Remember the Alamo

Remember the Alamo

By Tom Secrest

San Antonio Texas sits at the cross-roads of two major highways. I35 – the I stands for Interstate highway – a north-south highway, which runs from Duluth, Minnesota on the Canadian border to Laredo, Texas on the Mexico border; spanning a distance of 2518 km and I10, an east-west highway, which runs from Jacksonville, Florida on the east coast to Santa Monica, California on the west coast; covering 3959 km.

San Antonio, named after St. Anthony, is about half way along I10, but, as you would expect, pretty far south along I35. The city was settled and named by the Spanish in 1691. It may come as a surprise that San Antonio is the 7th largest city in the U.S. and the 2nd largest in Texas; Houston being the largest city in Texas and the 4th largest in the U.S.

In many ways it is a typical modern Southwestern city, full of lots of tall glass skyscrapers with a booming central business district. Outside of this area are the “burbs,” which is short for “suburbs;” discreet neighborhoods segregated along ethnic, racial, social, historical, and financial lines. During the day the burbs empty and everyone spills into the downtown area, where all the different groups seem to get along just fine and the artificial barriers that separate them in the evenings vanish in the bright sun and heat of the day.

Running through the center of the city is a narrow river, no more than one tenth the width of the Vltava passing through Prague; even a child could throw a coin across it. The river runs slow and quiet and because it is so narrow, it is dwarfed and hidden by the buildings around it. In fact, it would be easy to spend a week in San Antonio and never know there was a river meandering through the middle of the city. In the searing heat of a Texas summer, the river creates its own microclimate. With sidewalks along both banks in the shade of overarching trees and a gentle continuous breeze, the river has become a Mecca for shops, restaurants, and people trying to elude the heat. This microclimate is now better known as the San Antonio River Walk. At night the entire areas takes on a magical festa spirit, transformed by hundreds of thousands of tiny lights strung in the all trees along and across the river. Sidewalk cafes are everywhere and there is no shortage of the best Tex-Mex cuisine in the world.

Remember the Alamo! Originally called Mission San Antonia de Valero, it was home to missionaries. The targets, or subjects, of their good will and enlightenment were, of course, the Native, and by their standards, uncivilized, American Indians. The now historic site was constructed in 1724. Sometime in the early 1800s Spanish soldiers named the mission the Alamo. Alamo is Spanish for cottonwood. Cottonwoods are a type of tree, a tall, majestic, water loving tree, which grows abundantly in the moist soil along the banks of the river. Each spring, they release tiny fluffs of white cotton-like fibers which float on the breeze and slowly fall to ground like big snow flakes.

The Alamo was the site of a significant battle in the Texas Revolution. The battle, which was ultimately lost by the Texians and Tejanos, involved a who’s who of prominent citizens of the time; William Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett just to name a few. Like the river, the Alamo is almost invisible. The city has built itself around the old mission the way a vine wraps itself around an old building. So invisible, in fact, you could walk within a block of it and never sense it was there.

But it is there, and like so many places where battles were fought, it has a story to tell. A story about a battle, a battle where few stood against many and died for something they believed in, but would themselves never live to see or enjoy. Here men and women died for the freedom of others and in so doing paid a very high price indeed, and that makes it hallowed ground – ground worth finding and ground worth visiting should you ever pass that way. So when you next hear the expression “Remember the Alamo!” you’ll understand that they don’t mean remember the old mission building, they mean remember freedom, the cost of freedom, the price of freedom, and remember those that made the ultimate sacrifice in its name.

Glossary

* highway – hlavní silnice, dálnice (v USA)

* border – hranice

* spanning – sahající

* coast – breh, pobreží

* covering – pokrývající

* settled – obydlený, založený

* skyscraper – mrakodrap

* suburb – predmestí

* booming – rozvíjející se, vzkvétající

* vanish – zmizet

* coin – mince, peníze

* dwarfed – zakrslý, zakrnelý

* searing – zpražující, pálivý

* sidewalk – dláždený chodník

* tiny – malý, drobounký

* strung – napnutý

* shortage – nedostatek

* enlightenment – osveta, poucení

* cottonwood – americký topol

* cotton – bavlna

* abundant – hojný

* fluff – prach, chomác, chmýrí

* to sacrifice – obetovat se