Independence Day – my holiday(?), part III

Friday morning’s plans changed when Chris discovered that the privately-owned and restored lighthouse he’d wanted to see was closed to the public, and “seeing” it meant taking a commercial tour boat for a drive-by.  That didn’t seem like much fun to anyone but L, who’s always willing to go on anything larger than a Criss-Craft, so instead we drove the ninety miles to to Corpus Christi to see either the USS Lexington (CV-16), which is permanently moored and turned into a museum, or the Texas State Aquarium, a block away from it.  M said she didn’t like aquariums and would rather see the Lex, and I was more interested in the ship than the fish as well.  Mother and Chris didn’t have much preference and L would have liked the aquarium first, but it was only half past noon and we thought there’d be enough time to do both if we liked, so we all went aboard.

I hope the Fourth weekend had more visitors to the ship than usual, because if she’s as crowded during the whole season as it was Friday, it must be a perpetual mob scene, covered up with families.  (I’m tempted to try going again sometime, but in October or so.)  The ship has five self-guided tours; I chose the below-decks one, which led us down from the hangar deck through the crew quarters, the mess, the chapel, sick bay, one of the munitions storage areas, and one of the engine rooms before it turned around and started back upward. Every ladder on board was cramped and steep, as you’d expect, and ’watch your head – low clearance” warnings were plastered all over.

The ladders and climbing took it out of Mother and Chris, so once we reached the hangar deck again they elected to sit on a bench and wait while L, M, and I toured the flight deck.  The deck is showing the effects of years of sea air and a lack of several hundred sailors to help with “preservation of metallic surfaces.”  It’s pitted and bubbled with corrosion.  We took a walk around the deck, and then climbed the island to see the bridge.  Unfortunately, there were too many other people on the observation island for me to stop and see anything very well; I would have liked to look at the radar setup more closely.  The wheel room and chart room were less cramped, but M seemed uninterested at things you couldn’t interact with (the engine-room telegraph and controls were all bolted down and immovable), so we climbed back down.

The Lexington’s flight deck, abaft the bridge and looking forward

We got drinks to cool us a little after all the climbing around, then found Mother and Chris again and decided that everyone but L was starting to wear out, and the aquarium might be a better idea for another day.   We went back to the car, parked three blocks away—very close by tourist-attraction standards— and found, when we started to leave the lot, that I’d forgotten to pick up the parking token you need to exit the gate.  I parked the car, left everyone else there with the engine running and the A/C on, and hiked the three blocks back to the ship to get the token, and then three blocks more back to the car, all at power-walking speed.  I started to leave again, and just as we got to the exit gate, a City meter man showed up from nowhere and started working the gate manually to let people through without needing the tokens.

When we got back to our room, we all lay down and had a couple of hours’ nap to recover, and I had a shower to wash off the heat and stickiness.  I got everyone up after seven on the ground that if we didn’t, all the restaurants would close and we’d have no supper.  Chris said earlier that he wanted to go to a seafood restaurant at least once, so we managed to find him one, run by a Viet family and full of several large parties of the parboiled, all straight off the beach and acting like themselves—i.e., noisy holiday-makers.  None of us could really have a conversation, since most of us are too deaf to hear over the competing noise.  The food was good enough by small-town restaurant standards, although Mother, who rarely eats anything deep-fried any more and doesn’t eat much at any meal, didn’t care for her fried prawns.

We’d heard the city would be putting on a municipal fireworks display as part of the celebrations for the Fourth and the centennial, but our enthusiasm for doing anything else was low, so we went straight back to the hotel and to bed, where we could still hear the fireworks display if not see it.