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 Texas : Features : Columns : "Texas Tales"

Alamo History

Moonlight Reflections at the Alamo

by Mike Cox
Mike Cox
When I first noticed the guy setting up a tripod for his camera, I figured he just wanted a good shot of the Alamo at night.

Sitting on the short rock wall just across from the old mission, I took a puff from the cigar I’d bought at the Menger Hotel and absorbed the sights and sounds around me.
Alamo by night, San Antonio, Texas
The Alamo by Night, San Antonio, Texas
Postcard courtesy www.rootsweb.com/%7Etxpstcrd/
A Bible-waving sidewalk evangelist stood in front of the one-time fortress loudly offering a sermon on the wages of sin and the forgiveness of Jesus. A few people actually seemed to be listening, but most passersby pretended he wasn’t there.

About that time, an older man and a young blonde walked up to the front of the Alamo. The blonde moved a few yards closer to the chapel under the watchful gaze of one of the Alamo Rangers, a young man in a tan uniform with a white straw cowboy hat on his head and semi-auto on his hip. He also wore a protective vest beneath his shirt, something the defenders of the Alamo sure could have sure used.

The blonde struck a provocative pose and her companion used his cell phone to snap a picture of her in front of the world-renown Texas icon. They held hands as they walked away. Clearly she wasn’t out for a stroll with daddy, unless maybe a Sugar Daddy. Could be they were married and he was just prematurely gray, but they didn’t act like it. Either way, I imagine Col. William Barrett Travis, who claimed numerous feminine conquests in his diary, would have approved.

Travis would have been bewildered, however, at the steady stream of cell phone photographers (I only saw three traditional-looking cameras) recording what must be one of the most-captured images in Texas.

At least the firebrand lawyer would have found the clip-clop of the gaily lighted carriages circling the plaza looking for tourists reassuring. But then the people on the segue scooters rolled up. Their guide lined his charges up with the Alamo behind them and took a group photo, a souvenir of their downtown tour on a two-wheeled machine that did their walking for them.

A street-smart kid likely up to no good broke my contemplation of how all this would seem to Travis if he could see the place of his death all these generations later.

“Hi, sir,” he said, walking toward me.

“I don’t need anything,” I said assertively, and he walked on.

L
ooking back at the Alamo, I suddenly realized why the photographer had set up his tripod for a more-than-casual snapshot. Just in the few seconds I had been distracted by the teenager, a full moon had partially broken over the old sanctuary. Within a few moments the moon cleared the wall, rising just to the left of the familiar, bell-shaped feature added more than a decade after the battle. I have seen some pretty things, places and people, but the moon rising over the Alamo that night ranks high on my list of most striking scenes. Earth’s shiny satellite – about the only thing that hasn’t changed since the time of the Alamo – now hung over the mission as bright as a mint condition Mexican cinco peso.

I wondered if the Alamo’s defenders got to see one last full moon before they died. Indeed, a waxing moon, 88 percent full, rose after 3 a.m. that Sunday, March 6, 1836. A Mexican officer wrote: “The moon was up, but the density of the clouds that covered it allowed only an opaque light…seeming thus to contribute to our designs.”

Gen. Santa Anna’s design was to end what Mexico saw as a civil war. The men in the Alamo, depending on how revisionist you like your history, were a group of land pirates caught with their defensive pants down or a band of patriots fighting for freedom.

No thinking person can totally buy that the 200 or so men who died on this spot did so solely in the name of freedom, despite Travis’ passionate rhetoric. When the end came, they fought for survival.

But neither can that same thoughtful person deny that the battle site has become one of America’s enduring symbols of freedom. And after all these years, we still enjoy that freedom despite some scars, Band-Aids and areas still in need of treatment. No one had hassled the annoying street preacher, who had every right to stand there and make his pitch.

I, in turn, was free to enjoy my cigar (though I no longer have the freedom to smoke in many indoor venues), just as the posturing, giggling teenagers passing by in groups were free to do their thing, whatever that might be.

Pondering that, as if on cue, a Middle Eastern family walked between me and the Alamo. The woman, pushing a baby carriage, wore the traditional Muslim veil. The couple and their child received even less attention than the now-departed preacher, but I saw a strong metaphor in their sudden appearance. Assuming they had valid passports or were U.S. citizens, they had just has much right to visit the Alamo as I had.

But they also were a reminder, along with the cell phone, electric scooters and lighted carriages that the world continues to change.


© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales" March 11, 2010 column
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