Through The Looking Glass
Remember the Alamo!!!
Ugh...do have to Stanley? I see it nearly everytime I go downtown.
Seriously, if you want to skip all the “tourist shop” crap and get a real feel for the Spanish missions with the sense of the history surrounding them, try the “Mission Trail” when visiting “San Anto”. Not a trail that you should walk, I would recommend driving to each mission (scattered along the south side of town). You’ll find WAY fewer crowds and alot less pristine look to each mission, helping to set the scene for what frontier life must’ve been like in the early 1800s.
Y’know, when I move back East, I think I can make a slight detour to see this here Fort!
Are you kidding me shinjinrui! This isn’t about “getting a feel for frontier life” or getting past the tourist traps. Cough , choke, spit, choke, spit, cough. This is about Crocket, Bowie, Travis and 200+ other men facing down that son-of-a-bitch Santa Anna, that wannabee tyrant mother fucker. Men from Tennesee, Kentucky, and elsewhere joining with their Texan brothers to beat back that Mexican dictator Son-Of-A-Bitch, and and paid the price by dying for it.
REMEMBER THE ALAMO stands for individual liberty and freedom because thats whats those men died defending. ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!
If you drive by that place every day, then say a small prayer of thanks every day for what those men did. Their sacrifice still inspires many westerners that know the history.Live free or die, DAMNIT, Live free or die!
That’s the Alamo? Wow. It’s much bigger in my heart and head. So much history in so little space. Larger than life, by far.
Comrades,
Well, that’s the remodeled mission, but it looked different then from what it looks like now.
During the battle the arch on the front wasn’t there. It was added later when the US Army moved some staff into it for offices. James Longstreet, of later ACW fame, had is office in the 2nd floor on the right.
The mission building should actually be better called the chapel or church, because that’s what it was designed as. However, the main roof was gone, and there was a large earthen ramp built up inside facing away from the camera where an artillery piece could be moved up.
To the viewer’s left was the long barracks, a 2-story adobe building, and behind that was a revetment. To the viewer’s back was a long wall that connected to a right angle wall that connected to the long barracks. There was a house incorporated into the wall, about half-way down.
To the viewer’s tight was an earth and wood pallisade which was manned by Crockett’s men, and connected to the main gate. The main gate was actually another adobe structure with rooms, and a fighting platform up top. Jim Bowie was in one of the lower rooms when he was killed.
The entire Alamo complex was huge. The 183 men defending it were not even sufficient to man one wall, let alone defend the entire facility. Their ability to hold out as long as they did, although courageous by any measure, had more to do with Santa Anna’s ineptitude and the poor condition of his troops than anything else. That’s not a slight against the defenders, not at all. Just sayin…
I spent many weeks working on a documentary about the Alamo which was made into an IMAX film called “Alamo, the Price of Freedom”. We built the entire complex to scale, based upon the remains of John Wayne’s Alamo mission which can still be seen out in Fort Carson Springs, Texas. After it was finished, it was still amazing how damned BIG the place really was. You simply cannot get an idea of the scale of the place from just the surviving mission structure.
Respects,
Gwedd
Posted by Gwedd
07/21/2006 at 10:56 PM
LC Geno -
Ummm...just for the record, my step-dad has worked at the Alamo for about the last 20 years and I spent about 4 years working at a shop (in my teen years) right across Alamo Plaza, facing the Alamo. I never said I don’t appreciate the the impressive feat that Crockett, Bowie, and company pulled off waaay back in March of 1836. I never said I don’t appreciate their sacrifice. But Texas history is not the Alamo alone. And what stands as the Alamo now is, essentially, a beautiful set of gardens, and the chapel (which is part half-ass museum, part half-ass gift shop). And Gwedd is correct - most of what remains of the chapel has been remodeled a number of times. What should be the actual grounds of the Alamo have been over-run with hotels, a mall, and a series of retail store fronts. If anything, what is left that stands of the Alamo saddens me. It reminds me how our society tends to forget about history in favor of present day consumerism and commercial development.
Sure, go see the Alamo. Then go see the Mission Trail. Trust me, you’ll see the difference. By seeing the missions on the Mission Trail, you have a better idea of how things must’ve looked like and how people lived back in 1836.
Thanks Gwedd!
It’s always worth it when the reality of history is taken back from television and movies…
After all. They’re in it to make a buck, and if tawdry sex and gratuitous violence will put a few more butts into seats, expect Martian aliens with plasma railguns and green-skinned slave-prostitutes to show up in the CBS remake of “ALAMO: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED???”
We won’t even discuss ‘who wins’.
Posted by heldmyw
07/22/2006 at 10:56 PM
