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"Like most passionate nations, Texas has its own private history based on, but not limited by, facts." -John Steinbeck
"Remember the Alamo" was a battle cry in the 1800s to spur U.S. troops in the Spanish War. Now it is a battle cry encouraging tourists to come visit the Alamo's hometown: San Antonio.
San Antonio lined its trickle of river with concrete paths, transforming it into the Riverwalk, where bars and specialty shops beckon. The buildings and grounds of the 1968 Hemisfair (World's Fair) were cobbled into a museum campus. Quaint old adobes were preserved in the part of town where Santa Anna quartered his troops before storming the Alamo and were now home to boutique shops. A downtown plaza housed what the city hailed as "the largest Mexican market outside of Mexico." The city built a large football stadium that hosts only one game a year: the Alamo Bowl.
But perhaps most savvy of all was that San Antonio preserved the nearby missions, including the Alamo. 
San Antonio takes its name from the Alamo's official name, Mission San Antonio de Valero. The 1718 founders were from a town in Mexico whose patron saint was Saint Anthony of Padua, and alamo was Spanish for cottonwood tree--many of which surrounded the Alamo.
In December, 1835, Ben Milam led Texan and Tejano volunteers against Mexican troops in the Battle of Bexar, which was what San Antonio was then called. In late February, they were surprised by the arrival of General Lopez de Santa Anna, self-declared dictator and "the Napoleon of Mexico." On March 6, 1836, he attacked the Alamo and killed its 189 Texas "patriots" (only eight were native-born Texans).1 They had held out for 13 days, partly because crossing the cold desert had Santayana's troops bedraggled by the time they arrived.
Legend holds that Col. Travis drew a line on the ground and asked any man willing to stay and fight to step over--all except one did. That one lived. The facts surrounding the siege continue to be debated. But people "worldwide" (the handout insists) continue to remember the Alamo as a heroic struggle against overwhelming odds. It opened as a museum in 1968, and more than three million people visit annually. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT) preserve it with no funding from the government.
The Alamo was now just a series of low stone walls held together by adobe. Davie Crockett's rifle, powder, and balls are on display, as was a Bowie knife, named for Sam Bowie who died here [pronounced "Booey" by the locals]. A sign on the Alamo walls read, "Only the sturdiest of pioneers came as far as San Antonio, isolated by at least three weeks travel from either Mexico City or New Orleans." GTT was often seen painted on the front doors of houses in the South. It meant "gone to Texas." One Texas pioneer called the state "a heaven for men and dogs, but a hell for women and oxen."
1One underlying cause of the battle was that the Americans wanted to keep their slaves, which they couldn't do if ruled by Mexico, where slavery was illegal. Ironically, one of the few survivors of the battle was a slave.
[The Alamo]
Technically, the Alamo was still a church. A sign ordered, "Quiet, gentlemen remove hats." As I read that, a security guard, a stocky woman with a broken foot, drawled, "Let me know if you have any questions."
She had big blue eyes and a slightly graying ponytail pulled tight on the side of her tan leathery face that bore no make-up. Her Alamo-themed jewelry included a multicolored pastel Alamo brooch, a lapel pin with "Alamo" spelled in rhinestones, and hoop earrings in the middle of which hung metal cutouts in the shape of Texas. On her white shirt hung a nametag that read "Paula."
"When Texas was their own country, er, republic," she began explaining to me, Mexico offered you to buy land real cheap, and these people were having problems in their countries. A lot of people were running away from debt. So they just skipped out from their creditors and came here because they couldn't come get them. [laughter] We had a lot of Irish that came during the revolution. There was nine of them that died here in this battle. They didn't know Texas was in a revolution. But they found out. [laughter] You know, the Irish, they want to fight anyway. A lot of them got over here, though, and they couldn't make it because the Indians marauded so badly. It wasn't until Texas became a state that people really started coming to live here in Texas. Then the United States Army could actually come here. And they started setting up forts and fighting to get those Indians out of Texas.
"There's so much history about these guys. One boy that died here in this battle was born in the Alamo. Look at the names. The real Texans were Mexican. They were born and raised right here on the missions. The rest of the people had come over here, and then they called themselves Texans. A lot of people, they come here, and the only thing they've ever seen is John Wayne's movie. And that's with Mexicans outside the walls, only white people in here. Texas actually is a large conglomeration of a lot of different cultures, kind of like the way the East is. But this revolution really kind of cemented them together under one cause, and it kind of just carried on over into statehood. That's where Texas pride comes from.
"San Antonio," she pontificated, "is actually a multicultural city. Some areas, they do stay to themselves. But there are multicultural offerings, the arts, and theaters, and all the things like that. And then there's our big fiesta. What that is, is a celebration of freedom. We start it on April 21st when Santayana was defeated. One day we celebrate the way the German culture would celebrate freedom. The next another culture. The big finale is everybody just celebrates it their way.
"Yeah," she shook her head, "that Institute of Texas Cultures. [I] Go over there, and I'm there all day. [laughter] It's like, 'Wow, I didn't know that.' You think, 'Oh, it's just all these people from the United States.' It's not just Anglo people, and that's one reason I fell in love with San Antonio. And that's what I like about my job here, too. I meet people from all over the world, different states. I get to know their history of their state, their history of their country and stuff. And so to me this is like a smorgasbord of information for me. You know, I feel like I travel everyday. [laughter] I tease everybody all the time: 'Yeah, we built the Alamo in the right location, right near the mall and the Riverwalk.'
"We have people," she despaired, "who don't realize. They'll try and take a piece of the bar, or they'll just want to write their name on it, and that is a felony. We just had to arrest a young man. He's 20 years old. And he was actually going to college to become a minister. And he just walked up and started working a piece and jerked that piece of wall out. And he was arrested and prosecuted. Like our Rangers told him, too, 'You're becoming a minister. And what is one of the Commandments? "Thou shall not steal."' 
We are very serious about preserving this site. Anybody comes in here and they make fun or laugh or think it's just nothing but a joke, I ask them if they could, please, leave. I can't make them leave, but I can ask them. I just go up to them and say 'Apparently, you don't understand what's happened where you're standing. A little over a hundred men died right where your feet are,' and it humbles them. It will straighten them out.
"It's been hit hard since September 11th. Real hard. I'm lucky that here none of us are going to be laid off. We still have enough people that have gotten over the fear of coming to a monument that's so well-known that they are coming back now. We're not going to let them terrorists ruin our lives. They want you fearing. The day of the attack, we did not close. We were like, 'No.' The whole city closed down. We were the only thing that was open. We just go, 'No, we will not bow to terrorists.' We're going to show them no matter what you do, we're going to win and be open. And people were very surprised that we were open. Some started to take a little wrong attitude about us. But then they realized this is what we need to do. Like I always tell everybody, 'I cross that line everyday.' [laughter] Everyday when I come to work, I walk across that line and I says, 'I will defend the Alamo to the death.' And that's the way most of us do feel that work here. It does that to you. It really does."
[Espuma]
"[Texas is the] place where there are the most cows and the least milk and the most rivers and the least water in them, and where you can look the farthest and see the least." - H.L. Mencken
(Philip Sheridan put it more bluntly: "If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.")
On the way back into town from the missions, I stopped at Espuma Coffee and Tea Emporium in a converted old house with wood siding painted pastel orange, where I interviewed two Hispanic ladies working the counter. The short, stocky, older one was stuffed into a gray long-john T-shirt and had a round face with big dark eyes. The younger one bore a tan-and-teal sweater that complemented her dark brown skin.
The older one stared blankly at my question, "I have no clue who Hopper is."
"I'm sure you do," the younger one countered. "Nighthawks," she pointed out, "is his famous one of the café at night."
"Oh," the older one glissandoed. "That's one I know. Yeah, that's it; that's San Antonio," she sighed. "It's like that within your own family here. I speak for myself. I live on the street, and literally my brother lives one house over on the other side. I wouldn't know. I never see him.
"I grew up in that neighborhood. I know my neighbor. But we don't mix. We don't socialize." [Her coworker nodded.] "We know who each of us are. 'Oh yeah, I know them.' But if someone asked me, 'What do they do?' I don't know. You know everybody, but you isolate yourself from them.
"Personally, I venture out on my own. So I came this far, to this neighborhood where I work. And I will continue to venture out. [but] As far as the average person here, they're very close-minded. I tell people where I work, and they've never been there."
"You mean," the younger one asked me, "like everybody in their own space? Like they might sit right next to each other but be separate? I don't think I've ever thought about it like that. I think of it as people are close-minded. Like, 'me me me.' Their lives are not changing. I find it not challenging for a big town. Usually," she added, "when you do meet someone who has been somewhere, like different cities or states or countries, they're not from here." ["They're not originally from here," the older one echoed.] "My parents are very different [than me]. They're not that familiar with Texas. They don't even know what we have here. I really do like the downtown area, but I think it's for tourists. That's not for the locals.1
"You can get ethnic food here now," she brightened. "We're not picky, but people here won't try it. We don't even have a place that shows independent films. And even then, it's like two or three films. Because people don't want to have to think here. They want to pick one and just go. They stick to what's known."
The older one agreed, "Right, exactly, with everything, culture, everything. They don't cross that line."
1"San Antonio is for tourists" is the tourism board's motto.
At a used bookstore, I interviewed the woman behind the counter. She was heavy-set, with long dark hair flowing from her spherical head. She had on a red flannel shirt over a multicolored tie-dyed T-shirt on which rested a dog tag collar with no dog tag on it.
"Well, being born and raised in San Antonio, I can tell you: we may be number eight or nine on the population list, but everybody knows each other." She nodded a lot and raised her eyebrows to reinforce her comments. "Instead of six degrees, here it's like three degrees of separation. My mom's from here, and if I'm talking about someone, it'll be, 'Oh is that so-and-so's daughter?' It's like that. If I'm in a hurry, sometimes it's a hassle because everybody knows everyone; I know I'm going to run into two or three people [I know]. You can't just blow them off because they know people you know. You have to go, 'hey, how's your mom?'
"Culturally, it's not as diverse in some places. This town is All-American. People cut the lawns and yell at the neighbors. I fear that it will eventually become more isolated. People are moving farther out (especially people that are not from here). It's becoming car culture. And people I've met who are from there, I tell them to meet me somewhere, and they say, 'Oh, we don't go downtown.' And I'm like, 'Oh, my! Why not?!' It's kind of odd. I don't go out where they are. Because I don't recognize a thing. They're all strip malls. They all look the same. I get lost."
Local Hopper wanna-bes might have a studio at the Blue Star Arts Complex, a pair of narrow warehouses carved up and adapted into artists' spaces, separated by a narrow tract of crumbling, weed-poked asphalt. I found a gallery owner named Joan, sixtyish, with moussed gray hair, green eyes, a big Irish nose, and bright red lipstick. She broke off her conversation with an associate and set aside an oversized pot of large red flowers on a big square glass coffee table so that we could see each other as we sat in chrome tube and leather Marcel Breuer chairs. 
"I think," Joan cooed, "isolation has more to do with who you know. Thinking about my neighbors: he's a retired doctor from Mexico. She's from New York. They stay in their home all the time. You never see them. My other neighbor says maybe she's buried in the back yard. But that's the way their life is. It's extremely isolated. But that's their choice.
"The other thing is that we have a high population of Mexican-Americans. And they certainly are not isolated people. They embrace. They are very family-oriented and party-oriented. I always say about San Antonio, 'we don't need an excuse to have a party.' We have a fiesta all the time. And that has a lot to do with the city having so much Mexican culture."
To my question referencing Nighthawks, her associate Rick jumped in, "Oh yes, where you're looking through a glass window, right?" Rick was a wiry bundle of energy with thick hairy forearms. He was draped in a gray sweater and gray wool socks with brown loafers. Avid green eyes peered out from his constantly-moving head. "Are we as isolated as that, in character? You could maybe say that. But there's a small group of people in this city that aren't isolated. People have a tendency to call San Antonio a large small town. There are people that are very worldly, that have traveled and are very well educated. But it's a minority."
"I was in Dallas," Rick continued. "Living in Dallas and seeing all the culture that is offered to the citizens, and then coming home to San Antonio, it's kind of a shock. I think this city protects itself from what's going on in other cities, which could be viewed as isolating itself. In Dallas, you're always meeting new and interesting people. Here you can, but it's not as easy. The way I describe San Antonio is it's always slow to react to anything, any trend. I think a lot of people [here] are military and that's conservative." 
"Hm," Joan frowned. "That's interesting. I've never connected it to retired military. I always connected it to a cow town. Not a cow town but ranching. It's just a different way of life. You have a lot of people with ranches. And oil. And you have hidden little treasures, and they really don't know what they've got. They don't even know what they're worth here in this city."
Rick barreled on, "We have a lot of blue-collar business. So there are a lot of neighborhoods within this otherwise tourist city. And the industry here isn't like what you see in other large cities. Southwest Bell moved their headquarters here, and moved a lot of people in from Kansas City or wherever. And those people are moving back because the city doesn't have enough to offer them. One guy that moved here from L.A. I knew personally, and he said, 'Where is the stuff I was enjoying in a bigger city?'"
Paul at Blue Star's San Angel Folk Art wore black plastic glass frames and had tan skin and short hair. He modeled a blue shirt. "My family moved here 13 years ago from Mexico." He spoke fluent English with no accent. "This store is devoted to Mexican folk art and to those people and arts that are indigenous to the area. It is not devoted to those who just want to get a little more color in their lives. I have been in the collector's circle. I was dealing with art collectors, and, for some, it becomes a life and not just a hobby. They all are trying to scam each other. They want to put their name in front of a painting's name."
"San Antonio is important because it is a border land. We're over fifty percent Latino now. If you're getting at San Antonio, you have to look at that."
San Antonio's downtown municipal market had been transformed into El Mercado, which hailed itself as "the largest Mexican market outside Mexico." Paula had told me, "I remember being a little girl when I came here to Texas, and I loved going down to the market, because you could buy all kinds of items that were from Mexico. It's like you're stepping back in time into you're in another country. Green pastel arches on the Mercado's adobe siding led to a curved Spanish tile roof. Young boys snapped firecrackers on the pavement. A 12-year-old girl in tennis shoes Irish step danced to the South American Andean (NOT Mexican) music that played out back on speakers and from live musicians. Tattered flags atop the building looked like the flag must have looked after being shelled, shot, and wind-whipped in the Alamo.
At a store called Angelita, I spoke with the large woman behind the counter while she tidied in bright pink lipstick and black eye shadow, draped in a light gray smock above which hung a silver choker. "No," she answered my question. "I grew up here, and we knew everybody on the block and everybody on the next block. Some of the old [she pronounced it "ode"] neighborhoods you wish were more isolated. My parents live in their same neighborhood, but they no longer go out after dark, and they have to lock their doors. The gangs are really bad in San Antonio. Every citizen should have a gun, and those gangs ought to get the death penalty." With that, I strolled back out past the angel dolls and books on positive thinking.
San Antonio takes its name from the Alamo's official name, Mission San Antonio de Valero. The 1718 founders were from a town in Mexico whose patron saint was Saint Anthony of Padua, and alamo was Spanish for cottonwood tree--many of which surrounded the Alamo.
