Galveston before the build, build, build

At 77, Robert Cantu has watched Galveston grow and change. But when he talks about the Island he grew up on, he remembers something harder to see today: neighbors looking out for one another and people willing to reach back and help somebody get ahead. Here’s his story:

"I started working when I was a kid. Back then, somebody in your family or somebody from the neighborhood would hear you needed a job and say, 'Come on, I got something for you.' That’s how it was. People looked out for each other.

After high school, I went to work in the cotton warehouses. I stayed in that work about 30 years. I started out doing labor, then worked as a lineman and clerk and eventually ran a warehouse.

That was hard work. I’m talking about being inside a warehouse when it felt like 120 degrees. You sweated, lifted and kept moving. Nobody was standing around asking whether you felt like working that day. You did your job.

Some people saw more in me than I saw in myself. They showed me the work and kept telling me I could handle it. At first, I didn’t want all that responsibility. I was comfortable being one of the labor guys. But they kept pushing me toward that warehouse job, and finally I took it over.

That’s what community looked like. You didn’t always have to ask. Somebody saw you trying and reached back to pull you forward.

People come to Galveston and see the beach, The Strand and the shops. That’s the tourist stuff. The real Galveston has always been the people — the familiar faces and folks helping each other when somebody was down.

It ain’t quite the same now. A lot of new people come here wanting to change things instead of understanding what made Galveston special in the first place. More developments keep going up, especially out west. They clear the land and build, build, build. But what happens to the birds, the foxes and all the other animals living out there?

Where are they supposed to go?

Young people are coming up in a different world now. A lot of them want everything right now. But they don’t see the years that came before it — the heat, the lifting, the long days and starting at the bottom.

You gotta to learn from the people who came before you. Listen. Get up and do something. You don’t walk into a place and start at the top. You take the work they give you, learn it and keep moving. That’s how we did it."

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