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Tuesday, September 12, 2000

Red-winged blackbirds and sandpipers witness a visit to a childhood farm
Ex-resident's return to inspect family properties featured birds, memories, and succulent barbecue

When Carolyn Swearingen came for a brief visit recently she had a double agenda: to see old friends and to take care of family business. She grew up here, in the environs of Driscoll and Corpus Christi, attended Wynn Seale the first year it opened, and went to Corpus Christi High School. While there. she debated and served as student council president. I first got to know and admire her in high school when she was known as Carolyn Flynn.
   After graduation from the University of Texas, Flynn attended Yale Theological Seminary, where she met, and subsequently married, Fred Swearingen. He was about to become a Presbyterian minister. When Parkway Presbyterian Church was built here and was considering prospective ministers, Fred was interviewed and enthusiastically hired, in spit of the fact that he was a Yankee. The Swearingens served Parkway for 25 years, until his retirement. They now live in Santa Fe, N. M.
   When Carolyn learned that Fred and son Scott were planning a semi-camping trip to Alaska, she decided this would be a good time for her to come and look at the family farms, one of which she was considering selling.
   While here, she was a guest in the home of longtime friend Elizabeth Kirkland. One thing she hoped to do during her brief stay was eat at Joe Cotten's Barbecue Restaurant in Robstown, located conveniently in the same area as her farms. I was lucky to be included in the farm expedition.
   The bonus for me was (what else?) birds. The first farm, out of Banquete, was pleasant, open, tilled fields crossed by a tree-fringed creek. As we drove along the edge of the field, many small, fast-flying birds dipped in front of the car -barn swallows, beginning their southward migration. A red-tailed hawk perched on a telephone pole, hoping to catch a little lunch on the paw, and a sharp-shinned hawk swooped above us as we came back to the pavement. Carolyn told us who owned the land on both sides of her family's acreage.
   After inspecting this property, we continued on to Robstown and to Cotten's, arriving fortuitously a few minutes before noon and the lunch crowd. Swearingen had not been to Cotten's for many years, but was delighted to find everything as perfect as she remembered. She smiled with pleasure as our orders of succulent brisket were served on paper napkins without the encumbrance of fussy plates. "And without sauce, not messed up with barbecue sauce,'' she said, "That's the way it oughta be!''
   When we had gulped the last drop of our iced tea, we continued to the second farm, a few miles out of Driscoll. In spite of the years of absence, Swearingen was a good navigator and told me exactly which county road to take. Soon, she spotted a dilapidated red barn in the distance. "I spent many years of my early childhood on top of that barn,'' she told me. Looking at a deep drainage ditch along one side of the road, she commented that her grandfather had put the ditches in to drain excess water from the fields where it tended to stand.
   The condition of the out of use buildings made her sad. As we drove into the parking area, the old farmyard, red-winged blackbirds flew out of a mesquite tree and startled mourning doves from the wires. It was high, hot, early afternoon; the scalding sunlight reduced the birds to silhouettes. I wanted to take Carolyn's picture with a corner of the barn or with the endless flat of the fields at her back.
   As I got out of the car, I looked up to the outline of a bird standing sentinel on top of a telephone pole, a bird with longish legs and a tiny head on a long, skinny neck. It was an upland sandpiper. This was a most uncharacteristic pose for this bird. Looking further, I could see one on top of each of the surrounding poles. When we approached them, they flew.
   After taking a few pictures, we fled from the blistering heat, back to the comfort of the air-conditioned car, and as we drove, saw lesser nighthawks dozing on the wires above Swearingen's grandfather's deep ditches. In this year of drought, the fields would have been glad for a dousing of the long-ago unwanted water. Eastern kingbirds and some recently arrived scissor-tailed flycatchers escorted us off the property.

   The season's first meeting of the Audubon Outdoor Club of Corpus Christi will be tonight, with a covered-dish supper at the Fred B. Jones Sanctuary in Portland. Come by at 6 p.m. or earlier. Guests are welcome. Bring a dish to share, as well as your own eating utensils and a drink, and a chair or picnic table if you have one. Take U.S. Highway 181 over the Harbor Bridge and across the Nueces Bay Causeway. At Portland, exit at Moore Avenue. (Farm to Market Road 893). Turn left onto Moore and follow it 6.5 miles to its intersection with Farm to Market Road 1074. Turn left on 1074 and travel a half-mile to the sanctuary.


Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.

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