THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503040038
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
DATELINE: SAN ANTONIO LENGTH: Long : 203 lines
TEXAS MEN wear their hats when they eat in restaurants and when they're line dancin' and long-neck beer drinking. Heck, they even try to keep them on when they're riding bucking, hump-back bulls that weigh about as much as a pickup truck.
They wear those wide-brimmed, tall-crowned, 10-gallon hats almost everywhere. That's just what Texas men do, that's all. Call it cowpoke couture.
Except . . . when they pass through the heavy wooden doors of this small sandstone building deep in the heart of Texas, when they enter the cool semi-darkness of this shrine that embodies the very soul of Texas, voices drop to a whisper and booted feet shuffle nervously on the flagstone floor and the hats come off. With reverence.
This is the Alamo, and they remember.
You need to know something about Texas history to understand why this is such a meaningful experience - why a little mission church no bigger than the houses most of us live in imparts a mystique that is larger than life.
One hundred and fifty-nine years ago today, 189 battle-weary men peered over makeshift fortifications at this derelict old Spanish mission at a Mexican army perhaps 20 times their number. Mexican buglers sounded ``Deguello.'' This meant no quarter to the defenders, take no prisoners, kill 'em all.
They were an odd lot, these men, in this crumbling complex that once was the mission San Antonio de Valero.
Some were Texas colonists, who had settled in the region after Mexico had won independence from Spain in 1824. What had been a promising opportunity for settlers had turned sour. Now these Texians, as they called themselves, wanted independence themselves from the tyranny of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, a general turned dictator.
That's what the fight was all about: freedom. They had determined to give their lives for it, if necessary, and now it had come to that.
These Texians were joined by others, among them Davy Crockett and his ``Tennessee Boys'' who were mostly just spoiling for a fight. There were more than 30 others born in countries of northern Europe; 13 were from Virginia, five from North Carolina.
Probably none should have been there in the first place. Sam Houston, the Virginia-born commander of all Texian forces, had sent orders to abandon the place and blow it up, since it was clearly indefensible against Santa Anna's massed militia.
But Col. William Barret Travis refused, and his co-commander Jim Bowie, the knife-maker who was bedridden with pneumonia, supported that decision. Travis had taken his sword and drawn a line in the sand - there's a long brass rod marking the spot today in front of the Alamo - and said, ``Those prepared to give their lives in freedom's cause, come over to me.''
And this time tomorrow, March 6, 1836, the 13th day of the siege, they all would be dead from grapeshot, musket fire and bayonets, their bodies unceremoniously heaped on pyres and incinerated on Santa Anna's orders.
That is why Texans, and freedom lovers everywhere, ``Remember the Alamo!''
Many visitors seem surprised to find that the Alamo - the sandstone mission church and the surrounding buildings of the compound - is not out in the middle of some wide-open plain, but in the heart of this city of a million people.
``Is this really the place where John Wayne . . . ?''
Ah, the movies. There have been at least 18 made about the Alamo. The one to see is at the IMAX Theatre, just a few blocks away in the huge glass and steel Rivercenter Mall. It's as authentic as it gets, debunking myth and focusing on fact. The realism is amazing, the images powerful. This is the first time, in a movie, I have heard that distinctive sound made by a cannonball as it streaks through the air. That's what they heard.
Back in Alamo Plaza, I stand where those men stood when Travis drew his line in the sand and I wonder what I would have done. I'd like to think I'd have been brave.
But, looking back over my shoulder now, I'm afraid I might have said, ``With respect, Colonel, I'd like to think on this a while, and I'll be over there at the Pizza Hut . . . or Burger King or Wendy's or Uncle Hoppy's Bar-B-Q or maybe at the wax museum.''
That's the trouble with this place - 20th century America has encroached on a hallowed place to the extent that it's difficult to visualize what it was like when a few men were making history that would shape the lives of all of us.
Soon, though, archaeologists may be able to shed more light on that chilly day in March 1836. They think they've found a pre-battle era well in the plaza area. There are those who think it contains treasure.
Odd story about that:
In 1986, Maria Gomez, a famous Mexican archaeologist, curator, archivist (and, some say, mystic who was able to ``see'' long-buried artifacts), said she had read documents in her youth describing how Santa Anna had sent back wealth from the Alamo. But she was convinced that the bulk of the treasure remained at the old mission.
Although she had never been to San Antonio, she drew a crude map detailing the location of a well and a tesoro, buried treasure. Ground-penetrating radar revealed anomalies in the area she described, and excavation finally began this year.
Could this be silver, brought to the mission by Jim Bowie from the Lost San Saba Mines? Or gold? Or a treasure trove of relics from the battle?
Early on, they found an almost foot-long, rust-encrusted object that could be a bayonet tip or just an old butcher knife. One archaeologist said, ``There's a little bit of romance to it even though it looks like a spatula with chili on it.''
While I was there, they found a pig bone. The romance wanes.
It is the Alamo that draws visitors to San Antonio; it is the Paseo del Rio, the River Walk, that charms them.
Will Rogers once said that there are but four unique cities in the United States: San Antonio, San Francisco, New Orleans and Boston.
The San Antonio River, which rises from artesian springs just a few miles north of downtown, is the raison d'etre of the city. The River Walk is a large part of what makes it unique.
It almost never happened. After a severe flood in 1921, officials were ready to pave the whole thing over and call it a sewer. A few ladies with remarkable vision protested, and pointed out what could be made of the river. Then, along came a lot of WPA money during the Depression. They put in a flood-control system and went to work beautifying.
And today . . . a midtown oasis, sequestered 20 feet below street level, is this jewel: cobblestone and flagstone walks stretching along 2 1/2 miles of meandering green river, quiet and parklike in places with lush, subtropical vegetation. Elsewhere, European-style sidewalk cafes, specialty boutiques, hotels and nightclubs, telling you to come back when the moon is out and the lights are low and seductive.
Brightly colored open-air passenger barges ply the waters. Sometimes, people fall off the walkways, into the water. Not to worry, it's only 3 to 4 feet deep. There are tantalizing aromas - fajitas and Margaritas, of course, but have you tried German sausage wrapped in a tortilla or wienerschnitzel and tamales?
To keep the River Walk from getting all stinky, the city cuts off the water and cleans the whole thing the first week in January. And San Antonians, party animals that they are, have a Mud Fiesta, complete with Mud King and Queen and lots of messy events like mud wrestling.
San Antonio was the site of five of the 38 18th century Franciscan missions in Texas, classic church communities that brought Christianity to the indigenous Indians.
The Mission San Antonio de Valero was the first built, but it was never completed and eventually went secular and became a military post of sorts. Eventually, it was ``renamed'' for the town from which the Spanish cavalry troops were recruited: San Jose y Santiago del Alamo, and shortened to El Alamo.
The other four missions remain active parish churches, although the sites - along an 8-mile stretch of the San Antonio River south of the city - are administered by the National Park Service. They represent the largest collection of Spanish colonial architecture in this country. Each mission has a different interpretive theme.
At Mission San Jose, it is ``The Mission as a Social Center and as a Center for Defense.'' This ``Queen of the Texas Missions'' was arguably the most beautiful and certainly the most prosperous and best-fortified of the San Antonio missions. Much of its surrounding compound and parts of the parish church have been restored. The ``Rose Window'' is considered one of the finest pieces of Spanish colonial ornamentation in the country.
Mission Concepcion was established in 1731 and the present stone church, with its massive twin towers, took more than 20 years to complete. It is considered to be the oldest unrestored stone church in the United States.
Mission San Juan Capistrano and Mission San Francisco de la Espada are both smaller and more remote, but worth the additional drive because of their isolation.
We Americans often boast that we are a nation of immigrants, a great melting pot of cultures. Perhaps nowhere is this fact more celebrated than in Texas - in San Antonio, particularly.
At the Institute of Texas Cultures, a sprawling building that was the Texas Pavilion during the '68 World Fair, is a touchy, feely, interactive - and free - museum that tells of 27 different ethnic or national groups that came here and produced today's Texans.
It's one of the city's most popular attractions. An escorted tour takes about two hours.
The evening I was there, docent Betsy Thrift said she has escorted a group of cadets at one of the local Air Force bases from places like Korea and Saudi Arabia and Brunei. Later, she helped with 500 schoolchildren. ``Children,'' she said, ``are taught: `Your heritage is important, no matter what it is.' ''
I learned about a people I'd never heard of: the Wends. Do you know the Wends?
They're ancient Slavic people from an area of Eastern Germany and Prussia called Lusatia. They're sometimes called Sorbs or Lusatians. They were Lutherans with a plain lifestyle similar to the Amish. They came to Texas as a congregation and settled in places named Serbin and Giddings, Texas.
There are a number of other settlements around San Antonio with a high concentration of ethnic groups: Germans around Fredericksburg (see story, facing page) and New Braunfels, Poles around Bandera and Alsacians around Castroville.
People sometimes jokingly call San Antonio the Mexiplex, but it's a whole lot more ethnically diverse than that. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
STEPHEN HARRIMAN
The Alamo, left, where 189 ``Texians'' were wiped out by the Mexican
army in 1836, and the midtown oasis River Walk, above and top, are
the two most popular tourist attractions in Texas.
STEPHEN HARRIMAN/Photos
Mission San Francisco de la Espada features a unique Moorish-style
archway.
A rose window decorates Mission San Jose, the ``Queen of
Missions.''
The bells at Mission San Juan Capistrano form a striking
silhouette.
by CNB