FEBRUARY 2, 2022 www.wintertexantimes.com 14 WINTER TEXAN TIMES Lic# TACLB00114391E 10 Year Parts and Labor Warranty Mobile Home Installations 2022 Winter Promotion A/C Replacement 2 Ton - $3,500 3 Ton - $3,800 4 Ton - $4,500 5 Ton - $4,700 Free Installation Rio Grande Valley Call 830-399-0177 Text 956-304-8110 Four Seasons RV Park’s Veterans in the spotlight RV Parks and resorts offer many amenities and activities – even racing wooden turtles on a string can be a huge hit, like at Four Seasons RV Park in Brownsville. But each and every park’s identity comes heavily from the people who live there. Four seasons has a wide range of personalities – including the dozens who not just compete, but also watch, those turtle races and all the other activities. The park also is honored to be home to military veterans such as Bob Hughes, Noel Tow and Zane Dawson. Below is a snapshot of who these people are. Bob Hughes Bob Hughes was born in Colorado, but his family moved to Oklahoma before he learned how to hit the ski slopes. Now he’s lived in Texas longer than he did in Oklahoma. But when the Red River Rivalry game takes place between Texas and Oklahoma on the football field every year, he’s still rooting for those Sooners. Hughes was drafted into the Marine Corps in 1952. He went to boot camp in San Diego before being sent to radio school for six months – not the disc jockey version of radio school, but to learn Morse Code. “It was a 16-week training course,” said Hughes, who has lived at Four Seasons since 1994, now as a permanent resident. “They taught me basic electronics and a lot of dots and dashes.” After learning code, Hughes was sent to Quantico, VA, at the Marine Air Station and then spent 11 months in Japan. After that, he went back into the private sector. “I worked for a while in a lumber yard and then worked as a roughneck on a drilling rig – doing just about anything,” he said. “I did it all but when you have to raise the drill bit and replace it, that’s the working part there.” Hughes said he used to spend a lot of time at Four Seasons playing pool and competing in tournaments, until he wasn’t able to anymore. Still, he “especially loves the weather” and, if you see him out to eat, he’ll be the one with the Mexican plate in front of him. “A little bit of everything,” he said. “It’s good.” Noel Tow Noel Tow was born in Kentucky, moved with his family to Indiana and, after the military he eventually found his way to Michigan. There, he settled down, drove trucks, and raised a family along with his wife Scarlett. They started coming to the Valley in the winters in 2005. Noel entered the First Marine Division of the military in 1943. He was 17 years old, his dad left home and he had quit school to go to work. “But the military sounded like it would pay me more money than I was making at 30 cents an hour,” he said. He spent two-and-a-half years in the military, driving trucks part time and “digging fox holes,” where he said the b i g g e s t thing was to hide. “We would dig really deep,” he said. Sometimes “we’d have caves, so we didn’t have to dig.” He left the military and d r o v e trucks and “worked at r e t i r i ng . ” He drove for a meat packer for 17 years and then for Van Camps for another 17 years, driving to all 48 states, oftentimes with Scarlett by his side. The couple had three boys and three girls, then adopted one boy and one girl, raising eight children. Noel joked that he thought at times that maybe he should have stayed in the military. “With a bunch of kids, I thought maybe I should have waited and retired from the military,” he joked. “But it was a bunch of very good memories.” A huge NASCAR fan, especially of Dale Earnhardt, Tow said he liked the way “The Intimidator” would go about doing his work on the track. It’s similar to what he was taught in the military. “The military teaches you how to work with people and how to take orders,” he said. “Somebody tells you to do something, you do it and you don’t say anything. My boss once said that one of the trucks were turned over and he needed some help. I asked him if he was paying me like always and he said yeah. “I said, ‘I’ll do whatever as long as you’re paying me’.”
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