San Antonio, the Alamo and the Babe

When I was in seventh grade, I did a report on The Alamo. As part of my project I built a miniature Alamo approximately 12" x 16" using popsicle sticks and miscellaneous materials, possibly clay or plaster. My father was a chemist involved with the development of latex paints so I could create the precise colors one would see in the barren landscapes of South Texas. No photos exist of this remarkable model, only memories.

Santa Claus coming to town, a Texas Ranger riding shotgun.

The Alamo.

General Santa Anna's troops stayed in the hotel next door.

The light from this Christmas tree is what gave away the location
of the Texans who were forced to take refuge at the Alamo.

The slaughter at the Alamo in March 1836 marked one of the starkest moments of the Texas Revolution. After a 13-day siege, Mexican forces under General Santa Anna overran the mission and killed nearly all the Texan defenders, including figures like James Bowie and William Travis. Though a military defeat, the Alamo became a powerful symbol of resistance and sacrifice, rallying Texans with the cry “Remember the Alamo!”  This saga crystalized the mythology of American frontier courage.

Sunset over Mexico. The war that followed culminated in
the Gadsden Purchase.

The Gadsden Purchase (1854) was the United States’ $10 million acquisition of roughly 30,000 square miles of land from Mexico—today’s southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It wasn't really a "purchase" per se.The agreement, negotiated by James Gadsden, went something like this: "You give us this territory and you will have fewer headaches in the future.. Oh, and here's some cash so we tell our people we didn't steal it but bought it fair and square."

Gadsden, a key figure in railroad development, was looking to secure a flat terrain for a southern transcontinental railroad and settle border disputes after the Mexican-American War, This deal finalized the modern continental U.S.-Mexico boundary. Though small compared to earlier expansions, it remains the last major territorial addition to the contiguous United States.

Babe Ruth once played an exhibition game in San Antonio.
While there he stayed at the Menger Hotel.

Ruth and the New York Yankees were on a preseason barnstorming tour and faced the San Antonio Bears at League Park. Contemporary Texas newspapers reported that Ruth thrilled the crowd with a towering home run during the game.

The Yankee's visit to San Antonio took place in 1922, during Prohibition. By this time San Antonio had become known as one of America’s most openly “wet” cities. Speakeasies, back-room saloons, and “soft drink parlors” operated throughout downtown, often with the quiet cooperation of local officials. Smugglers funneled liquor across the nearby Mexican border, soldiers and civilians provided steady demand, and police raids were sporadic. The result was a vibrant but illegal nightlife that flourished despite the letter of the law. The Menger Hotel stood at the heart of the Prohibition-era nightlife zone where many of San Antonio’s back-room saloons quietly operated.

Ruth drank heavily throughout his playing career, often late into the night, even during the season. Teammates and sportswriters of the era documented his frequent binge drinking which was tied to the broader image of Ruth as a larger-than-life figure—big appetites, big personality, and little interest in discipline off the field.

Despite the drinking, Ruth’s natural athletic ability allowed him to perform at an elite level for most of his career. By the mid-1930s, his drinking and partying lifestyle began catching up with him. Sooner or later, all things must pass.

* * *

You probably didn't know where this was going when you began reading here. I didn't either. I was simply trying to create copy to accompany a few interesting photos sent to me by America's Photographer, Gary Firstenberg.

Here's a link to his website. Ye shall be impressed.

www.firstinphoto.smugmug.com

1960

1960 was a big year in my life. That was the year I got out of school for three weeks in spring and went cross country with my grandparents. From my home in Cleveland to Reno, NV, all by rail, through Chicago, Salt Lake City, prairies, mountains, day and night for three days each way. Destination: my cousins, aunt and uncle an hour outside Reno. Uncle Dale did geology and the Wolfe family lived a free, remote life. Later that same year we went to Niagara Falls with cousins, aunt and uncle on my Dad's side...

That's not the reason, however, that 1960 is today's theme. This year is an election year. 1960 also proved to be a significant election. Perhaps all are, but 1960 seems especially so. John F. Kennedy electrified voters with his oratory skills, charm and wit, and in November was elected the youngest president of these United States, breaking new ground as the first Catholic to sit in the Oval Office.

I've heard said that Obama is being compared to JFK. This week I can see a bit of that. He has charm, and panache. And so I went online (everything is but a click away these days!) and found a site that assembled JFK quotes, among others. Here are a few that pertain to the arts.

"Too often in the past, we have thought of the artist as an idler and dilettante and of the lover of arts as somehow sissy and effete. We have done both an injustice. The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intense application and intense discipline."

"We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth."

"I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty...an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft."

"In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation."

I chose these quotes about the arts, several from remarks made at Amherst, because 1960 was also the year that artist/poet/musician Bob Dylan emerged on the scene in NYC. Behind me here in my office is a Sept 1960 poster announcing that Dylan would be performing on the 19th at the Underground Cavern in Greenwich Village.

To think that Dylan is still making music today, 48 year later, and that that other beacon of 1960 was snuffed out 45 years ago...

Thinking of Kennedy brought to mind this very short essay by Jorge Luis Borges, which I discovered in a Fall/Winter 1970-1971 edition of The Antioch Review.

IN MEMORIAM J.F.K.

This bullet is an old one.

In 1897, it was fired at the president of Uruguay by a young man from Montevideo, Avelino Arredondo, who had spent long weeks without seeing anyone so that the world might know that he acted alone. Thirty years earlier, Lincoln had been murdered by that same ball, by the criminal or magical hand of an actor transformed by the words of Shakespeare into Marcus Brutus, Caesar's murderer. In the mid-seventeenth century, vengeance had employed it for the assassination of Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus in the midst of the public hecatomb of battle.

In earlier times, the bullet had been other things, because Pythagorean metempsychosis is not reserved for humankind alone. It was the silken cord given to viziers in the East, the rifles and bayonets that cut down the defenders of the Alamo, the triangular blade that slit a queen's throat, the wood of the Cross and the dark nails that pierced the flesh of the Redeemer, the poison kept by the Carthaginian chief in an iron ring on his finger, the serene goblet that Socrates drank down one evening.

In the dawn of time it was the stone that Cain hurled at Abel, and in the future it shall be many things that we cannot even imagine today, but that will be able to put an end to men and their wondrous, fragile life.

~by Jorge Luis Borges