Take the Tour!
Our next stop was in the great state of Texas which my little sister once so wryly described by saying that, 'Texas proves our God is an angry God and doesn't want us to be happy.' We stopped into San Antonio to take a look at the Alamo. Everybody supposed to do that at some point in their life, if they love America. The problem is there is not so much to see at the Alamo. I you where to have driven to San Antonio just to see it, I think you'd be a little disappointed. If you have ever talked to a Texan, and believe me, you will have known if you have because they are constitutionally unable from mentioning it in every other sentence, they will act like they are somehow participants in the victory of the Alamo. What they often fail to mention is that they were not, in actual fact at the scene, and secondly that it was not actually a victory but a defeat. Texans are however, correctly proud of a state anti-littering slogan that they will compulsively recite if given the opportunity; that slogan is, of course 'Don't Mess with Texas'. Another prominent fact that most romanticizers of the Alamo forget is that Texas was fighting for independence from Mexico because slavery was illegal in Mexico and Texans were worried that if the Mexicans occupied the area they may not be able to keep their slaves. I had heard stories about the Alamo and read books and had seen Pee-wee's big adventure so I knew my Alamo, of so I thought. It is a adobe fort with wooden doors that is not very large and there are thousands of bullet holes through everything. There are a few displays and they have spruced up the outside a little but there is not much to it. The problem was that my dad had blocked out a certain amount of time, something like three hours, which was two and a half hours too long. He had talked up the Alamo and therefore was incapable of admitting that it had been oversold and that we should just wrapo it up and head on down the road. So he made us slog though every possible time conuming display, tour and plaque. There were a couple of cool cannons outside but they are not for ridding as a park ranger reminded us once or twenty-teen. I thought I would be all set if I never came back but when I was twenty-five my wife and I were in San Antonio and she thought we should go see it. I told her it was in a bad part of town and that it was boring but nothing worked and I had to go back, but with no pride on the line we were able to leave in a reasonable amount of time after we asked all of the rangers where we might find the basement.
