Austin to Houston, via San Antonio; the morning to the very late evening, with a sidetrip to the 19th century. 3/9/05
My Grand Texas Plan involved lots of shopping in interesting places for authentic Texan curios, but as it turned out this was an aspiration I was alone in. As a concession, Wednesday morning we stopped by BookPeople, basically because it was what you get when you Google for "austin bookstores."
I was hoping to find copies of hard to find Bruce Sterling novels. I mean, this is Austin, right? Crazy go nuts hip cyberaware Austin ought to have old copies of Involution Ocean and The Artificial Kid just lying around. But no. I did find a paperback copy of Heavy Weather, which may not be hard to find in an absolute sense, but isn't stocked in Yakima. I also picked up a discounted copy of Cory Doctorow's Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom. I was vaguely disappointed about the whole sidetrip, though there were plenty of other things I liked and might have bought. My uncle, commenting on the premise of Heavy Weather as laid out on the back cover, asked "You don't actually believe this stuff, do you?" Note that, while the book is intrinsically about serious climate change, the copy on the back simply describes the characters as storm chasers in pursuit of an incredibly powerful tornado; an act and an event to which I was not aware any great political significance was attached. But here we see that my hypersensitivity to any issue that could possibly be interpreted in a political manner did not develop in a vaccum.
After this we drove and drove and drove, heading south, through country ever so slightly jumbled, such that there were a few spots from which one could look down on other spots. (That were not skyscrapers or water towers, that is.)
My notes on this day are all very perfunctory, because once again I left my notebook in the car and just wandered around. When we arrive in San Antonio we drive straight through it once, eyes peeled for signs that we expect to see saying "HEY TOURISTS: THIS WAY TO HISTORICALLY THEMED SPENDERY." Or at least I think we expect to see them. A theme of this trip is that Texan roadside signage leaves something to be desired compared to its Washingtonian counterpart, but all through the trip I am skeptical about this. Are there really more signs saying, for instance, "Space Needle This Way -->" in Washington, or is it just that we are familiar with the landscape and know which way to go? I claim that the Alamo is probably on the dividing line between North Alamo Road and South Alamo Road (or was it Plaza?), but I am told, reasonably, that this need not necessarily be the case.
We find out later from a San Antonio police officer that it is, though.
So, the Alamo. I have never seen a movie about the Alamo, though I watched my share of Davy Crockett's Disney TV show as a kid. (In reruns, of course.) So my preconceptions about what it was, and where, were far less solid than my father and uncle's. The Alamo itself has a relationship to the city much like the relationship a grain of sand has to an oyster. The city has encased the site in layers of high-rise hotels, trendy restaurants, and, in general, city-type stuff. My relatives expect, at least emotionally, if not in reality, to see a isolated cluster of buildings, alone in the dusty plain.
We park, we wander around. The centerpiece of the Alamo site is a crowded museum/gift shop. Like, Bowie knives originally sold by a Bowie, behind which is an array of novelty bicycle license plates with names on them. (None of which are Simon.) There is a lot of merchandise. Alamo branded backscratchers. Alamo DVDs. (Remember that last Alamo movie? The Alamo does.) But the Alamo receives no state or federal money, we're told. Or at least I seem to remember being told. Anyway, it is very commercial inside this particular building, no moral judgment implied.
The longhouse, which is one of the original buildings, is now given over entirely, on the inside, to museum displays. Old rifles and uniforms, Santa Anna's travel cot, captured later on in the war. A theater showing a History Channel show about the Alamo. I walked around the outside of this upon first arriving, running my hand along the wall. There are as many bumps and chunks missing as you would expect for a two hundred and some year old structure. But are any of these from the battle, I wonder? Probably not. The Alamo was used by the Spanish after they captured it, and the U.S. military for several decades afterward. (Well, after Texas joined the United States, of course.) So it didn't just sit here untouched afterwards.
Inside the church are a few more artifacts, though the space is mostly empty, aside from the people in it. A sign outside asks gentlemen to remove their hats. (The sign was put up in 1913, when gentlemen actually wore hats.) The walls are thick and the few windows high and narrow. The few women and children in the compound were put here. There's also a large model of the battle, one of two in the area. (The other is in the gift shop, though it is one of the displays.) I really like these models, which let me get some idea of what the area looked like in 1836.
The Alamo these days includes a pretty nice park. The only picture of me taken with my full consent features me on a bench in this park, gazing meaningful off at the church, though my eyes are presumably hidden by my dark glasses. I was trying very hard to look cool.
Here's the thing: What does all this old stuff mean? I did not feel any intimate historical attachment at the Alamo. Which is to say I tried very hard to cultivate a sense of identification with the site and the people I imagined dying in it, but, in a sense, I did not have a dog in the fight. The Texas war for independence occupies, I suppose, the same mental space that the French and Indian Wars do. It just wasn't something I had spent a lot of time thinking about, prior to visiting. I was worried that I was not "getting" the Alamo.
After some time there, we wandered down to the whole Riverwalk scene, which was pleasant enough, and had lunch. We didn't cover too much of it, though, and really, aside from a nice walk through a trendy commercial district, what did we (as a group) miss. We weren't likely to wander into a club or a tavern, after all, to mingle with the locals. Though I suppose in this case the locals were tourists as well. Instead we rode a bus (dressed to look like a trolley) down to the old Spanish governor's mansion, and looked at more interesting old things, before riding back to the car.
And on to Houston.
Here's the deal with Houston that night: There was some Intense Discussion about where to get a hotel, which led to more wandering around than was necessary. I had been looking forward to capping my day with some nice vegetative TV watching, but this was not possible, since the show I wanted to watch was long over by the time we stopped.
I was not feeling particularly enthusiastic about the trip at this point. On the bright side, breakfast the next morning was OK.
The official Alamo website, if you're interested.
My Grand Texas Plan involved lots of shopping in interesting places for authentic Texan curios, but as it turned out this was an aspiration I was alone in. As a concession, Wednesday morning we stopped by BookPeople, basically because it was what you get when you Google for "austin bookstores."
I was hoping to find copies of hard to find Bruce Sterling novels. I mean, this is Austin, right? Crazy go nuts hip cyberaware Austin ought to have old copies of Involution Ocean and The Artificial Kid just lying around. But no. I did find a paperback copy of Heavy Weather, which may not be hard to find in an absolute sense, but isn't stocked in Yakima. I also picked up a discounted copy of Cory Doctorow's Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom. I was vaguely disappointed about the whole sidetrip, though there were plenty of other things I liked and might have bought. My uncle, commenting on the premise of Heavy Weather as laid out on the back cover, asked "You don't actually believe this stuff, do you?" Note that, while the book is intrinsically about serious climate change, the copy on the back simply describes the characters as storm chasers in pursuit of an incredibly powerful tornado; an act and an event to which I was not aware any great political significance was attached. But here we see that my hypersensitivity to any issue that could possibly be interpreted in a political manner did not develop in a vaccum.
After this we drove and drove and drove, heading south, through country ever so slightly jumbled, such that there were a few spots from which one could look down on other spots. (That were not skyscrapers or water towers, that is.)
My notes on this day are all very perfunctory, because once again I left my notebook in the car and just wandered around. When we arrive in San Antonio we drive straight through it once, eyes peeled for signs that we expect to see saying "HEY TOURISTS: THIS WAY TO HISTORICALLY THEMED SPENDERY." Or at least I think we expect to see them. A theme of this trip is that Texan roadside signage leaves something to be desired compared to its Washingtonian counterpart, but all through the trip I am skeptical about this. Are there really more signs saying, for instance, "Space Needle This Way -->" in Washington, or is it just that we are familiar with the landscape and know which way to go? I claim that the Alamo is probably on the dividing line between North Alamo Road and South Alamo Road (or was it Plaza?), but I am told, reasonably, that this need not necessarily be the case.
We find out later from a San Antonio police officer that it is, though.
So, the Alamo. I have never seen a movie about the Alamo, though I watched my share of Davy Crockett's Disney TV show as a kid. (In reruns, of course.) So my preconceptions about what it was, and where, were far less solid than my father and uncle's. The Alamo itself has a relationship to the city much like the relationship a grain of sand has to an oyster. The city has encased the site in layers of high-rise hotels, trendy restaurants, and, in general, city-type stuff. My relatives expect, at least emotionally, if not in reality, to see a isolated cluster of buildings, alone in the dusty plain.
We park, we wander around. The centerpiece of the Alamo site is a crowded museum/gift shop. Like, Bowie knives originally sold by a Bowie, behind which is an array of novelty bicycle license plates with names on them. (None of which are Simon.) There is a lot of merchandise. Alamo branded backscratchers. Alamo DVDs. (Remember that last Alamo movie? The Alamo does.) But the Alamo receives no state or federal money, we're told. Or at least I seem to remember being told. Anyway, it is very commercial inside this particular building, no moral judgment implied.
The longhouse, which is one of the original buildings, is now given over entirely, on the inside, to museum displays. Old rifles and uniforms, Santa Anna's travel cot, captured later on in the war. A theater showing a History Channel show about the Alamo. I walked around the outside of this upon first arriving, running my hand along the wall. There are as many bumps and chunks missing as you would expect for a two hundred and some year old structure. But are any of these from the battle, I wonder? Probably not. The Alamo was used by the Spanish after they captured it, and the U.S. military for several decades afterward. (Well, after Texas joined the United States, of course.) So it didn't just sit here untouched afterwards.
Inside the church are a few more artifacts, though the space is mostly empty, aside from the people in it. A sign outside asks gentlemen to remove their hats. (The sign was put up in 1913, when gentlemen actually wore hats.) The walls are thick and the few windows high and narrow. The few women and children in the compound were put here. There's also a large model of the battle, one of two in the area. (The other is in the gift shop, though it is one of the displays.) I really like these models, which let me get some idea of what the area looked like in 1836.
The Alamo these days includes a pretty nice park. The only picture of me taken with my full consent features me on a bench in this park, gazing meaningful off at the church, though my eyes are presumably hidden by my dark glasses. I was trying very hard to look cool.
Here's the thing: What does all this old stuff mean? I did not feel any intimate historical attachment at the Alamo. Which is to say I tried very hard to cultivate a sense of identification with the site and the people I imagined dying in it, but, in a sense, I did not have a dog in the fight. The Texas war for independence occupies, I suppose, the same mental space that the French and Indian Wars do. It just wasn't something I had spent a lot of time thinking about, prior to visiting. I was worried that I was not "getting" the Alamo.
After some time there, we wandered down to the whole Riverwalk scene, which was pleasant enough, and had lunch. We didn't cover too much of it, though, and really, aside from a nice walk through a trendy commercial district, what did we (as a group) miss. We weren't likely to wander into a club or a tavern, after all, to mingle with the locals. Though I suppose in this case the locals were tourists as well. Instead we rode a bus (dressed to look like a trolley) down to the old Spanish governor's mansion, and looked at more interesting old things, before riding back to the car.
And on to Houston.
Here's the deal with Houston that night: There was some Intense Discussion about where to get a hotel, which led to more wandering around than was necessary. I had been looking forward to capping my day with some nice vegetative TV watching, but this was not possible, since the show I wanted to watch was long over by the time we stopped.
I was not feeling particularly enthusiastic about the trip at this point. On the bright side, breakfast the next morning was OK.
The official Alamo website, if you're interested.
