10/31/2025
Bring back The Porch! Such a magical place, I remember it well. If anyone is interested in doing something like that on the property, let us know.
The Porch in Flour Bluff was a Popular Gathering Place
By Bobbie Kimbrell
The once popular Porch bar in Flour Bluff does not exist because it was demolished years ago. The Porch started off as a bait stand and bar which was located on the water’s edge of the Laguna Madre just east of where Yorktown Boulevard ends at Laguna Shores Road and was called Rex Allen’s Place.
Rex rented skiffs for sport fishing and kept most of the skiffs on dry land and some staked out in the edge of the shallow water on cedar stakes. Old timers from the Bluff said that Rex had a blind white horse that he used to pull the skiffs into the water but quit using the horse because of public sympathy for the blind horse.
Rex owned about a block of land south of his place and in about 1945 or 1946 he had a U-shaped channel dug into the property, then moved the building at the base of the U a little off Laguna Shores Road and also put in a boat ramp for launching outboard boats. Rex rented out docking space in the channel to commercial fishing motorboats, most of which were 30 to 40 feet long tunnel stern. Short cedar posts were driving into the bank of the channel for the motorboats to tie up to, later on short piers were built and rented to sports fishermen. After the building was moved a porch was added and the building pretty much became a bar and the porch had tables and chairs where you could sit and drink your beer or soda water. At that time in history a lot of young neighbor kids bought soda water and candy and played on the porch. The porch offered a beautiful scenic view of the Laguna Madre. You could see the mullet jumping out of the water and a constant flock of seagulls flying in the air with their loud squawks and screeches. You could also see the boat traffic and tug boats pulling barges up and down the Lagoon with Padre Island in the background. After many years Rex Allen retired and rented out the property to quite a few different people later on. After Rex died his son, living in New York, rented out the property for about the same price as a two-bedroom house rented for at that time and I think that is when everybody started calling it the Porch instead of Rex’s Place. The Porch had a wood-burning cast-iron stove for heating in the wintertime and eventually a pool table and piano and a juke box was added.
The floor of the bar and porch were uneven and tilted toward the water side and was noticeable as you walked in. The pool table had to be jacked up on one end to make it level. From time to time small two or three member bands would play music on weekends.
People who knew how to play the piano would often play when they came in to have a couple of beers. One piano player in particular was a 25-year retiree from NAS Civil Service named Richard Collier. He pounded the keys like did Jerry Lee Lewis of the Elvis days. At one time the Porch was rented by a couple from the island of Trinidad. The wife also worked at the Tuloso Midway school.
A commercial fisherman, Richard Barta and his wife Jenny rented the Porch for a while. Richard did quite a bit of barbequing on the weekends and Jenny had a moon game going on most of the day and night. A lot of commercial fishermen made the Porch their favorite watering hole and a lot of fishermen kept their boats in the channel. After a while Jerry Barta and his wife took over the Porch and added a lot of improvements. They put in an ice cooler for storing bars of ice, gasoline and live bait tanks near the boat ramp. Jerry usually had a barbeque on Saturday night which was served a little before closing time. Jerry had a lot of friends and Bohemian relatives came by the Porch to visit and drink a few beers and go fishing and dancing. Jerry’s son-in-law won the first Texas Million-dollar lottery jackpot in the city. After winning he kept his job and took over for Jerry when Jerry wanted some time off. After Jerry retired his brother, Big Ramond Baros. and his wife took over the Porch and he and his wife did some commercial fishing also. I think it was Ramond who put in a little room on the Porch for pinball machines and added a room on the other side for dancing. Ramon previously was a fuel tank truck operator which might have been with Osage Oil Company near Upriver Road. Raymond’s two daughters helped him run the Porch at times. I forgot to mention earlier that Rex Allen also built two hurricane storm shelters. One was about a half mile or southwest of the Porch, amid the scrub oak trees about 10 feet from the King Ranch fence.
It was built of heavy timbers that might have come from when the 1933 hurricane washed away the Don Patricio Causeway between Flour bluff and Padre Island. The other shelter was built on stilts directly behind the Porch using conventional lumber materials. From time to time, it was used by the locals for poker games. The poker games helped sell a lot of beer. Eventually a new renter presumably bought the property and put in RV rental units which helped the business greatly and it’s assumed that is why they closed the Porch and demolished it. The Porch was so popular somebody put in a makeshift Porch on the site and the locals would bring iced down beer for their get-togethers and reminisce about the old days and gaze across the Lagoon as they had done for years. As the walls of the Porch came tumbling down it ended an era in the history of Flour Bluff.
