One night in February 2003, three months before my wife Allene and I moved to Bocas del Toro, Panama, a severe cold front passed through New Braunfels, Texas, where we lived at the time. The next morning, I saw snow covering our yard, and it turned out the front had deposited a lot of snow and ice in its wake as it rolled on through the state. Snow is rare in south Texas. In fact, in the twenty years I spent growing up in Houston, I only recall it snowing twice. Both times it happened, everyone ─ kids and adults alike ─ went outside and played in it. We were building snowmen, having snowball fights, making snow angels, and desperately trying to find any kind of slope that we could use to slide down. The terrain around Houston is very flat, but fortunately in the field behind our house there was a big mound of dirt that my Dad had piled up with his tractor from excavating a big hole that was later supposed to become a swimming pool. So of course, all of us kids, including our cousins the Cloyds and the Blakers, gathered up garbage-can lids, cardboard boxes, pieces of plywood, and anything else we could use as a sled. Then we proceeded to make mincemeat of that tiny snow-covered hill, until we were all totally exhausted, with our clothes soaked, our feet and hands frozen and our lips turned blue. I know for sure that night we all slept well after experiencing such a joyous day.

Now flash forward to that day in February 2003 in New Braunfels. New Braunfels is in an area of Texas called the Hill Country, meaning there are plenty of slopes and hills around. We lived on seven acres of land and our property had a nice gentle slope to it from the far back corner, down past our house all the way to the street. I was 52 years old at the time but still a kid at heart, so I hurriedly ate my breakfast so I could get out there in that snow. Because Allene and I are both avid surfers, we also had taken up snow-skiing because of its similarities to surfing. We tried to take one or two ski trips every winter to New Mexico, Colorado or elsewhere and a few years earlier had purchased our own ski equipment. So right after breakfast I grabbed my skis, boots and poles and headed out the back door. Unfortunately, Allene had had hip replacement surgery the year before and was not cleared yet for skiing or surfing so she could not risk partaking in all the fun.
I put on my ski boots, hiked up to the far edge of our property, stepped into the ski bindings and made my first run all the way down to the street. Looking down the road after sliding to a stop, I was a little surprised not to see any of the neighbors’ kids out playing in the snow. I thought, “Well, maybe it’s just early and they’ll be out later.”

After making several more runs down the slope of our property, I decided I needed a bigger challenge. I walked back in the house and said, “Allene, will you drive me up to Canyon Lake? I want to ski Canyon Dam.”

She gave me one of those looks that meant “You’re nuts,” but she said, “Sure I will.”

We loaded my gear into her car and drove to Canyon Lake, twelve miles away. A short while into the trip, after passing many homes that had beautiful hills right nearby with untracked snow on them, I turned to Allene and said, “What’s going on here?”

She replied, “Yeah, I know, I was wondering the same thing. Where are all the kids?”

In fact, all the way to the dam we saw absolutely no one out playing in the snow. I was shocked to say the least. But it didn’t stop me. I ended up making two good runs down the dam before a park ranger came and ran us off saying the park was closed. I was tired anyway. No ski lifts at the dam and a very long hike back up in the snow.

On the drive home, Allene and I had a somber conversation about how we were living in a whole new world. We’d come to the realization that the kids nowadays would much rather prefer to stay indoors and be on their Gameboys and other personal devices than venture out into the snow. That was hard for me to grasp. But then again, it has always been hard for me to embrace change, especially technological ones.

I can remember when 4-track tape players first came out and I actually jumped on that pretty quickly because I loved music and it made it possible to buy all my favorite bands’ releases in a format that would play in my car. Oh man, was that great or what!?

But shortly afterwards, they came out with the 8-track player. I saw no need to go that format as I was totally happy with my 4-tracks. That is, until they quit making 4-track tapes, which basically forced everyone to buy an 8-track player if you wanted to listen to your bands’ new recordings in your car. For the first time, I smelled a rat. This was the beginning of the mass consumerism that would soon come to rule the world. But grudgingly, I went along with buying an 8-track player. Especially when I realized how much it helped to put on some cool music when I went parking with my girlfriend.

From there it progressed to cassettes, CDs, and now you can plug your personal device with all your music downloaded on it, directly into your car stereo system with a USB cable. But not me. I don’t have a personal device. I still listen to CDs or tune into this excellent Jazz radio station out of Costa Rica in our truck here in Panama. And I’ve never downloaded a song in my life. Not sayin’ I’m proud of that, it’s just not my thing yet.

A lot of people who used to come over to our house before we moved to Panama were amused or surprised when they saw me playing my collection of 78 records on an antique wind-up Victrola record player with a cone speaker. Even though I had a state-of-the-art big stereo system that would also play 78s, to me the records sounded better and more authentic on the old Victrola. I had a marvelous collection of 78 recordings, which included old Western Swing, Big Band Jazz, Frank Sinatra, Elvis and many country recordings including almost the complete set of Hank Williams. But reluctantly, with the drastic downsizing we had to do in order to move to Panama, I had to let all that go.

I have no idea why I’m so resistant to change. I’ve thought about it and thought about it but I just can’t come up with a rational explanation. Eventually, when I do embrace some new advancement in technology, I realize how stupid I was after I find how much better this particular product is compared to the old model.

Take surfboards, for example. When we moved to Panama in 2003, I was still surfing on my old 7-foot short board with a single fin. The 3-fin thruster set-up had been invented several years earlier and by this time pretty much every short-boarder had converted to this system. I think it was in 2005 when we went to Maui to visit family, the airline destroyed my board even though I had packed it very well. My parents said, “No worries, we’ll go look for a new board for you tomorrow and it’ll be your Christmas present from us.”

The next day was very frustrating as we hit all the surf shops looking for a single fin board like mine and couldn’t find one. Every single short board had three fins. Even most of the long boards had gone to three fins. So reluctantly, I finally picked out a board that had a shape I liked even though it had three fins. The next day I paddled it out into some beautiful 6-foot Ho’okipa waves. On the first wave I caught, immediately on making the first bottom turn, I realized how big of a mistake I’d made by not converting to the new design sooner. I can still remember clearly, me yelling out loud to myself, “You dumbass!” That board felt like a rocketship compared to my old one … so much faster and more maneuverable.

The surf leash had also been invented in this same time frame. It consisted of a hard rubber cord, six- or seven-feet long, which was tied to a leash plug that anchored it to the tail of the board and had a Velcro loop on the other end that wrapped around your ankle so you wouldn’t lose your board during a wipeout. Before leashes, you spent a lot of time swimming in after your board but that resulted in your becoming a good oceanic swimmer and learning how to survive in all kinds of conditions. To all of us who surfed pre-leash, we thought it was just part of the deal and that it made us better watermen. I, and all my surfing buddies, turned our noses down at leashes and derided anyone we saw using one, with comments like, “Hey man, why are you wearing that kook strap?”

In the ensuing years, I noticed most of my buddies had converted to wearing a kook strap themselves so I had to just shut my mouth and surf, still holding out on not using one. Then, on another trip to Maui, just off the plane, my brother-in-law and I paddled out into a solid 8- to 10-foot northwest swell at Ho’okipa. The wind was light offshore and the waves were reeling perfectly down the reef. I paddled into a bomb a little late on my very first wave and proceeded to get crushed. My board washed in along the cliff where it got caught in the rip and got carried around the point into the next bay over. It was a long swim through heavy waves and currents but finally I retrieved my board from the rocks and had to call it a day because my board was dinged up pretty bad and I was totally exhausted. The next day I went to a surf shop to buy resin and cloth to repair the dings. I also grabbed a leash and leash plug to install on my board while I was at it.

You’d think I would have learned a lesson from these two incidents. Nope. To this day, I still don’t own a smart phone. My phone is a dumb phone that I bought at a store here in Bocas del Toro for 28 bucks. It only sends or receives calls or texts. Maybe it can do more than that but if so, I don’t want to know anything about it. My friends always tell me, “Get a smart phone … it’ll change your life. “ I’m positive they are right, but for me, I’m not sure if that change would be for the better.

Allene and I have a game we like to play when we are out and about. When we are in a restaurant, sitting in an airport or even driving down Main Street here in Bocas, we like to watch how many people are on their phones. Try it sometime. You’ll be amazed. We’ve seen many times in a crowded restaurant where at every single table except ours, everyone is gazing at their phones, their fingers in a blur, dancing over their touch screens. We always get a kick out of this spectacle. Sad to see though, from my perspective.

We have a rule in our family. When we all go out to eat together, all devices have to be turned off before we enter the restaurant. We like to practice the ancient lost art of conversation. We actually enjoy interacting with one another, sharing laughs and a few new stories, which are always enhanced by a good meal and a few glasses of wine. I may be old-fashioned but I think it’s one of the great pleasures in life.

Allene finally made me learn how to use the computer about three years ago. I guess she got fed up with having to do all my internet stuff because I was totally computer illiterate. If I needed to send an email, I would write it up longhand and she would type it up for me and send it. She sat me down one day and showed me how to go to Yahoo to check our email, how to google something, how to go to Google News and how to check the surf report. (The first thing I have to check every morning is the surf report, which really makes no sense at all. The ocean is less than 200 feet from our front steps and I can look right out the windows and see the waves breaking and what the conditions are like. Duh!) She said these are the basics and turned me loose.

Man, I was like a kid in a candy store. That first night, after Allene went to bed, I went to Google and typed in “Celebrity Sex Videos” and hit the enter key. Sure enough, it brought up a site that had sex videos of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and others. When clicking on a specific video, a new site would pop up and say Click Here, and before I knew it, I had several tabs open and some of the stuff was things even I didn’t want to see. I got scared and tried to exit the sites but didn’t know what I was doing, and more things kept popping up so I panicked and hit the OFF button on the computer.

The next morning Allene tried to turn the computer on but couldn’t get it to do anything. She said, “Clay, what did you do to the computer?” I sheepishly confessed to everything and unfortunately we had to take it to a specialist in town who found the computer infected with eight viruses.

Needless to say, from that point on I was banned from going to any porn sites and if I did, I would be banned from using the computer at all. I did learn my lesson, especially after having to fork over $150 to the guy who fixed the computer. To this day I have respected Allene’s ban, but one day I might get my own laptop and I’m not making any promises on what might happen.

In 2015 I released a Texas Trilogy of EPs called “Still Rockin’,” “Still Swingin’,” and “Still Country.” The compilation consisted of all never-before-released studio and live tracks. My agent in Nashville did a fine job of promoting the releases of each of the three EPs, actually getting iTunes to post the release of each one on their feature page, right up there alongside Willie Nelson’s, Merle Haggard’s and other major artists’ new releases. At some point later, he approached me and said, “Clay, I’m working really hard promoting your releases because I believe in them and think they are very good. But you’re not giving me any help. I think you need to get on social media and start re-connecting with your friends and fans if you want these to succeed, since you’re not performing anymore.”

I thought it over and realized he was right. Allene suggested I get with Angie Whittemore Brutto, who was one of Allene’s advertising managers back when Allene owned and edited the local newspaper here in Bocas del Toro, called the Bocas Breeze. Angie now has a company called PanamaInDesign that specializes in building websites for businesses, how to promote your business on social media, and designing ads and logos and flyers. I thought that consulting with Angie was an excellent idea not only because I respect her knowledge and business acumen, but also she’s one of the best surfers here in Bocas. Whenever we are surfing at the same spot, I’m always thrilled to see Angie not only taking off on some of the heaviest waves that come through, but surfing them better than even a lot of the guys.

The first thing Angie did was create a brand new website for me and secondly, build my official Clay Blaker music page on facebook. Knowing me, she didn’t tell me at the time that I also had to have a personal page as well. She broke that news to me a few weeks later and I was upset because no way would I have time to manage two pages. She patiently explained that the facebook rules don’t allow you to have one without the other, so I had to learn how to make do. Now, after getting the routine down, I absolutely love facebook.

Long ago, I admit I was really bad about staying in touch with friends and family. I just never could seem to find the time to sit down and write a letter or call someone. And I rationalized that it didn’t matter; that whenever I got together with someone again, we would just pick up where we left off. To me, facebook is a great tool that was invented to eliminate the aforementioned problem.

I like to go on facebook in the morning when I eat breakfast, check in to see what my friends or family are up to (and vice versa, they get to see what I’m doing). And I’m off of there in 15 or 20 minutes and go on about my day. Sometimes in the evenings after dinner, I’ll get on for a while and make a post, answer messages, comment on posts, or chat with someone. I think if you use it in this manner, facebook can enhance your life. The problem is that so many people fall into the black hole and it takes over their existence. I can tell by looking at the times of the posts by many of my facebook friends that they are on there day and night, and mostly posting boring, trivial and uninteresting stuff that I just blow past without reading. By all means, if you do experience something cool or interesting, write it up and post some photos. I definitely want to hear about that.

I doubt if the inventors of facebook realized as they were coming up with this thing, how big it would be and how much money it would make them. They’ve definitely created a monster, but it’s not gonna get me.

Last week, I was driving home from town, which is on the other side of the island from where we live in Boca del Drago. I was passing through the indigenous village at Drago, a community of 800 or so people of the Gnöbe tribe, which has a school, recreation center, baseball/soccer field, a couple of small stores, six churches and many small dwellings scattered along the road and back into the fields and jungle. When we first moved here nearly 15 years ago, if we were driving home at night after a dinner in town, when we passed through the village it was pitch black, only occasionally seeing the flicker of a candle or a kerosene lamp in a few of the houses. Nowadays, when we come through the village at night, almost all the houses have electric lights from solar panels or small generators. But the difference when you see something flickering now is that it’s a television screen in nearly every house. And the paradox is that most of these houses still don’t have indoor plumbing. Not only are they seeing all the same stupid shows and commercials that everyone else in the world watches, but they even have the Panamanian version of MTV. When you see young people walking around the village these days, many of the guys are dressed like black hip-hop artists with the baggy pants, Nike shoes, and baseball caps turned sideways on their heads. And some of the girls are out and about in short, tight skirts with sexy blouses. Ah well, they probably don’t realize that by acquiring television, it has permanently changed their culture. And I’m the last person anyone should ever ask to know whether that change is good or bad. Time will tell.

But getting back to that day last week as I was driving through the village, what happened next, really put the icing on the cake. I was nearing the end of the village and I happened upon one of the buses that run from town to Drago and back, that was unloading passengers. I came to a stop and realized that it was our friends Balbino, his wife Dora, and their children. They are a very nice Gnöbe family who were returning home from a hard day’s work from the small restaurant they own at Starfish Beach. After visiting a moment with Dora and her daughter Paola (in Spanish, as Balbino and his family do not speak English), Balbino stuck his head in the passenger window of my truck and said, “Hey Clay, I’ve got some music here on my iPhone that I really like and I want you to listen to.” I replied curiously (thinking, “Wow, Balbino has an iPhone!”), “Okay, let’s hear it.” He scrolled around on his iPhone then touched a place on the screen and I heard the opening strains of “I Want to Hear it From You,” which is from a video of me performing with my band on YouTube. We listened a while and then we both got a good laugh as he clicked it off. He said he had no idea that I used to be an entertainer, and I have absolutely no idea how he came across that video. We said our goodbyes and as I drove away shaking my head in disbelief, chuckling to myself, for some reason the thought popped into my head about the day I skied Canyon Dam and how on the way home Allene and I agreed that we were living in a whole new world. At the time, we had absolutely no idea how prophetic that statement was.

In 1969, as I was entering my freshman year at the University of Houston, I didn’t have a clue as to what I wanted to study. My two loves in life were surfing and music but everyone around me always said, “Oh, you can’t make a living doing either of those.” So it had me convinced that I needed to find something else to do with the rest of my life. I made an appointment with one of the freshman counselors and this guy persuaded me to enroll in the computer science program. He said, “Clay, this is going to be the coming thing and will be huge. You need to get in on the ground floor.”

So I took the bait and decided to major in Computer Programming. On the first day of class, the professor said that the university had recently gotten their first computer and that we were going to follow him to go look at it. We all walked a short ways across campus and entered a good-sized building. He said, “There it is!” We all stood there with our mouths agape, gawking at this monstrous machine that took up the whole building. This was before the microchip of course, and before computers became small. So, all the classes had to use this one computer and there was no keyboard. Everything was done with these cardboard data cards that you punched holes in and fed into the computer. After the first week of class, or maybe even sooner, I realized I hated this stuff.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered the music library on the third floor of the Cougar Den, where I could check out all the latest records, take them into a private booth, stack them on the turntable, lie down on a comfy couch, put the headphones on and drift away. And from that moment on, that’s where I would be during Computer Class, unless there were waves, and then I and my cohorts would skip school altogether and head for the beach.

When I look back to the day when one giant computer served a whole university and think forward to where we’ve arrived at today, it is just totally mind-boggling. I think this is either the end or the beginning of everything. And right now as I’m sitting here on our front porch gazing out at Bird Island, wracking my brain trying to come up with an intelligent ending for this story, something to tie it all together, my wife Allene just came out and saved the day. She sat down here at the table beside me and said, “Hey, Clay … check out this new thing I just got on the Kindle.”

She held the Kindle in front of us and spoke to it. “Alexa, can you play some Clay Blaker music?” This very polite female voice came on and said, “Hold on while I look.” A moment later, the voice came back with, “Here is some Clay Blaker music.” And one of my songs started playing.

I looked at Allene and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

At that point it occurred to me that this is way, way, WAY more of a new world that I ever imagined in my wildest dreams, and that wanting to or not, Ol’ Clay is being dragged into the twenty-first century, slowly but surely, kicking and screaming all the way, while at the same time trying to avoid falling into that big black hole that’s out there waiting to suck him in. Don’t hold your breath. It’s not gonna happen to me!

Recently, some good friends from Texas, Al and Rhonda Brown, came down to visit us here in Bocas del Toro, Panama. Like they always do, they showed up with some nice gifts for my wife Allene and me and one was a t-shirt for me that said on the back “I Surfed in the ‘60s … Still Surfing in My 60’s.” My first reaction was a hearty laugh along with high five hand slaps with Al and Rhonda. My second reaction was more introspective as I thought, “Wow, have I really been surfing that long? Yep, it’s true.

On July 4th weekend of 1962, the Almeda Divers Association, of which my father Mack Blaker was a founding member, sponsored a spearfishing tournament that took place in Galveston. The staging and weigh-in area was right next to the south jetty, where the Houston Ship Channel enters from the Gulf. Several canopies and tarps were staked out in the sand for shade, and under the biggest tarp a P.A. system had been set up and was crankin’ out the tunes, while right next to that sat a huge barbecue pit on a trailer, where some folks were getting serious, smoking a bunch of briskets, ribs, chicken and sausage. Texas style!

There were a lot of spectators and family members of the divers hanging out, waiting for the boats to come in for the big weigh-in. I was hoping my dad would come in with a big fish. All of the kids, including me, were running wild, like we always did at the beach, our skin already a pale shade of pink that would look more like the color of a well-done lobster by the end of the day. This was before sunscreen was invented.

At one point, a friend of my dad’s, named Randy Woodum, grabbed me and said, “Hey, Clay, you want to go out and try my new surfboard?” Surfing was in its infancy on the coast at that time and my dad and a few others had recently taken it up. I was eager to give it a go. It just so happened the waves that day, although not very big, were absolutely perfect. The wind was non-existent and swells were coming in, in long beautiful glassy lines. It couldn’t have been any better for my first day.

We waded out to the third sandbar and Randy instructed me to lie down on the board and he would push me into the wave. He said when I felt the momentum, I should pop up on the board and ride it. By some miracle, that’s exactly what happened. When I felt the board glide into the wave, I jumped straight to my feet and with me being right-handed, my dominant leg naturally put me in a regular-footed stance. I rode that wave all the way until the fin started dragging in the sand. I still to this day can’t logically explain it, but immediately I knew while riding that first wave that I was hopelessly hooked and for the rest of my time on this earth, I would be a surfer. That day totally changed my life.

On the drive home that night, I was telling my dad about the waves I had ridden and I could tell by his reaction that he was as excited for me as I was. The next words that came out of his mouth were the magical words I was hoping to hear, “Alright, boy, the next time we go surfing, you’re going with us.”

That night, when my head hit the pillow, I drifted off into the deepest, most peaceful and sound sleep I think I’d ever had, all the while having sweet dreams of sliding across those endless blue-green swells. It wasn’t long after having those dreams though that I had a real nightmare.

Two or three days after my first day of surfing, while we were closing up our family business called “Blaker’s Water Sports,” my dad looked around at me and a couple of the guys who worked at the shop and said, “Hey, y’all want to go surfing?”

In my mind, I was thinking, “What? It’s gonna be dark in an hour and it’s a long drive to the beach.” But I didn’t care. I was too excited to even think about backing out.
So we loaded up four boards and headed down to Surfside Beach. After crossing the big bridge over the intercoastal canal, my dad turned left on the beach and drove down to the Surfside pier. The pier had lights for night fishing and my dad said, “Okay boys, we should be able to see good enough to catch a few waves.”

As we were hitting the water, my dad hollered at us over the sound of the waves, “Hey, you guys, shuffle your feet when you’re walking out. There are a lot stingrays around these piers. And there’ll probably be some current so don’t let it take you into the pilings. The barnacles’ll cut you up like razor blades.”

“Oh great,” I was thinking, “and besides that, those lights on the pier are there to attract bait and the fish that eat them, so there have to be a few sharks hanging around as well. But hey, let’s do this!”

We waded out with our boards to the third sandbar and turned them around to face the shore, then waited for a big breaker. When one would break behind us, we’d push off in the whitewater, jump on the board on our stomachs and try to stand up. Of course, we were going straight off, because none of us knew how to turn yet. Also, at that time we didn’t know that it’s way more difficult to surf in the whitewater. If you take off on a wave and get to your feet on the smooth water before it breaks, then you have more control over the board to be able to ride in the whitewater after the wave breaks. Basically, we were all getting knocked around pretty good. Especially me, being only 12 years old and small for my age, I felt like I was taking a total beating. At one point, when I was walking my board through the cut between the second and third sandbars, I stepped on a blue crab and it pinched the hell out of my little toe. I was screaming and everyone thought a shark had bitten me but at that moment the crab let go and I hollered, “It was a crab and I’m okay!” I did reach down and make sure I still had that toe.

A little later I was getting pretty tired when a wave smacked me and I lost my board. As the waves were pushing it towards shore, the current was pulling it towards the pier. By the time I got to it, it was inside the pilings so I carefully went in after it and somehow barely brushed one of the pilings with my right leg. I didn’t feel any pain so I just forgot about it and headed back out. Finally, a while later, my dad hollered, “Alright boys, let’s get one more and go in. We’ve got to head on back.”

When we were putting the boards in the back of the van, the interior light was on and my dad said, “Hey, Slick, what happened to your leg?”

I looked down and I was bleeding like a stuck hog. I said, “I guess you were right about those barnacles.”

On the drive home, I was trying to make some sense of it all. My session had been a total nightmare. My toe was purple and swollen, my lower leg looked like raw hamburger, I was sore all over, totally exhausted, and on top of all that, I never stood up on one wave. But at the same time, I also had a grin from ear to ear, my spirit was soaring, and I felt like the king of the world.

That’s the irony in surfing. After having what I know now as the worst surfing session of my life, I thought it was the most glorious day ever. Or should I say night. Nowadays, the saying goes, “Any day that includes a go-out is a great day.”

In learning any new endeavor, no matter what it is, you will always reach a few game changing moments, or turning points. After night-surfing two or three nights a week for a couple of months, we got word from some other surfers that the waves were better the farther south you headed down the coast. One of the main reasons for that is the further away you get from the Mississippi River basin and all the big rivers on the upper Texas coast, the continental shelf is much narrower and drops off into deeper water much faster. So when the waves come out of deep water and don’t have the drag of a slow-sloping large continental shelf, by the time they hit shallow enough water to break, they are bigger, steeper and better formed than their upper coastal counterparts.

So we decided to head for Port Isabel at South Padre Island. In those days South Padre Island was barely populated. Next to the jetties were campgrounds, a big pavilion, and the Jetties Restaurant. On the road that went north for a short ways up the island, there were a few small beach homes, a couple of bait stands, a grocery and tackle shop, some small motels, and the Palmetto Inn. You wouldn’t recognize the place now. The skyline of South Padre Island now resembles Miami Beach, with condos and high-rises everywhere.

But when we arrived there on our first surfing trip, to us it was a pristine paradise, very tropical and different from the upper Texas coast. Of course the first thing we did was drive straight to the beach by the jetty to check the surf. To our utter dismay, it was totally flat. So, being tired from the seven-hour-long drive, and being bummed about no surf, we set forth up the island searching for a clean, cheap motel. After driving a mile or so and checking out a few places, we found one that suited our needs and after putting our stuff in the room, we walked across the dunes to get a look at the beach.

To our shock, there were 4-foot beautiful waves breaking on the third sandbar. We ran back to the room, put on our trunks, grabbed the boards out of the back of the van and hit the water. We walked the boards out and as soon as we passed the first sandbar, the water was over my head and the current was pulling strongly to the north. My dad said we had to get on the boards and paddle. But we’d never hardly paddled before because up until then we’d just been pushing ourselves off in the whitewater. We finally got out to the third bar where we could stand up and we started pushing off again in the whitewater but it was a complete failure. When the wave would break behind us, we would push the board ahead of the foam, hop on to our bellies, but before we even tried to stand up, we’d be in the deep water between the bars. The waves at that point would totally flatten out and we would stall out and lose all momentum.

After 45 minutes or so of frustration, my dad hollered, “Hey Slick, let’s go in. I’ve noticed something about these waves and we need to sit and watch them for a while.”

After watching the waves for a few minutes in silence, my dad finally spoke. “I’ve figured out why there weren’t any waves at the jetty. Look at the angle the waves are hitting the sandbar. The swell is coming from an extremely southern direction so it’s being blocked right there by the jetty but the swells that are passing the end of the jetty are hitting way north up the beach. Now watch what the wave does when it breaks. See how the curl is peeling off to the right all the way down the sandbar? What we should do is paddle the boards out past where the waves are breaking and try to paddle into them before they break. Then if we catch one, stay on your stomach and lean on the board to the right and it should turn and stay ahead of the curl as it peels down the sandbar.”

Well, it sounded like a plan to me. So we did paddle out past the break. Needless to say, our paddling strength was pretty weak, but finally my dad was into one and rode it pretty far down the bar. The first couple I caught, the nose of the board pearl-dived, and I was flipped right off. But I finally caught a good one and leaned over on that right rail and sure enough, the board swung around and I was flying down the sandbar just ahead of the curl. After I paddled back out, my dad said, “Okay, now we just have to stand up and do the same thing.”

After several failed attempts, both of us finally did it. And there it was. Our first eureka moment. That big turning point. Once again, I had felt that same sensation of flying as I did that first day I was pushed into those waves at Galveston. From here it was all uphill and every game-changing moment that happened later was another step towards becoming a better surfer.

It didn’t take us long after that trip to figure out that the first thing that had to happen to be a better surfer is that you had to become a good paddler. Surfing’s not like snow-skiing where the lift takes you up the mountain and gravity takes you back down. No, in surfing you have to paddle out to the break and in Texas, if the surf has any size, that can be brutal. Because of that slow-sloping continental shelf I mentioned earlier, on a big day the waves will be breaking a half mile out or even further during hurricane surf. Then once you get outside you have to be able to paddle fast enough to catch a wave to get back in.

To become a good paddler and to keep your paddling muscles in shape, you have to paddle on a regular basis. Swimming helps, push-ups and pull-ups help. But there are muscles you use in paddling that don’t come into play with those other exercises. So there’s no getting around it. You have to paddle. But that’s great because if you’re paddling, you’re surfing.
For anyone who is just learning how to surf, once you become a good paddler your surfing will improve by leaps and bounds. Immediately. Trust me on that. It’s the key to the highway.

Back in those days, there weren’t many surfers. There were only a few places in the world where people surfed. The boards were long, average length 9’6”. There were no leashes … they hadn’t been invented yet. Some people say leashes ruined surfing. That they gave people of limited swimming and surfing ability false confidence to venture out into the waves with a board strapped to their leg. That statement is true but leashes didn’t ruin surfing. Personally, I love leashes: more time spent riding waves instead of time lost swimming in after your board after wipeouts. Leashes do break on a regular basis though, so you absolutely still need to be a good oceanic swimmer.

To me, the major problem affecting surfing is the same one causing many other problems in the world. Overpopulation. I won’t get into that because that’s a whole other story, so I’ll just speak here of how it applies to surfing. But just to give you a clue, in 1960, there were 3 billion people in the world and now there are 7.6 billion. As you can see, the population has more than doubled in that timespan. To put it plain and simple, there are just too many surfers for the amount of surf spots there are. Yeah, for sure you can still find out-of-the-way places to surf if you have the time and money to travel and search for them. But it’s getting harder and harder.

Clay Blaker, 14 years old, on first surfing trip to Mexico

In 1968, six of us from Texas took a trip to Hawaii and on Maui we camped out for a week at Honolua Bay (ranked by Surfer Magazine as one of the five best waves in the world) and had it all to ourselves.  Man, that was a dream come true for us.  But when my whole family moved to Maui two years later, Honolua by then had a core group of 15 to 25 regulars who surfed it on every swell. At that time, we already thought it was too crowded because those guys hogged almost every wave. I surfed it about 6 or 7 years ago when Allene and I were visiting our family and I counted over 300 people in the water. I was out for three hours and only got two waves and had people riding in front of me and behind me on both waves. I drove out to Honolua last year when we were there and from the cliff overlooking the break I estimated there were around 700 surfers in the water. And no, I did not go out.

But Honolua Bay is not the exception. Crowded conditions have become the norm almost everywhere people surf. People now surf in virtually every country on earth that has a coastline and believe it or not, that includes the Great Lakes in the U.S. The modern wetsuit is so state-of-the-art that it’s allowed large surfing communities to develop in places like Canada, Alaska, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Scotland and there are even some Russians starting to surf in Siberia.

To the young surfers of today, crowded conditions are all they’ve ever known and they seem to deal with it fine. When I watch young surfers at a crowded break, I can’t seem to tell if it’s a free-for-all or some kind of organized chaos. Either way, it ain’t my thing.

I’ll admit I was struggling with this situation before we found Bocas del Toro. When we moved here in 2003, there were maybe 15 locals who surfed and also a handful of expats. For the first few years, none of the spots were ever crowded. At that time, this place had never been featured in any surf magazines and nothing had gotten out on the internet. But sadly, at least from my point of view, that has all changed. It’s definitely on the map now. Several of the known spots have gotten very crowded. However, there are so many nooks and crannies here in the archipelago that you can always find a place to surf alone if you have a boat and know your way around. Hell, I’ve been here going on 15 years and there are still spots I know of that I haven’t surfed yet. Plus, as a backup, we have our little spot right out in front of our house.

Clay surfing at Carenero, Bocas del Toro, Panama

I prefer to surf alone, but don’t mind surfing with a friend or two. Surfing alone is really not recommended but I do it anyway. Like scuba diving you should use the buddy system and watch out for each other. Surfing does have risks, especially when the waves are large. The waves here in Bocas are very powerful and mostly break over shallow reefs. Leaving hide on the reef is a common occurrence, especially if you’re taking off on the heavier waves. I’ve made a few visits to the local hospital myself to get stitched up. The first time it happened, I was surfing alone at a spot I won’t name here. It was a couple of feet overhead and the conditions were perfect. The wave at this spot is a right-hander that has a hollow section right on the takeoff and then a steep wall that lines up all the way down the reef. To me, it’s very similar to a spot on Maui called Little Makaha, or Laniakea, on the north shore of Oahu. This is a high-performance wave that will make you think you’re Kelly Slater if your game is on. Anyway, early in the session, I had a pretty gnarly wipeout and my board banged my elbow as I was tumbling underwater. I thought nothing of it and it didn’t hurt at all, and anyway getting hit by your board is a normal occurrence in a wipeout. I paddled back out and caught a few more good waves and then there was a lull in the action as I sat waiting for a set. At some point I glanced down and my trunks and the water around me was full of blood. It scared the crap out of me as I started frantically searching my body for an injury. Then I remembered the elbow bang and pulled my arm up to look and I had a gash all the way across the point of the elbow, with the white tip of the bone exposed. Right then a nice wave came and I spun around and went on it. I ended up surfing another 45 minutes because the waves were just too good to stop. The whole time though, I was thinking about sharks and finally my imagination got the best of me. I headed for the boat.  When I got back to the dock, I showered with my gallon jug of water, got dressed and drove to the hospital.

Now here’s the coolest part of the whole story. The doctor who attended me in the emergency room was a very nice-looking young female Panamanian who told me she had gone to medical school in Cuba. Allene and I had recently been to Cuba ourselves so the whole time the doctor was treating me, we talked of our experiences in that wonderful country.

First she scrubbed the wound thoroughly with betadine, then with a syringe deadened around the whole area. Next she told me to lay my arm out straight so she could stitch it up and I bent my arm instead and asked if she would stitch it in that position. She looked at me funny and asked, “Why?”

I told her it was because I didn’t want to pop the stitches when I was paddling the next day.

She said, “Oh no, you can’t surf for at least a week.”

I just smiled and said, “Stitch it the way I want it, please.”

So she did, and then cleaned the area again, put antiseptic cream on it bandaged it up nicely, put an elastic bandage over that and asked if I’d had a tetanus shot recently. I said no so she left the room for a few minutes and returned with another syringe and gave me a tetanus shot. She also handed me a package of antibiotic pills that I had to take three times a day for five days and also a couple of pain pills. I thanked her and she shook my hand and told me to go to the cashier to pay.

The cashier was an elderly lady who totaled everything up and said that I owed $9.00. I was a little shocked so I said, “What? That can’t be right.”

She looked confused, added everything up again and said “Yes, that is correct. If you think it’s too much, tell me your age and maybe I can give you the senior discount.”

I replied, “No, no, no! It’s not too much … I was thinking it was way too little.”

She smiled and said, “Well, that’s what we charge.”

I paid her the $9.00, thanked her and told her to have a nice day.

I walked out feeling like I’d won the lottery. (Oh, and I did go surfing the next day and the rest of the week. The waves were just too good.) A few months later I was back in there getting stitched up again and they only charged me $6.00 because I didn’t need the tetanus shot. You gotta love this place.

Clay surfing at Tiger Tail, Bocas del Toro, Panama

My wife Allene loves to surf. We both also loved to snow ski so a couple of times a season we would go to New Mexico or Colorado to look for fresh powder. One year when Allene was 25 or 26 we were skiing at Ski Apache in Ruidoso, New Mexico, when a big wet warm front hit during our morning session and of all things it started raining at the top of the mountain. We skied down to the lodge to wait it out and finally after lunch it stopped and we headed back up the mountain. When we got off the lift at the top and started back down, we soon realized that we’d made a big mistake. The rain had turned the runs into solid sheets of ice. We should have quit immediately and walked down but of course, we didn’t. We were both taking some bad spills and on one fall, Allene hit the ice hard on her left hip. I could tell she was in serious pain and I took off my skis and walked over to see if she was okay. She finally was able to get up and we made the call to quit for the day. She was in more pain that night so I went to a convenience store and got her some ibuprofen. The next morning was our last day of the trip and she said she wanted to ski so she took some more ibuprofen and we headed up the mountain. The snow had been groomed overnight so was no longer icy. Allene had a hard time but skied very gingerly and toughed it out the whole day. When we returned home she nursed it along for three or four weeks and it seemingly got well. We thought.

A few years later she started having some pain in that same hip that gradually got worse and worse so she finally went to get an x-ray.  The doctor found a scar from a hairline fracture on her femoral head, which was almost twice its normal size and covered with bone spurs. He said sometimes a fracture like that can cause arthritis to settle in the joint and that was what was causing her pain. He also said a hip replacement was inevitable in her future but to hold off as long as possible as new and improved prostheses were being invented all the time. He gave her a prescription for inflammation and pain and told her just to take it easy but keep exercising.

She held off for fifteen more years but finally the arthritis was eating away her hip joint so she had the operation in 2001, receiving a new femoral head made of titanium. For her surgeon, Allene chose Dr. Jon Manjarris, who was a good surfer and good friend we knew when we were growing up in Texas. John went to medical school and became a top-notch orthopedic surgeon and by the way, still surfs to this day. Because he was a surfer himself, it gave us confidence that he would do what was needed so that Allene would be able to surf again. The day after the surgery, a nurse came into the hospital room with a walker and had Allene walking up and down the corridor. That afternoon, when Jon was finished with his rounds, he came up to the room with some surf videos and a bottle wine and oh, boy,  I was happy about that, although Allene was still on a morphine drip and couldn’t have any. We watched movies and spent some time reminiscing about old surfing days. He hung out with us the next night as well and the next morning checked her out of the hospital. If you ever need a good orthopedic surgeon in Texas, look this guy up. Jon Manjarris … a helluva good guy, a helluva good surgeon and a helluva good surfer.

Jon told Allene right as we were wheeling her out the door that if she followed his instructions to the letter, she could be back surfing in three years, but not earlier. So she did. And now she’s back and she’s ripping. She surfs an 8’6” soft-top that goes easier on the new hip and also rides waves on her 12-foot stand-up paddleboard, which is also a soft-top.

Another thing Jon told Allene, once he found out she was a regular-foot, was that she would have to switch to being a goofy-foot. Going from a prone position to a regular stance would put too much of an angle on her left hip. So she was going to have to learn to put her right leg forward instead and keep her left foot on the back. “And one other thing,” he said, “you will have to keep your leash on that forward right ankle, not your left. It’s going to look funny but you don’t want that leash pulling your femur out of the hip socket in a wipeout.” Changing your stance is not an easy thing to do but once she was able to get back in the water, she practiced and practiced and now is a seasoned goofy-footer.

Not long after we arrived in Bocas we realized that the town beach had a perfect longboard wave that was very similar to San Onofre in California or Waikiki in Hawaii. The locals call that stretch of sand Las Cabanas beach, but we renamed it Waikiki. Whenever Waikiki is breaking, Allene is on it. They say the best surfer in the water is the one having the most fun and no one has more fun than Allene. Except maybe our good friend Kurt Fargo, AKA Cortez. We were surfing with Cortez over 40 years ago in southern California and he moved here to Bocas a few months after we did. He is Allene’s surfing and paddleboarding partner and boy do they have some serious adventures together. If they aren’t surfing on their longboards or paddleboards, they might take their snorkeling or fishing gear with them on the paddleboards and spend hours on and in the water. Kurtis is like a brother to us and we are so thankful to have him here.

Bocas del Toro has been a dream come true for Allene and me. In our wildest imagination we never thought how incredible it would turn out to be. And we owe it all to surfing. If we hadn’t come here on that first surfing trip in 1998, I shudder to think of what our life might be like now. Probably still slugging it out in the honky-tonks trying to fan the dying embers of a fading music career. I won’t try to speak for Allene, but from my perspective, surfing has always been just as important in my life as music. I guess at this point it’s taken on even more importance.

There’s no doubt that surfing has made me a better human being over the years. Traveling to exotic locations to surf has exposed me to many different cultures, which in turn led me to experience different customs, foods, languages, religions and ideas. While our differences make us unique, I’ve found that deep down inside, were basically all the same. We are all from the same tribe.
The things I’ve learned from surfing and the ocean are things that I apply to my life on a daily basis when I’m on dry land. Things like patience. You have to be patient in surfing because you‘re always waiting on something. Waiting for the surf to come up, waiting for the tide to change, waiting for the wind to turn offshore, waiting for the next good wave.

You also learn to be a good listener. You always have to pay attention to what the ocean is telling you at all times or you can get in a bind quickly. And you need to listen to what your brain is telling you and what your instincts are telling you, especially in large surf, because it could save your life.

Surfing has taught me to be kinder to other people. When I was younger and surfing in crowds I would be hassling with the others for waves and if someone cut me off I would get really pissed. I gradually learned that’s not the right way to be. Nowadays, when I surf with others, I show respect to everyone and give waves to them. Almost always they give it right back. In surfing, you are always interacting with nature and through nature you begin to see how everything on earth is connected. And that we all live here together on this big beautiful planet and we need to take care of it and each other. Surfing to me is not a sport. It’s a way of life. Sure, it’s big fun, but it has a spiritual side to it as well. When I’m sitting out in the water waiting for a wave and looking at all the beautiful scenery and ocean surrounding me there’s no doubt in my mind that there is a power greater than me. In these special moments, I feel a deep sense of holiness come over me. It brings me much peace and happiness.

There have been times in my life when I talked about these things in front of people who have never surfed and I could tell by the looks on their faces that they felt what I was saying was a bunch of B.S. That, maybe in their minds, surfing was a frivolous endeavor, a big waste of time and that people who surfed were lazy beach bums and not productive members of society. I’ll be the first to admit that there is an element of truth in that stereotype. But for me, when I come out of the water after a good session I feel like I’m in love with the world and being in that frame of mind makes me want to do better in living my life in a more positive manner for everyone around me. Maybe that’s not being productive in a material way, but still, it’s powerful. Think what the world could be like if everyone lived that way. There’s always hope.

So now, at 67 years of age, I find myself in the best physical shape of my life. These beautiful waves of consequence here have forced me into that, albeit willingly. I still ride a short board and on most days still surf better than I have in my whole life. There are a couple of reasons for that. One, the equipment we surf on these days is far superior to what we rode in the old days and you can do so much more on a wave. Two, I get to surf every day on world-class waves. Of course, I don’t mean every, every day. Some days you might just have too many other things to do and sometimes, like everywhere else, the surf does go flat. Luckily, here near the equator, all year long we have pretty close to 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. So theoretically, you could work a full time job of 8 hours a day and still get out there and get in a 2- or 3-hour surf session before dark. My record here for most days surfing in a row is 58. During that period, the surf was never below head-high, with most days being overhead, some days double-overhead, and a couple of days pushing triple-overhead. I had to finally take a day off, not because the surf went flat but because I was too beat up and needed a day of rest. I got back out there the next day and started another streak.

And I still have those game-changing moments occasionally. A few months ago I was surfing at that same unnamed spot where I lacerated my elbow and I accidentally did something I’d never done before in my life. Sometimes at that spot, when the tide is low, there’s a shallow spot in the reef that makes the tail-end section throw over right in front of you. If I see it’s gonna happen, I like to crank a huge bottom turn and go straight up and hit that section of the lip and snap a big turn back down with the whitewater and hopefully land it and shoot out into the flats of the small channel.

The day I’m speaking of, I was flying down the wall of one of the bigger waves that came through, linking my turns together and saw that the tail-end section was gonna throw over, so I dropped to the bottom to crank my big turn up into the lip and I bobbled it. That threw my timing off so instead of snapping a turn back down off of the lip, I ejected right off of the wave and was airborne. Miraculously, the board stuck to my feet and I landed on top of the whitewater, did a floater down to the bottom, turned out into the flats and kicked out.  Paddling back out I thought to myself, “Did that really happen?” I’d just done my first aerial ever. I had to laugh, because of course I was surfing alone so there were no witnesses. About two or three weeks later there I was again. Same spot, no one else out. Again that same situation presented itself and this time I knew just what to do. When that last section came over I hit it like a skateboard ramp and launched air. I landed it perfectly. Even though it is the simplest aerial maneuver there is, and I probably didn’t come but a foot or so out of the water, I can say I’ve now done one. Twice. But aerials aren’t really my thing because I’m old-school (and old) plus it’s easy to get hurt trying them. I’ve found at my age it takes longer and longer to recover from injuries and I just don’t want to miss any surfing time. For now, my goal is simply to keep surfing at a good level for as long as possible. Most days I can do that, but I have noticed more frequently that I have days where I feel like the biggest kook in the water. I know for sure that it’s downhill from here, but I’ll try to stave it off as long as I can. I know one day there’ll come a time when I’m back on a longboard surfing at Waikiki with Allene and Kurtis and I guarantee I’ll still be enjoying it as much as ever. In fact, the three of us have a new mantra: Never stop surfing. I even got it tattooed on my arm recently.

Clay surfing at unnamed spot, Bocas del Toro, Panama

Sometimes when Allene and I are surfing out in front of our house and the waves are good, we can see our beach, and up on the hill, our beautiful home and property, and we’ll turn and look at each other and just burst out laughing, thinking,” Can you believe this?” Other times we’ll look at each other and tears of joy will roll out of our eyes because we are so thankful for all we have and for this amazing life.  We feel very blessed and never for one minute do we take any of it for granted.

For as long we’ve been together, Allene and I have always lived exactly right in the moment. We’ve always believed that all we have is the present and that we need to make every second count. We don’t dwell much on the past because it’s already gone. We have, however, tried to learn from our mistakes. And we don’t worry much about the future either, because we’ve always thought if we take care of the here and now, the future will take care of itself.

So that’s how we’ll keep living our life, with the understanding that at our age it could all come crashing down in a moment’s notice. If not in a moment, it will someday. We’ll just let our new mantra guide us until it’s time to catch that biggest of all waves… the one that walls up all the way down the line, forever and ever.

There you have it.

Never stop surfing.

Holy Cow!!!! I can’t believe they actually did it! They pulled it off! After 55 years of futility, on a beautiful, balmy evening in Los Angeles, California, the Houston Astros won the World Series. I’d have to say the stars and the planets were perfectly aligned, because at that moment, everything seemed right with the universe. The last few years I was wondering if I would ever see this in my lifetime. But I never gave up hope. And now, here we are, and I’m gonna tell you something: it feels incredible.

This whole deal started for me way back in the mid-‘50s when I was 5 or 6 years old. My grandparents on my dad’s side, Granny and PawPaw Blaker, had one of the first television sets in Almeda, the little town south of Houston where we grew up. Everyone in our family and my dad’s brother Jack’s family, who lived next door, would all go to Granny and PawPaw’s to watch TV. PawPaw was full-blooded Bohemian, Bohemia being an area in the western part of what was then known as Czechoslovakia. PawPaw loved to watch the Yankees on TV mainly because of their shortstop at the time, Tony Kubek. PawPaw told us that Tony was also Czech and that he was our third cousin on his mother’s side. I thought, Wow, that’s pretty cool having a cousin on the Yankees team, so I would always go to PawPaw’s to watch the games with him whenever the Yankees were playing. I can still remember the pungent smell of the Garrett snuff he liked to dip as he watched the game while spitting in his spittoon. Tony Kubek became my first hero in baseball and I still loved him as a broadcaster on NBC’s Game of the Week when his playing days were over.

The transistor radio was developed and came out on the market in 1954. It was a small battery-powered radio and I got one for Christmas in 1956. At the time, Houston only had a minor league baseball team called the Buffs. But I found out what station they broadcasted the games on and I was excited to listen to them on my little radio under the covers at night after we’d all gone to bed. Also in this era, baseball trading cards were the rage as companies such as Topps and Fleer sold cards in packages with bubblegum. My cousins Bubba Blaker and Butch Cloyd and I would walk along Highway 288 in Almeda picking up discarded soda bottles so we could sell them to buy baseball cards. Anything that had to do with baseball … we were on it. We couldn’t wait for school to be out for the summer so we could mow the field beside our house and start playing the game itself.

Clay in his Gulls uniform

In ’58, I would be old enough to try out for the Fondren PeeWee League and I was beside myself waiting for summer. My mother, Rose, who had been a softball player in high school, started working with me every day after school, throwing me grounders, playing catch, and pitching to me while I batted. My dad, Mack, who at that time had a car-repair business, the Almeda Garage, had to put in long hours every day at the shop. So that left it up to my mom to bring my baseball skills up to snuff. No problem for her. She had played catcher in high school and had a good arm. Pretty tough as well. She got her nose broken in a game by a girl who slung the bat after getting a hit, but mom finished the game in spite of blood running down her face and all over her jersey.

I went to the tryouts when summer started and got picked by a team called the Gulls, as in seagulls. At the time, I thought that was a pretty lame name for a baseball team and was proven right at our first game when all the older kids sitting in the stands started calling us the Gurls. They were merciless to us that season and the next one as well. I was extremely glad to be moving up to the majors and a new team the following year. My older cousins Butch and Bubba had both played for the Phillies so I don’t know if they’d put in a good word for me but at the tryouts that year the manager for the Phillies picked me for the team. I was stoked. For two years I pitched and played shortstop, and then I was out of that age group.

The next group up was Pony League and the closest league to where we lived was the Windsor Pony League, the field being in Windsor Village. I got picked to be on the Tigers. In this league, no one was a little kid anymore. Everyone could hit and throw the ball hard by this time so it was definitely a step up. I remember one night game I was batting against Nick Ortiz, who was one of the top pitchers in the league. He drilled me right in the center of my left thigh. It dropped me like a sack of potatoes. I had a huge charley horse and could barely walk so I had to come out of the game. I guess I wasn’t as tough as my mom.

Towards the end of each season, the managers of all the teams start looking at the players who are doing well so they can make their picks for the All-Stars team when the season is over. Then the regional playoffs would start and it was single-elimination all the way to the state finals. Everyone wants to make All-Stars so you can keep playing but they only took the two or three best players from each team. About this time, we started hearing rumors of this lanky kid from Alvin who could already throw an 80-mph fastball. They also said he was wild a lot of times so although very few could hit his fast ball, because of his wildness most hitters were afraid to stand in the batter’s box. Needless to say, he was almost unhittable and got a lot of strikeouts. Found out later, his name was Nolan Ryan.

I was kind of hoping I wouldn’t make the All-Stars because the town of Alvin was nearby and it would probably be one of the first teams we played. After being plugged by Nick Ortiz, I wasn’t too keen on stepping into the box with this Ryan kid pitching. (I found out later that I wouldn’t have had to play against him after all. He was three years older and on to the next level.) It was a moot point anyway. By the end of the season I’d thrown my arm out. Too many curve balls at too young of an age. I think they call it tennis elbow nowadays. Also, by this time I had started surfing and that was it for my ever playing team sports again.

I still followed baseball religiously though … a huge fan then and still one to this day.

While I was still in Little League, a major event happened that would change the face of the city of Houston forever. It was announced that a major league team would begin playing in 1962 in the National League. They were to be called the Colt 45s and a stadium was quickly built southwest of downtown in a soggy, mosquito-infested cow pasture. The opening-day game of the first season was April 10, 1962 with a three-game homestand against the Chicago Cubs. One of my best friends while growing up in Almeda was Willie Keyworth, whose family owned a dairy farm way out at the end of Fellows Road. Willie’s dad, Billy, who was good friends with my dad from grade school on, took Willie and me to that first game. Walking into that stadium to me felt like walking through the gates of heaven. I was in awe. And yeah, it was Houston in April so it was already hot and muggy but since it was a day game, at least there weren’t any mosquitos. But nobody cared anyway. It was a glorious day. The crowd was electrified and the atmosphere super-charged. And the team didn’t let us down. Roman Mejias smacked two homeruns and the Colts beat the Cubs 11 – 2. In fact, the Colts ended up sweeping those first three games with the Cubs and people were already talking about pennants and the World Series. Little did we know how long we’d wait for that World Series title.

As the season progressed, I decided my favorite player on the team was third baseman Bob Aspromonte. A good friend of my dad’s, Jack Hunsicker, heard I liked Aspromonte and told us that he knew him and could get tickets from him to go to a game. So he did, and it was a day game so my dad didn’t go because he had to work. (Also, my dad was more into football and not so much of a baseball fan.) At the game, our seats were right on the field by third base. During warm-ups, Jack hollered at Bob and he came right over to the rail. He introduced me to Bob and we shook hands and I was so starstruck I became totally mute. Jack, after a few seconds when I didn’t say anything, nudged me and said, “Bob got us the tickets, Clay.” I came out of my stupor and said, “Thank you, Mr. Aspromonte.” He replied, “Hang on, I have something for you.” He went into the dugout and came back with a photo of himself that he autographed for me. Then he said, “Y’all enjoy the game,” and went back to warming up. The game was against the Mets and the Colts won 3 – 2.

About a month or so later, my dad came home from work and asked, “Hey Slick, you want to go see the Colts game tonight? Sandy Koufax is pitching.” I was surprised, because as I mentioned before, my dad wasn’t much into baseball, but I quickly said, “Yes!” It ended up being a great game, especially getting to watch Koufax painting a masterpiece from the mound. In the 6th inning, with the Dodgers leading 2 – 1, Koufax was taken out due to a muscle strain. The Colts scored two runs off the relief pitcher to take a 3 – 2 lead. The Dodgers hit a solo homerun in the 8th to tie it 3 – 3. And that’s where it stayed until the 13th inning. In the top of the 13th, the Dodger’s Maury Wills, who was one of the best base stealers of all time, walked, stole second, stole third, and came home on a sacrifice fly. When the side was out, the Colts came to the plate, couldn’t score. Game over, Dodgers winning 4 – 3. What a heartbreak. Plus, we didn’t get home until around 1:00 in the morning and my mother was still up, worried sick, and wondering where we were. That ended up being the last pro baseball game my dad ever attended. But not me. I loved every minute of it and went to many, many more Colt and Astro games over the years.

In 1965, the Astrodome, called the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” opened and the Colt 45s had a new home. Due to copyright/patent infringement flak from the Colt Firearms Company and Colt 45 Malt Liquor, the team got a new name as well. Because of the heavy presence of NASA in the Houston area and the name of the new stadium, the team settled on the name Astros. I’ve always liked the name, with its connotation of rocketships and the space age. There have been a lot of years however when the team did not live up to the image of its name. There were times when the team stunk up the season so badly they should have been named the Covered Wagons. Instead of spaceships, think of circling the wagons. Regardless, if you’re a real true fan, you stick with your team through thick and thin, good or bad, loving them always and savoring all the great moments: walk-off homeruns, a leaping catch up over the wall that thwarts a homerun, or someone pitching a no-hitter.

Mention of a no-hitter always makes me think one thing. Nolan Ryan. I’ve followed Ryan’s whole career because first of all, he’s a Texan; secondly, I’ve known of him since I was 12 or 13 years old; and third, he was just so damn good. When he finally came home to the Astros after spending several years with the Angels and Mets, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Allene and I went to a lot of games at the ‘Dome when we had time off from the music business. After the team acquired Ryan, we made it a point to see as many games as we could that he pitched. We’d usually try to go in a group, as it was more fun. Some of the folks who went with us were Hal and Sharon Anderson, Greg and Donna Anderson, Glenn and Melinda Hammond, Donnis and Pam Hammond, Ansgar and Gaby Reuter, Hermann Lammers-Meyer and his Emsland Hillbillies band members, when they came to Texas from Germany most summers, Lisa Morales (from the famous music duo Sisters Morales), … and Tommy Foote.

Tommy was the drummer with the Ace in the Hole band when we first met them in 1976. He was from Houston, like me, and when I found out he was a big Astros fan, we hit it off immediately. Ace in the Hole had a pretty good vocalist at the time, who broke out with a single on MCA Records in 1981. He consequently went on to be one of the biggest stars in the history of country music. Yep … King George Strait. A few years after making it big, George needed someone to be his tour manager and handle everything that happens while on the road. Thinking Tommy was the right man for the job, George promoted Tommy from drummer to official tour manager and that’s what Tommy still does to this day. Thank God, because Tommy’s job would come into play for him and me one memorable night years later at Arlington Stadium. More on that shortly. Meanwhile, back to the ‘Dome.

As elated as I was when Nolan Ryan came to the Astros, I was equally devastated when the team decided not to renew his contract in 1988 and the Texas Rangers snatched him up. That was a move that I think the Astros will always regret. In a perfect world, Nolan Ryan should have finished his career with the Houston Astros. Nolan went on to have some good seasons with the Rangers, adding to his strikeout total, his games won, and even threw his 6th and 7th no-hitters with them. He was still throwing pitches clocked in the upper 90s, with an occasional one that went over 100 mph until the day he retired. In his later years, he also developed a wicked change-up slider that was damn near unhittable. But the real coup for the Rangers was Ryan’s public relations value. As the saying goes, he “put fannies in the seats.” Not only was he setting records that will probably never be broken because of pitch counts and the new relief-pitching system, he was such a gentleman and so well-liked that people would fill the stadium for a chance to see him pitch.

Allene, Tommy and I continued to attend an Astros game every now and then. As I stated before, you always stick with your team, but without Ryan, somehow it just wasn’t the same. Around this time, George Strait began doing a concert once a year in Arlington Stadium after a Rangers game. In his job as tour manager, Tommy got to know a lot of the personnel in the Rangers organization from coordinating all the details with them for the concerts. Tommy knew a lot of these people on a first-name basis, including the clubhouse manager and many of the players. So anytime he wanted to attend a game, he could call someone in the front office and get tickets.

Late in the season of the year Nolan Ryan said would be his last, Tommy called me up and said, “Hey, Clay, Nolan Ryan is pitching tonight. You want to go to the game? This might be the last time we get to see him pitch.” I answered with no hesitation, “Hell yes! Let’s do it!” He said, “Okay, meet me at my house in one hour.” It took me twenty minutes to get from our house in New Braunfels to Tommy’s place in San Marcos, where we got in Tommy’s car, hit the IH-35 onramp heading north to Ft. Worth. We made it to the stadium, went to the will-call window and picked up our tickets, walked in and found our seats. They were good seats, right down on the field between home plate and first base … a bird’s eye view to see Ryan. The players were warming up as it was still early. A vendor came by and we both got a hot dog and right about then, the announcer came on the P.A. system and said that Nolan Ryan had been scratched from the line-up due to a muscle strain he got in the warm-ups. We both looked at each other and at the same time screamed, “NO WAY!” Boy, were we bummed out. When the next vendor came by I bought the biggest beer he had to drown my sorrow. Well, we were there, so we decided to just enjoy it. The Rangers did end up winning the game and all’s well that ends well, so Tommy said, “Hey Slick, you wanna go down to the clubhouse? Maybe we can talk to some of the players …” I said, “Sure, let’s go.” We made our way down below the stadium and the security guard at the clubhouse door recognized Tommy right off and said, “Howdy, Mr. Foote. Good to see you again, y’all go right on in.” Upon entering, it was like old home week. Everyone was glad to see Tommy and after handshakes, back slaps and introductions of me all around, someone stuck a couple of beers in our hands. Ryan wasn’t there with all the guys so I was thinking since he didn’t pitch, maybe he already went home. But lo and behold, a few minutes later, some guy walked out of the showers buck naked, drying himself off with a big fluffy white towel and all at once I realized it was Nolan Ryan. At the same time he glanced at us and seeing Tommy, wrapped the towel around his waist and walked over. He gave Tommy a hug and said, “Great to see you, manI I didn’t know you were here tonight.” Tommy said, “This is my friend Clay Blaker.” And Ryan said, “Clay Blaker! I’ve got one of your cassettes and we play your music all the time in the clubhouse. My favorite is ‘Green Snakes on the Ceiling.’ It’s really good to meet you.” I was flabbergasted but managed to say, “Nice to meet you too and thanks for the kind words.” We visited a while longer until Tommy finally said, “Slick we got a long drive, we’d better hit the road.” On the drive back to San Marcos, we were both on Cloud 9, and I couldn’t thank Tommy enough for giving me the opportunity to meet my all-time favorite player in baseball. And we did get a good laugh when I reminded him that no one would ever believe me in a million years that on the night I got to meet my hero Nolan Ryan, at my first glimpse of him he was stark naked. Man, what a night!

After Ryan retired as a player he continued to stay involved with baseball in various capacities. All the while, Allene and I and Tommy Foote continued to support the Astros. In late ’96, I got a call from Tommy, telling me that Ryan’s business manager had called him saying they wanted to book our band for Ryan’s 50th birthday party. The deal went down and on January 31, 1997, Tracy Byrd, Neil McCoy and I, with our bands, played a private party at Gruene Hall, Texas’s oldest dancehall.

Nolan and his wife Ruth (by the way, on June 25th of this year, 2017, they celebrated their 50th anniversary) were on the dancefloor most of the night, along with everybody else. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.

After the show, Ryan gave Neil, Tracy and me Rangers jerseys with our last names on the back and also photos and baseball cards that he had autographed. Once again, I can’t thank Tommy Foote enough for being instrumental in having us be a part of that incredible night.

Around this time, Nolan Ryan and his son Reid bought a minor league team in Mississippi and brought it to Round Rock, outside of Austin. The team was called the Round Rock Express. This team played in the AAA Pacific Coast League and was affiliated with the Astros. They would have live concerts at the park after games a couple of times a month to go along with the theme of Austin’s being the “Live Music Capital of the World.” Our band got booked for one and upon arrival at the stadium, Reid came out in a golf cart to meet our bus and led us to the loading ramp at the back of the stadium. When we stepped off the bus, Reid introduced himself, and said that his dad couldn’t be there that day but said to tell us hello. There were a couple of stage hands to help us get the gear up the ramp and to help us set up. On the first load-up when we came out into the view of the field, I was immediately impressed. “Wow!” I thought. “What a beautiful stadium!” They had built a good-sized pavilion just outside the left field foul line, which took up the space where the seats ended and went to where it was even with the outfield wall. The stage faced towards home plate. In front of the stage was a dance floor area and behind that were tables and chairs and a bar and grill area in the back. Super nice! Reid was a gracious host, telling us to order anything we wanted to eat and drink after soundcheck, then to enjoy the game and kick off the music immediately afterwards, encouraging everyone to stay. That’s exactly what we did and at the end of the event we all agreed it had been a fabulous experience and that the Round Rock Express was a first-class operation.

In the next few years, big changes happened in Houston. The Oilers NFL team moved to Tennessee and became the Titans. The Astros moved into a brand new stadium downtown called Enron Field, now called Minute Maid Park. In order to get another NFL team, the league required the city of Houston to build a new football stadium with more seating capacity than the Astrodome. Sadly, the Eighth Wonder of the World, closed its doors. And the new NFL franchise the Houston Texans, moved into their new facility which is now called NRG Stadium. Big changes happened as well for Allene and me. In 2003 we sold everything we owned and moved to a small island in a small archipelago in the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of the Republic of Panama.

Then, would you believe, in 2005, the Astros were in the World Series for the first time, against the Chicago White Sox. Allene and I were beside ourselves and watched every game at the Big Bamboo, a restaurant and sports bar run by our friends Steve and Vickie Hubbard. On the night of Game 4, Bocas was in the midst of a torrential tropical downpour, which mirrored our demeanor, as the White Sox completed a sweep of all four games. Once again we said, “Well … maybe next year!”

But that didn’t happen. Year after year, it didn’t happen.

And then, in 2013, the Astros announced they would be moving to the American League. Good God Almighty. I was horrified. I’m a purist and I detest the designated hitter role. To me, it ain’t baseball if everyone doesn’t have to bat. Well, it is what it is. I had to get used to it.

Anyway, who cares now? It’s all water under the bridge. (No pun intended, Houston.) The Astros are the new World Champions. After they defeated the Yankees in the ALCS, somehow I knew in my heart that this year they would win it all. Week before last, I told my buddy Kurt Fargo as we were going to grab some lunch, that the Series would go seven games, because the teams were so evenly matched, but the Astros would prevail. I mean, it just had to be. Think about it: Both the Cubs and the Red Sox had gotten the monkeys off their backs, but that little monkey in Houston over the course of 55 years had grown into a 600-pound gorilla and he was ready to jump off. Plus, the Dodgers have won the Series several times. When you add all that to what Texas and Houston went through from Hurricane Harvey—and are still going through—there’s no way the Astros could have been denied.

I know how disappointed the Dodgers fans must be. But if they would just get hold of a dictionary and look up the word disappointed, in the parentheses they would see “Astros fans.” Just kidding, but it could be. The Dodgers have a great team and they fought hard until the end. They will be back.

While Allene and I were watching game seven, at one point, around the 6th inning, she turned to me and said, “Are you nervous?” I told her, “No I’m really not. They’ve got this.” She said, “Don’t say that, you’re gonna jinx ‘em.” I replied, “No it won’t. Really, they’ve got this.”

Thankfully, we were watching the game alone in our jungle home, which has no close neighbors, when Charlie Morton got the final batter to ground out in the bottom of the 9th.
We jumped up, embraced, twirling around, and screaming at the top of our lungs “WE WON, WE WON! THEY DID IT!!! The Astros are the World Series champions!” We looked into each other’s eyes, held on tightly and broke into tears. It’s hard to put into words the emotions we were feeling in our hearts and minds at that moment, so I won’t even try. If you have always been an Astros fan … you know.

So, call it destiny, fate, karma, divine intervention, or whatever you want. The Houston Astros are the 2017 World Series Champions. In the aftermath of everything we’ve all been through as Astros fans for the last 55 years, including the recent devastating floods, I’m reminded of an old famous poem that took place in a town called Mudville. Except this time, there is much joy in Mudville because the Mighty Casey finally came up to the plate again and this time he didn’t strike out. He knocked it out of the park.

A Grand Slam!