Our local Seadrfit churches will host our final Bay Praise of 2021 on Saturday September 25 at 6:00 p.m. at the Bayfront pavilion. We will have a meal provided by a local church, music from different churches, and a brief message from one of our local pastors.

As we near the end of the year, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas will have different community events available in town, and thus the Bay Praise events will take a break. Due to likely cold weather in January and February, we will begin Bay Praise events again next March.

We hope you can join us for our final gathering this year however, as we come together as a community to offer our worship and praise to the Lord, fellowship together and enjoy a great meal. Bring your favorite outdoor chair if your able.

-Cody Logan

The POC Service Club is busily preparing for its huge “Fall Mega Garage Sale” on Saturday, October 2, 2021 from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. There will be something for everyone, so please plan to join us!! All proceeds from our Garage Sales go to the beautification, improvement, and enhancement of the POC Community, and to support the many charitable and civic events of the POC Community!!!

The Club continues to accept your generous donations of gently used household, decorative, and kitchen items; small appliances; clothing; shoes; toys; children’s and baby items; furniture; etc. We cannot accept computers, electronics, or mattresses. For your convenience, we now have a “Donation Drop Box” located at the front of our new Donation Center. To donate items, or if you are dropping off items, please notify any of the following ladies so that we can go out and secure your donations:

Alane Haardt- 281-416-6028
Diane Cooley- 903-467-6335
Nancy Ladshaw-830-832-0510
Marie Hawes- 361-920-2322

The Club’s October meetings will be held on Thursday, October 7 and October 21, 2021 at 10:00 AM at the POC Community Center. We work hard, but have a lot of fun, and welcome all service-minded ladies who are interested in joining us!

-Alane Haardt

Clint and Corky

The End of Island Summer Is Near

Salutations from the island! I hope that all of you are doing well, and are as happy as I am to see the end in sight for this hot and humid weather. Yay!!

The first day of Fall, Sept. 22, cannot get here quickly enough for me. Not having air conditioning out here on the island, or even in my truck in town, the summer days can get pretty dang hot and miserable. I would like to think that after all of these years out here, I would be acclimated to the dreadfully hot and high humidity summers. . . have I survived them?, yes I have. . . have I enjoyed it?, umm, NO! But such is island life. I seem to recall an old saying, “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”. Well I sure as heck hope so.

As I sit here writing this on Sept. 10, typing away every single letter with my right index finger on my IPhone, the weather forecast shows some heavy rain coming in the next few days, and lasting throughout the week. Even though the island received 41” of rain from the end of April until July, a monsoon it seemed at the time, the island is once again dry and could use at least several inches. The one positive though to the dry conditions, and no standing water, is that the demon mosquitoes have been at the minimum the last few months. I’ll still feel a few at dusk and dawn, apparently their favorite times to go on their blood-sucking endeavors, but they haven’t been terrible. Unfortunately, this forecasted rain next week might put an unwelcome change to that.

The hummingbirds must have been sending out scouts last week, I saw one flying around the cabin looking for a feeder. I quickly cleaned one of mine and filled it with sugar water, (a 1/4 cup of sugar mixed with 1 cup of water), and hung it up, and within a few minutes the scout was back and feeding. I’m hoping for a lot of Fall hummers visiting the island, and I’ll hang up a second feeder when I begin seeing more than a few of them. Every Spring and Fall I’ll be blessed with 4-5 of the tiny fliers finding my feeders on their trek back and forth for the season. I’ve had as many as 10-12 a few years fighting over the sugar nectar. I enjoy sitting on the porch and watching them in the cool early mornings and late evenings.

The grass in my island yard is finally starting to come back, and showing its green color. It’s actually more weeds than grass, but I don’t care, it is better than a brown dead yard. Last year during the summer storm season my yard was completely covered in salt water on three separate occasions from the surges, eventually killing my St. Augustine grass. So I’m happy to see at least some type of greenery returning. And the chickens, ducks and guineas enjoy it as well.

Well that’s it from the island for now. Everyone take care and have a most wonderful day.

Diane Cooley, Amy Austin, and Kristi Linscomb with donations for POC’s “Hurricane Ida Relief”.

Neighbors helping Neighbors!! The POC Community Service Club recently purchased $500.00 of items at POC’s Dollar General, and donated them to POC’s “Hurricane Ida Relief” effort. Club Member, Diane Cooley, delivered the items to Amy Austin and Kristy Linscomb, of The Inn At Clark’s, the designated collection center for POC.

Donations poured in from all over the POC Community, and thousands of much needed items were delivered to the people in and around Amite, Louisiana, an area that was recently ravaged by Hurricane Ida. Way to go POC- home of some of the greatest and most caring, compassionate, and generous people on Earth!!

It is hard to believe that the POC Farmers Market celebrated its one-year anniversary back in August. This event started out in August 2020 in Josie’s parking lot with approximately 20 vendors. The interest and traffic were more than we anticipated, so we moved to the Kingfisher Beach Pavilion a couple of months later. The market continues to grow, and we see new vendors each month.

If you are in town the second Saturday of the month, please come and shop from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. for homegrown and homemade products. It is never too early to get those Christmas presents.
Please enjoy the recently cleaned pavilion at Kingfisher Beach. Darla Parker and Sue Glover, both Port O’Connor Chamber board members, spent a couple hours power washing the concrete and picnic tables. It looks so nice and welcoming for our residents and visitors.

The Chamber will be working on several upcoming events this fall, including Trunk or Treat in October, a Poker Run in November and the Toy Run and Boat Parade in December. We will keep everyone posted about these events as well as other things going on so remember to refer to our webpage www.portoconnorchamber.com.