Bess at home in his kitchen, late 1940s

y memories of Forrest Bess go back to when I was four to five years old in the late forties. My parents, Jack (step-dad) and Naomi (mother) Akridge, had a cabin in Chinquapin (total population of two, Forrest being one of the two), right on the Intercoastal Canal near Forrest's home. Chinquapin lies between Sargent and Matagorda across the canal from East Matagorda Bay. My parents fished and shrimped there frequently and from day one bought their bait from Forrest. This is how they met in the first place. From then on, their friendship grew until Forrest passed away.

We lived in Pasadena, Texas where my step-dad owned a plumbing business. As the friendship grew, Forrest occasionally would visit us at our home. He would sit on the floor with my sister and me and play jacks with us. He always seemed to think a lot of us kids. He liked to discuss his visions and dreams with my family. He once even painted a canvas of a dream that I had discussed with him. However, I never saw it as he sold it soon after it was finished.

Forrest lived alone before and after his parents died and would get very lonely and drank quite a lot, but always had a good sense of humor and was always pleasant to be around. After his dad died, he frequently visited his mother in Bay City until she died. He lived with her for a short time, but I am not familiar with that part of his life. He was seldom seen when he wasn't smoking his pipe. He was always broke and Mom and Dad would loan him money to help out. Forrest would paint a canvas for them now and then and always said he would buy them back some day, however, he never did. He always told my folks not to get rid of the paintings because when he got famous, they would be worth a lot of money. He said then that he knew it would not be in his lifetime. "That's just the way it is with 'great' artists," he'd say.

Bess's home in Chinquapin

I remember him at his bait camp and all the raccoons that would come up there at night. We could feed them right from our hands. Did that many, many times. There were hundreds of coons on that island. His "home" was more of a shack than a house. It was on an island and he had to motorboat back and forth across a bayou that crossed the Intercoastal in order to do business with bait purchasers or to have company or just to go to town. It had a bedroom, a paint room and a kitchen/dining room/living room (more or less all one room). There were no doors between any of the three main rooms. To get to the bathroom, more like an outhouse, he or his company had to go outside the front, and only, door and to the back of the house to get to the commode and shower. It was attached to the house but there was no inside door to get there. The almost flat roof had a wooden deck on it but rather than shingles or composition paper for roofing, there were oyster shells placed on tar for the roofing. I had never seen that before. His house was blown/washed away at least once and he rebuilt it. It may have happened more than once, but I remember only the time when hurricane Carla came through. It took my parents' cabin too, but by that time, they had sold it to someone else.

Forrest caught and sold shrimp to support his artist's lifestyle. He did sell many paintings during his life, but never made enough to support a more normal life. Occasionally, he would have someone help him with the shrimping, but I am sure he was never able to pay them enough to keep them happy. However, he seemed to be happy doing what he did, even when it was just him alone. He liked his privacy. I know he always made me feel welcome when I was there. He always fixed me up with a cane pole and some shrimp to fish in the Intercoastal for redfish. I nearly always caught fish doing that. My mother would always get some shrimp and go to the point and catch some nice flounder.

I know very little about his education except for the fact that he attended several different universities and colleges. He was a very intelligent man and I admired him for that.

My mother kept a scrapbook on him and we kept it after her death until recently. I always knew he was a strange person, but I personally never witnessed some of the negative traits that came up about him after his death. He was a good, caring person as long as I knew him and that's the way I prefer to remember him.