My parents built a lake house on the grassy shoreline of a man-made body of water in a small town near our home in Texas. The town—a four-thousand-person community under the thumb of chicken magnate Bo Pilgrim, who owned the bank, the schools, the newspaper, and a monstrous home in the middle that, according to Last Week Tonight on HBO, had a golden bathroom with a nude painting of himself hanging above the toilet. The high school’s mascot was even the pilgrims before changing to the pirates, which my brother David would contend are the same.

The lake house—named O’Buoy after an extensive voting process where my pick, The House that Ailing Gallbladders Built, lost in the first round—was complete with shiplap walls and garish water-themed fare. There was a painting of a bloated fish breaching the waves. A wooden bear holding a sign reading HERE LIVES AN OLD BEAR WITH HIS HONEY, and another with WE’RE ON LAKE TIME NOW! My favorite is the wall of family pictures where Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin make an appearance next to my wedding photo.

I don’t know much about Bo Pilgrim besides his silhouette around town with a flat-brimmed quaker hat. There are also multiple statues: him standing triumphantly over the downtown square, him gazing out over the river, and him sitting on a park bench, ready to lend an ear. I’ve heard there’s one of him holding a chicken, too. He was also a significant donor to Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential run. So old Bo might’ve saved us from quite a bit with a little more chicken scratch on checkbooks. 

The lake—dug up and designed by Titus County Fresh Water Supply District President Bob Sandlin during his first and only term—was filled so hastily that the trees it covered hadn’t the time to topple over. Instead, they remained upright, creating a network of large nests for bass and crappie to nuzzle into branches like mockingbirds flying through the water. Fishermen loiter over, skimming the top with their quiet troller motors and embracing the shade of the interstate that cuts the lake in two. The snags of the treetops spring out of the water, cutting through an otherwise serene existence and making it a skier’s obstacle course, the old ruins of the east Texas forest looming underneath. The lake bends around for a few miles until it seeps into a decaying tire refinery, Bob Sandlin’s primary purpose for building the reservoir and the reason he was axed after one year. He named the lake, Lake Bob Sandlin. Not Robert Sandlin Lake, not Sandlin Lake, but Lake Bob Sandlin. Somehow both identifying and crass. 

The lake’s rocky waters bounce off the concrete storm wall on the peninsula’s eastern side near my parents’ house. The lots belong to Dallas runoffs and other east Texas residents that have likely miscalculated their proximity to the more inviting colony of Ozark lakes just an hour or two north.

My parents, their lot just to the right of the peninsula’s peak, have run off more than a few suitors for the tip’s plot, attempting to keep their view of the interstate intact. 

A sprawling compound rests against four wooden boat docks along the lake’s western side. A helipad and a water-plane runway of buoys bobbing in the wake of a passing jet ski encircle the perimeter. It’s the Pilgrim lake house. You can see five or six different structures from your pontoon boat, including a tennis court and a great, grand American flag waving every morning. There’s a firework show each Independence Day, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Day. 

One of the last times I went, on David’s fortieth birthday, we went to see the Pilgrim’s fireworks show. Bo, dead and gone, left his family to run it, or maybe some Dallas folk who bought the property. So, we sat in my dad’s pontoon with my brother’s tennis partner, Jeremiah, and his boyfriend, Coleman. Jeremiah, also creeping up on forty, performed a snippet of his old high school baton twirling routine to “God Bless America” while mortar shells and bottle rockets exploded behind. My dad fiddled with the radio, trying to get his new favorite song, “Gin and Juice” (not the Snoop Dogg version but The Gourds country variety), to play while chatting with Coleman. 

“You want to go on the innertube tomorrow, huh, Coleman?”

“Yeah… I haven’t been on one in years.”

“You ever had a water enema before?” my dad asked, laughing.

“Don’t ask,” Coleman said, a light flickering in front of his face signaling a drag on some kind of vape pen, “what you don’t wanna know.”

My dad bent over laughing, shaking his head as a red, white, and blue shell burst over the boat. 

Bob and Bo, somewhere in the dirt nearby, might’ve loved this scene on their water seconds before their explosive American holiday party, but the checks to Jeb Bush and the smoking tire refinery make me think otherwise. Still, east Texas can’t help but change eventually. 

C.E. O’Banion is a writer, husband, and father of two living in Baton Rouge, LA. His work can be found in The Southern Review, The Hyacinth Review, Dead Mule, and more. His debut novel, Chinese New Year, came out via TBP Press in March of 2023. O’Banion is a graduate of LSU and USC’s creative writing programs. His writing usually focuses on family, friends, his hometown, and chain Mexican restaurants. You can find more of his work and connect on his website: www.ceobanion.com