9 Things I Learned About Texas

1.  Texas is not a southern state – it’s a western state. . . sorry Texas, but any state whose restaurants do not routinely and uniformly serve sweet iced tea is not a southern state – just sayin’.

2.  Texas boasts three of the 20 largest cities in the US – 2 in the top 10 – and San Antonio, at #7, is one of them.

3.  The Alamo is a religious shrine – who knew?  (I’m still trying to figure out the religion – I’ll get back to you when I do, but it’s definitely a shrine, so there’s definitely a religion there, right?)

4.  The people are nice.

5.  Almost no one wears cowboy hats.

6.  There be giants here.  I know this because the Texas-is-big-and-aren’t-you-jealous souvenir shop boasts coffee mugs and oven mitts made for the hands of giants.  I haven’t seen any yet, but I’m on the look out for the hands that’ll fill that oven mitt.

7.  Texans have a sense of humor, as evidenced by the laughing crowd at The Book of Mormon – not everyone’s cup of tea, I’ll grant, but still . . . nobody walked out – a pretty good sign, eh?

8.  It’s hot here.  I kind of knew that, but really, it’s hot.  A lot.

9.  The border and southern (as in southern hemisphere) connections make for some fabulous food experiences – and architecture . . . and everyone sharing at least a little bilingual ability . . . and lots of other stuff, but the food, oh, the food.

San Antonio is for Grandfathers

On a Tuesday in 1918, my grandfather Roy got on a train somewhere around Akron, Ohio and headed for San Antonio, Texas.  Army.  Basic training.  World War I was raging and he was headed to Paris.  The journey to San Antonio lasted long enough that he could post a letter home along the way.

Next week Mom and I’ll head to San Antonio ourselves.  We’ll visit with cousin Daniel and go to the theater and take in the sights.

I have never been to Texas.  Not even to drive through on the way to somewhere else.  Not even to land in an airport in between two points.  It’s quite an accomplishment to have reached the age of 58 without ever having set foot on Texan soil, particularly as I’ve crossed the country numerous times, the first when a little girl to visit my Granddaddy Roy when he lived in Arizona – a long, long time after his respite in San Antonio (if basic training in the Army can be called ‘respite’).

My granddaddy was in his late 20's when he went off to war by way of San Antonio, Texas.  Older than the 20th century by only a few years, he was sent to what was then, in his describing, a virtual desert.  I don’t think he got to the Alamo, for surely he would have said.  And I don’t know if there was a river walk then.

I wonder what he would think to know that one grandson now lives where he spent that time so long ago getting ready for war – the war that would end all wars . . . or so they said, so they believed, at the time.

I don’t know how my granddaddy felt about anything.  All I know (and it’s far too little to suit) is what he said.  From what he said, one would conclude that he was a jaunty fellow indeed, eager for the chance to fly fighter planes (he never did, although he did drop bombs from the back of the plane in France – by hand – and called it a good time).

We have so little in common it seems.  But as Mom and I walk with Daniel through the byways of San Antonio, it is my granddaddy I’ll be thinking of – as he was then – young, uniformed, optimistic – jaunty.