“I grew up in South Texas and moved here in ’87. My wife grew up in this area, right down Coleman Boulevard. Her daddy, Johnnie McGuire, did woodwork on a lot of the shrimp boats, built the doors for them. Everything in our house that’s made of wood, besides the floors, he built: table, bookshelves, bed. He pretty much did everything.
“I got started on the waterfront out here, met Wayne Magwood, and started coming out on the shrimp boat. I started king-fishing back in ’88 and started entering fishing tournaments in ’98. I have the smallest boat in the fleet, a 17-foot Mako, but we always catch fish.
“We’re out there with a limited budget for the tournaments, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s a challenge because them big boys with the corporate sponsors, they have big pockets and we have shallow pockets. So we just go out there and have a good time fishing.
“I’m the regional manager with Flexi-Van Leasing, which is a chassis leasing company, so I’m still on the waterfront.
“The water is a good place to get away from things, is what it is; fishing or just going out on the boat. Sometimes, I come down to the docks just to help Wayne unload his boat after he’s been out. We’ve taken his boat out a few times since the shrimp season ended, just to get out on the water. One day, we go out, the wind was blowing and it was cold. We see this girl waving to us on top of this overturned sailboat.
“There was a guy in the water, holding on to the bow of the boat. We went over there and I took a line, tied a loop in it, threw it to her, and she gave it to him. We got him up and he said he’d been in the water almost two hours. We got some dry clothes on him, cranked up the stove, called 911 and had an ambulance meet us at the dock.
“He left a note after he got out of the hospital, thanking us. So we called him on my cellphone. He said his body temperature had only been 83 degrees when the ambulance got him to the hospital.” —as told to Jason A. Zwiker
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