I’ve discovered a better one
August 19, 2010 (Thursday)
Key Allegro Island Estates is built on Frandolig Island in Rockport. A fellow once told me that the island was offered to him for $600, and he turned it down. The developers created an island of homes and canals. I have no idea how valuable the development is today. $Billions? Certainly more than $600.
Almost everyone has a story about “the big one that got away,” and the stories are not just about fish. I frequently read about comic books that are very valuable. I myself am almost certain that I once owned a copy of a comic book that sold recently for $1,500,000. Or maybe the one I had would sell today for “only” $100,000. Whatever. I bought it at a drug store at the corner of Noble and Hardy Streets in Houston in 1941 for ten cents. That’s my story about the one that got away. What’s yours?
Jesus told us about an even sadder situation. He asked, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26 NIV). Talk about letting something valuable slip through your fingers! The poem says it like this: “To lose your wealth is much; to lose your health is more. To lose your soul is such a loss that nothing can restore!” Your soul is priceless. Don’t lose it. Invest it with the Lord. He pays great dividends.
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Historical marker for Frandolig Island on Bayshore Drive in Key Allegro:
“Dubbed ‘Nine Mile Point’ by early settlers, this island was first used commercially by the Cushman Meat Packing Company in the late 1860s. Austrian Franz Joseph Frandolig, a horseman who had delivered cattle to Cushman & Co., homesteaded property at this site when the company vacated the land in 1878. Frandolig and his family established a large fig orchard. They sold the fruits and vegetables in Rockport and Fulton. Frandolig also kept a vineyard, where he produced and sold wine by the barrel, and built a salt works. The Frandolig family sold the property between 1901 and 1903. The severe hurricane of 1919 returned the island to its natural and uninhabited state. In 1958 the local navigation district began to offer it for development.”