I grew up in a Gulf Coast petrochemical stink hole called Texas City before dropping out mof school and serving 2 years, 10 months, 8 days, 5 hours and 43 minutes in the U.S. Navy (getting out of the military with an honorable discharge was one of the greatest accomplishments of my life). I'm an ex-cop, ex-firefighter, ex-newspaper reporter, ex-desert rat river guide-wrangler and adult video store clerk. I've also done short stints as towboat deckhand, motel desk clerk, brewery worker, day laborer, night club bouncer and security guard.

I first visited Galveston Island in the summer of 1950 (I was 7 years old. and immediately fell in love with The Island). I was a Galveston Firefighter in the mid 60s and again in the early 70s. In between, I was a Pasadena patrolman. I've worked as a reporter for the Galveston Daily News, where I met the woman who would become the love of my life. We were the first couple to be married at Dickenses Evening on the Strand. I wrote for a fortnightly semi-underground, sometimes muckraking rag called InBetween Magazine, and a for few area weeklies. I covered Hurricane Alicia for the Texas City Sun.

Lady Lurker and I burnt out on the newspaper biz in 1986 and wound up in Terlingua at the end of an cross-country bicycle trip that began in Springfield MO. Terlingua is the only place besides The Island that felt like home (Galveston and Terlingua are on the same latitude.) Due to health issues, we had to leave the desert and return to syphilization. I spent a couple of years as editor for a small Dallas area daily before retiring in 2006 and returning to paradise.