Sunday, February 16, 2014 - San Antonio Missions, the Horrors of Houston and Aunt Minnie

Clothes washed, Bloodroot selects a white shirt and tan shorts for today’s adventures.  Keith calls him a Boy Scout, feeling the old scouting uniform best describes Bloodroot’s attire.

Our first stop today, the San Antonio Missions, consists of five separate missions spread around town.  (The Alamo Mission, yesterday’s destination, is one of the San Antonio missions.)  We choose to visit the San José Mission.  Exiting Pearl, Bloodroot, in his Boy Scout regalia, complains of cold.  Keith begins jumping around, gyrating as one stricken with St Vitus’ Dance, shouting like a small child, “Oooh, I’m cold!  I’m cold!” I can hear the unspoken, “Man up, boy!”  I simply watch, amused by the spectacle.

The Spanish built five missions along the San Antonio River, intending to create an indigenous medieval peasant society, loyal to Spain, of course.  The park service has restored the San José Mission.  In the early 1700s, gathering-hunting Indians, harassed by the Apache and drought, voluntarily sought sanctuary in the mission.  The price - conversion to Catholicism, loss of traditional lifestyles, and labor as yeomen farmers.  The choices were hard yet acceptable.  Unfortunately, most of the new converts died of disease.

The mission itself consists of a large walled compound.  We enjoy the stonework.  Inside we find workshops, chapels and living spaces for both the Indians and the Spaniards.  Gravity-fed irrigation systems watered the fields.  Initially successful, the missions began to fade around 1780, undermined by disease and lack of military support.  The missions finally closed their doors in the early 1800s.

We leave the mission heading for Houston and Aunt Minnie.

Bear guides Pearl up I-10 from San Antonio to Houston, four lanes all the way.  I curse this stupid state’s obligatory transit on lousy freeways.  As consumers loyal to big oil, we spend hours on the road, consuming lots of petrol while stuck in traffic on a Sunday.  We ride forever, enmeshed in major congestion all the way between the two cities, observing stranger behavior than we find in Denver, where we have the legitimate excuses of thin air and legal marijuana.  We’re accustomed to aggressive, clueless behavior.  Back home we watch people randomly changing lanes, or crossing five lanes of road to turn only a block later.   On this freeway, totally self-absorbed slow drivers block the left lane, meandering along, because naturally, no one else counts but them.  Mad hornets dash about determined to get around the slowpokes, providing some frightening entertainment.  Our tough trip, full of complete stops, makes me appreciate living in Colorado.  And Houston, East Texas in general, has the population to support mass transit!  We see no public transit, no light rail, no subway – just an interminable stream of vehicles.

For our edification and distraction, we listen to Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy.  Russell describes Plato’s Republic as a combination of Brave New World and Sparta.  Logically separated into three classes, governed by philosopher kings, everyone works tirelessly for the common good, eliminating poverty.  Russell’s audiobook could accompany you through four or five cross-country trips; I don’t think that you’d hear it all even then!  I doubt that we’ll ever get beyond Greece.

As we travel from west Texas to the east, I find myself liking the state less and less, my distaste rising with the humidity.  Houston smells like Florida, wet and moldy.  Have I become such an habitué of the high plain desert that I feel uncomfortable in the lowlands?  Already I thoroughly miss the thin arid air and find myself choking and gasping from the humidity, as though trying to breathe through a bowl of chicken soup. 

As we near the city, Keith calls Aunt Minnie, asking her what restaurant we could treat her to.  She suggests Dead Lobster.  “No!” we cry in panic.  Keith calls Minnie’s son Vic.  Since we’re near the Gulf, we hope for good seafood.  Vic suggests the Aquarium at Kemah.  Keith forgets to specify quiet and small.

We pick up Aunt Minnie at her apartment.  Six years ago, Minnie visited us in Denver.  What a difference a few years can make!  She’s gone downhill a good bit since then.  Me too.  In 2008, I walked and worked fulltime.  Minnie doesn’t look good.  Her hair askew, she’s missed her facial features when applying make-up.  Encumbered by cheap flip-flops, she walks unsteadily to the car.  She’s doused herself in cheap, foul-smelling, headache-inducing perfume attempting to cover her self-perceived sin of smoking. 

We find Kemah, which turns out to be an amusement park, loud, overpriced and definitely not for us.  We eat at the Aquarium Restaurant, an extension of the amusement park.  In search of a table, we pass numerous fish tanks and brightly painted concrete molded ceilings.  I fear yet another expensive, lousy meal.  The host shows us to our table.  We order.  Minnie happily eats shrimp.  I enjoy my snapper, ignoring the price.  The Bunny orders tilapia in pineapple salsa, which he later announces tastes like someone poured corn syrup over a piece of fish.  Keith also expresses disgust with his meal.  But Minnie dreams a heavenly shrimp-filled dream.  For $160, we have been taken yet again.

Over dinner, Minnie tells us that she’s dropped out of her church, her sole social support, because the Lutherans marry gays and Leviticus 18 calls homosexuality an abomination. I respond that Leviticus 11[1] calls eating shrimp an abomination.  My comment elicits a blank deer-in-headlights stare.  Ah Minnie, the central point of Christianity is love.  How can you not see that?  When asked the greatest commandment, Jesus reportedly said (as documented in Mark 12, Matthew 22 and Luke 10), “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”[2]

Loneliness rolls off Minnie like a miasma, a palpable sadness you can see and touch.  I so pity her.  She was very good to Keith when he was young.

We drop Minnie off at her apartment.  Exiting Pearl, she again complains of lonesomeness.  Our visit has brightened her world, temporarily diffusing the melancholy which rebounds tackling her as we leave.  We promise to return tomorrow to take her to the pharmacy.

On our way to our very tiny Airbnb flat, we encounter yet more traffic at 8PM on a Sunday.  As Sven enters the flat, I’m stopped dead in my tracks by yet more overpowering cologne reek.  Oblivious to any safety concerns, we fling all the windows and doors wide open.  Bloodroot begins a seek-and-destroy mission, using his nose to save his mother.  Finally, he finds the odor’s source, a plug-in room stench machine.  He unplugs the machine, setting it outside in the grass to perform an appropriate function, like annihilating mosquitos or other unpleasant arthropods.  Mission accomplished, the boys dispel any remaining stink by creating tomorrow’s lunch, a tempeh stir-fry.  We settle in for our well-deserved sleep.

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[1] Bible, King James Version, Leviticus 11:12:  “Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.”

[2] Bible, King James Version, Mark 12:28-31.

Saturday, February 15, 2014 – The San Antonio Riverwalk and the Alamo Mission

This morning I enjoy the most delicious shower.  The world improves, becoming clean and sparkly, even in Del Rio, Texas.  After showering, I can now look at last night’s dinner as a cultural experience, having recovered from being just tired and pissed.  I haven’t had such bad service since… since… well, never.  I still wonder whether the Ramada passes for high class here.  “No, not at all,” says Bloodroot, still disgusted, “even for Del Rio, Texas.”

Heading out again on Texas route 90, we’re almost immediately stopped by the Border Patrol, probably south Texas’ only remaining federal employer.  After ascertaining our citizenship, they send us on our way.

Any time I think that we may be a normal family, Bloodroot will begin to kiss Keith’s bald head in a manner Keith calls a Goat Molestation.  Keith remains stoic, enduring the nearly daily attention, generally shouting, “Goat! Goat!” 

This morning, Keith, not Bloodroot, supplies our daily dose of insanity. Bloodroot wants to backtrack five miles up to the Amistad National Recreation Area to stamp our passports.  We don’t plan to visit the park, only stamp our passports.  This makes perfect sense to me. 

The five-mile backtrack greatly upsets Keith who firmly believes exclusively in forward motion.  “Ten miles out of the way!” shouts Keith as he grudgingly acquiesces.  “I wanna stamp!  I wanna stamp!  It’s only fifty miles back!  Waaaa!” Keith yells, banging his fists against the steering wheel and stomping his feet in a temper tantrum imitation that would bring great pride to any four-year-old.   Pearl jerks as Keith’s feet leave the gas pedal to trample the floor.

Pearl has been talking to Keith again, claiming that she wants to join the 100 mph club.  Keith maintains that she isn’t old enough yet.  I chime in that it’s a bad idea to even look like you might be thinking about breaking a law in Texas.  After all, we have Colorado license plates and the Border Patrol has already stopped us twice.

We buy gas again, still recovering from our brush with death in the Guadalupe Mountains.  Somehow one of Bloodroot’s socks falls out of the car.  Leaving the station, we spot the sock and circle back to retrieve it.  Bloodroot is nothing if not cheap (he prefers the term “frugal”) and we can’t be lolling about throwing out socks!

As we enter San Antonio, I’m assigned navigation, but my hands don’t work.  I fumble through our map collection, never finding the small insert showing downtown and the Alamo, our destination.  Try as hard as I may, I just can’t manipulate the paper, eventually ending up surrounded by piles of misfolded maps.  Keith disgustedly delegates my task to Bloodroot.

Bloodroot leads us as we randomly drive around San Antonio, all the while loudly proclaiming that he knows our exact location and that I lack faith in him.  “We’re going south, Mom.” But Pearl’s compass says east.  The boys consult the maps.  I remain quiet, never an easy task for me.  Bloodroot does indeed find downtown.  We become one with a massive traffic jam directly in front of the Alamo. 

Escaping the traffic jam, we search for parking.  Following a good bit of circling, we discover a city-owned parking lot near the main plaza where Pearl can extend her ramp.  We find the $9 charge a bit steep, but whatever, we’re on vacation.

Crossing the main plaza, we see the imposing Cathedral of San Fernando, a massive Spanish edifice.  San Antonio is Spanish in the same way that Quebec City is French.  As outposts of long-ago European civilization, each strove to maintain the ties to the old country, making them more Spanish than Spain or more French than France. 

This church looks like something straight out of Spain: two large bell towers covered by wooden shutters and three front doors.  The doors, also wooden, no longer completely reach the marble lintels, but I doubt that it’s ever very cold here.  The cathedral transports me back to medieval Spain.  I begin furtively looking over my shoulder for the Inquisition.  Will the Inquisition know my secret thoughts?  Will I pass or am I an obvious Unitarian?  Oh no, I’m an Anglophone! 

We pass enough to enter the cathedral through the side door, buzzing up the ramp thoughtfully provided for Sven.  Settlers from the Canary Islands, of all places, built the church in the mid-1700s, staking their claim in the new world.  They wanted to create an edifice grand enough to house their most prized possession - a baptismal font given to them by the Spanish king Charles III.  The church also contains a black Jesus and a black Mary, who actually look more Indian than black, albeit dark skinned.  The parish unfortunately retrofitted the remainder of the church, effectively erasing our Spanish past.

Crossing the plaza, we find a ramp to the San Antonio Riverwalk.  We descend and walk along the river.   The river resembles a wide canal.  Our stroll takes us past multi-hued buildings, varied architecture, palm trees, greenery, hotels and restaurants.  We even see an arched bridge, a la Venice.  I notice little, finding myself preoccupied with not driving Sven into the river.  Bear wishes that we had allotted more time to San Antonio and vows to return.  We resurface via some secret hotel lift and head to the Alamo.

Ah, the Alamo.  Peter Rowan’s song Moonlight Midnight swirls round my head.  “I will meet you at the Alamo Mission.  We will say our prayers.  Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mother will heal us as we kneel there.”   I spent years playing that song with the Akron (OH) hippies, never tiring of it.  Ah, the irony, now here I am crippled at the Alamo Mission.  I call Dave the bandleader and tell his answering machine that I am indeed at the Alamo Mission.[1]  Although I dutifully say my prayers, I am not healed.

The Daughters of the Republic of Texas maintain the Alamo, a revered shrine dedicated to lives lost in the 1836 Alamo battle.  The Spanish built the Alamo Mission, a far-flung outpost of their extensive empire, to withstand an Indian assault, not the artillery of an 18^th-century army.  Following a thirteen-day siege, the Mexican general Santa Anna’s army overran the mission and brutally slaughtered all combatants, leaving some servants alive to spread the tale of horror.  The Texans, their mettle strengthened by the knowledge of no quarter given (no surrender, all will be slain) rose and later defeated Santa Anna’s army, establishing the short-lived (ten years) Republic of Texas.[2]  The Alamo Mission itself consists of numerous buildings including a church, hospital and barracks.

We take photos of ourselves in front of the mission, then join a Disney-esque line dotted with posters hanging every few feet explaining the Alamo’s history.  My eyes don’t work well anymore, making me a slow reader, certainly something I never thought I’d be.  The darn line moves more rapidly than I can read the placards, forcing me to resort to the internet to satisfy my history jones!   The unimpressive shrine consists mostly of flags and tourists milling about a rectangular building. 

Another secret elevator returns us to the Riverwalk.  Overly hungry, Bear and I can’t decide where to eat.  We don’t want any more horrid tourist crap food, the Del Rio Ramada still weighing heavily upon our minds and bodies.  Fortunately, the Goat assumes leadership of our enterprise, choosing a restaurant called the Acenar.  Through the magic of elevators, we visit the downstairs baño and the upstairs dining room.  The staff forbids us an outside table, claiming prior reservations.  We sit, half of our table outside and half inside, gazing over twenty empty tables to the river below. 

We enjoy our meal despite receiving way, way too much food.  I’m so tired of stupid obscenely large American portions.  We see so many amazingly huge people on the Riverwalk that perhaps we should forgive the staff for the gigantic lunch.  Gotta feed those big Texas boys!  As he rolls up yet another bean and rice burrito, Bloodroot confesses to having inherited his DNA dad’s penchant for eating any swill set before him.  We leave, rescuing Bloodroot from obesity.

Returning to Pearl, we discover that city parking is free on Saturdays.  We drive out to tonight’s Airbnb house.  I can drive Sven through the front door.  Yeah!  And miracle of miracles, we find an operating washing machine and dryer.  We watch TV, drink some wine, and wash clothes.  The exertion of travel disappears with the promise of clean clothing.

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[1] I haven’t spoken with Dave in years, but he still has the same land line he had in 1984.  As an old person, I recall the number from a time when we had to actually memorize phone numbers. 

[2] Texas joined the US during the Spanish-American war in 1846.