I took a drive along Seawall Boulevard today. The weather was mild, balmy in fact, but the sky was overcast and dark, even though it was early afternoon, the air moist and thick, white caps pounding the beach. I love this kind of weather.
The crumbling hulk of the Flagship Hotel, a ghostly ship, a spectre-bark!
And as I drove along through the fog, lulled into a kind of dream, the old Flagship Hotel slowly materialized out of the heavy mist like a ghostly apparition and in my mind morphed into a Coleridge lyric:
The sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper o’er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.
From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Or here’s another excellent verse, from a copy of the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads, in which Coleridge added this stanza—one that never appeared in any of the ballad’s printings—in the margin next to the stanza above:
This ship it was a plankless thing,
—A bare Anatomy!
A plankless Spectre—and it mov’d
Like a being of the Sea!
Such were the musings that came to mind today, as I drove along the Coleridge coast, shrouded as it was in a poetic mist.
But back to dull reality and the disintegrating pile that is the Flagship Hotel, Galveston’s ever-present spectre-bark (although not remotely poetic), continuing reminder of the devastation that was Hurricane Ike, and gigantic waste of a premier location.
Let the work begin!
Well, I was very disappointed to learn recently that the hotel is apparently not going away after all, as I had fervently hoped. Decisions are made, but decisions are made to be changed, so the latest word is that the Flagship will remain and become, after a major overhaul at least, the anchor (aweigh!) of the new (old) historic (sort of) so-called Galveston Pleasure Pier.
Hrmpf! We shall see (right eye squinting, toe tapping the ground).
Oh, well. I’m looking forward to the rides anyway.
So no more comments from me on this undertaking, at least not until some defining progress is made. Today I observed a bunch of red and white roadway barriers, a concrete truck, and five or so construction workers busily rebuilding the old access ramp to the pier, as well as one very large crane doing I’m not sure what (but which, let me point out, should have been swinging a huge iron ball at that ugly Flagging Ship!). It’s a start, I guess.
Stay tuned. I intend to.
