourism appeals reached Hill Country residents.
I was on the Convention & Visitors Bureau in Kerrville and worked on campaigns to bring tourists to Kerr County.
I’ve held the same position here.
Kerrville hired high-powered tourism professionals and when you served on tourism boards there you learned from those folks.
I can’t say the same about my efforts here.
Devising ad campaigns to draw people down Texas 71 from Austin to Matagorda County fell on deaf ears every time I brought that or similar Kerrville-inspired ideas here.
Over several city administrations here, the concept of spending concentrated hotel tax money to bring scores of people just doesn’t appeal.
There have been a few people along the way who’ve tried, but they moved on, for more pay and, perhaps, more encouragement.
If we just had several hotels here generating hotel tax money for such campaigns.
Oh, that’s right we do.
The way Trump is going after green energy, renewable energy and agriculture, we sure ought to be considering different – or discarded – revenue streams like tourism.
We also should avoid shutting those concepts down before they have a chance to bear fruit.
We did have a successful outfit that brought writers from nationwide publications to Matagorda County.
They wrote articles about what we have to offer, but before long the powers-that-be ended that foray.
What did those powers-that-be offer as an alternative to putting out the word about this place in distant locales instead?
Nothing much.
