Vaseline-Colored Breakers

Ben Montgomery: Melissa Parrot drains her Coors Light, slips out of her T-shirt and hops off the tailgate of her Texas Edition Ford F-150. The pickup gets 20 miles per gallon of gas, which costs $3.96 at Exxon, which gets petroleum from the earth beneath the brown saltwater she's about to step into. "You're going to get in?" asks her friend. "Why not?" Melissa says. "Look at it," he says. "We drove all the way down here," she says. They live north of Houston, 70 miles away. "Might as well get in." Melissa walks down Galveston's East Beach, where the signs say "Drinking Is Legal," past cigarette butts and beer bottles, toward breakers the color of Vaseline and a horizon dotted by oil rigs,…