A Long Overdue ‘Thank You’ To the People of West, Texas

By now, we’ve all seen  news accounts of the massive destruction and pain wreaked by the horrendous explosion of a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, April 15. As searchers comb through the still smoking ruins of the plant, the town reels with the sorrow of at least five dead (the toll with undoubtedly rise) and hundreds injured. West will be a long time healing.

Investigations are already underway to pin-point what happened, what laxity of maintenance, what failure of state and federal oversight led to a large plant manufacturing highly explosive materials was built so near the town and surrounded by a school and a nursing home. Answers, unpleasant and nagging, will come. But instead, I want to give the people of West a long, overdue thanks. In one freezing night at least 25 years ago, they have my family and I a lesson in the power of love and community.

This is what happened. West is one of those small, forgettable towns draped along Interstate 35 as it cuts across Texas. Settled by Czech immigrant farmers in the 1840s, West never strayed much beyond its rural roots and Czech heritage. It is perhaps know best to travelers as a convenient resting point at the Little Czech Stop on I-35. For years, like others driving to some other place, we’d stop for coffee, rest rooms and k0laches – doughy pastries filled with jellies or other delights – before pouring back into the car and heading out. One winter that changed.

Frankly, the details are a little shaky. It was sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas and my wife, our then-3-year-0ld son and I were traveling to Ft. Worth when an ice storm moved in across North Texas. The interstate became dangerously slick with ice and we were hungry and tired so we pulled in to West to wait out the storm and see if we would travel on. A man at the gas pump suggested we might try out Picha’s Czech-American Restaurant for something more meaningful than kolaches. So we did.

The place was packed. It was dark and noisy, mainly with locals, as the waitress guided us to a booth. “Where you from,” she asked and we told her San Antonio and that we were headed to be with family but were stopped by the ice. The menu was largely Czech dishes. I can’t remember a thing we ate, and couldn’t pronounce them if I could. But they were hot and filling and delicious. Gabriel, wanted a cheese sandwich, which they fixed for him. As 3-year-olds are wont, he grew cranky. So did his parents.

Suddenly, people came by the table, asking how we were, how’d we like the food and would be be able to get home for the holidays. These were other customers. Seems the waitress had spread the word of our weather delay. They sat across from us and told us about the Czech dishes we’d just eaten and how their mamas had made it better. Two young girls in their teens, gushing about how cute Gabriel was, rushed him off to ‘play with their cousins. Or something. It got a little strange until I realized – they were comforting us, making our lives a little easier. A truck driver, a grizzled guy in his 50s, told us the weather had grown worse up north. “I wouldn’t go farther if I was carrying a baby,” he said. Old men cooed their sadness we couldn’t make it ‘to your folks’ but advised we could still make it back to our own home.

It was strange. And immensely heart-warming. Here total strangers had come together to feed us (well, actually, we paid, but offers were made) and advised us and comforted us and our child. And we had just stopped in for a meal.

We left, with a lot of waves and a few hugs and climbed back into the car and drove south. Over the years, we stopped many more times in West for gas and kolaches but never went back to the Czech-American. I regret that now. And more so, I regret never letting the folks there know how much their kindness had meant to us.

So, now, in your time or sorrow and pain, I hope the people of West know you’re in our thoughts and we are thankful we came, for that brief moment, to know you.

 

How To Respond To Terrorism

To to the first responders and the people of Boston, we’ll get through this together. That’s how we do things.

Counting The Days Until I Can’t Breath Again

On this lovely spring day, I sit in the back room and watch the new growth green up the pecan trees in my yard and count the days before I once again am choked with gallons of mucus, roaming the house looking for Kleenex and sounding like a sea cow whose just met a killer whale. I just went through this with miserably high oak and mold pollen counts. And now the pecan trees taunt me with their looming green horror. Life is not fair. 

I don’t really have any allergies, you see. I suffer from non-allergic rhinitis.  A few years back, I went to an allergist, who had me take off my shirt and then stuck little pins covered with every know allergen known to man into my back. Net result, nada. Zilch. That is, I’m not allergic to molds, grasses, oak pollen, cat or dog fur, or much of anything. But I live in San Antonio, the Hot Zone of allergenic material. In the fall, the cedar pollen blows in from the Hill Country like a pale green dust storm. You can see it coming. Similarly, in early spring, we get bombarded by mold and pollen from oaks and grasses. Soon follows the tyranny of pollen blossoms, that look like small, green worms and fall with abundance, carpeting my back yard like an two-inch thick blanket. The assault of this constant and overwhelming wave of allergens hits me like a club, battering my immune system until I am a walking repository of histamines. My eyes water and close, my nose runs like a cheap faucet and I cough and hack and blow sickening quantities of mucus.

Thank heavens I’m not allergic. No, not exactly. If I were allergic to any of these substances, the slightest hint of them would send me off to the doctor for a quick shot and relief. Me, I get steroid nose spray and buy boxes of Kleenex by the freight-car load.

So, why tell you this? Simple. I have discovered that misery really does like company. And if I’m going to suffer, than by God, those around me will too. See you when the pecan blossoms fall.

Makes Sense To Me

Copyright Bill Waterson

c

A True Irish Story

In 1986, my wife, child and I took a trip to Ireland. We spent a week in Dublin, enjoying the city. We walked the old streets and cross the  River Liffey and enjoyed the sights and smells of the place. Gabriel, then not quite 2, charmed many an Irish man and woman. It was a wonderful trip. 

Then we rented a car and decided to see the West. The serenity of the countryside was broken only by the moments of sheer terror as I barely avoided head-on collisions with big trucks. Remembering to drive on the right side of the road was often a problem when the road was no bigger than our driveway back home. But we struggled on, down through Cork, up to Kilkenny and into the Dingle Peninsula. We reached the Atlantic and looked out across the great ocean. It was lovely. 

Somewhere along the way, in some rural area of green and brown tones, we stopped at a country pub for a sandwich, soup and a rest. It was late afternoon and the sun was sinking towards the horizon. The pub was a small place and poor. There were maybe four people inside, the owner and three work men. They were right out of a casting office for Irish Farmer. Study work clothes, wool caps, heavy, mud-stained boots (at least I hoped it was mud) and hands thick and gnarled with years of pulling a living out of Irish soil. They stared with curiosity at three Americans in their midst, nodded a greeting and turned back to their pints and their talk. 

We ate quickly before the boy could grow too restless and left with thanks. No body said a word. At the rental car, I noticed that the keys I was sure were in my pocket were actually dangling from the ignition. And the doors were locked. Crap. 

After pulling on the doors like that would work, I returned to the pub and the curious stares of the folks inside. I asked if they had a coat hanger I could use to unlock my car door. The pub owner stood silently. “I locked myself out,” I said. He nodded, turned and walked into the back. The farmers watched me as though I was recently released from an asylum for the criminally stupid. 

The pub owner returned with a wire coat hanger and handed it over silently. I left. Back at the rental Ford, I was able to pop the lock, get the keys. As Ginny got Gabriel back into the car, I bent the hanger back into shape and returned it. My re-entry stopped the conversation as I handed the hanger back to its owner. 

He smiled. ‘Ah, keep it, lad,” he said. “Ye may have need o’ it up the road.’ 

And then they laughed. Great roaring laughs that told me I would be the subject of many a pub conversation for years to come. 

‘And, then this American idjit locked his keys in the car while his wee child was fretting and…” 

I’ve pretty much hated vacations since.

Happy Alamo Day To Texans Everywhere

Today marks the 177th Anniversary of the fall of the Alamo. In which a military disaster and defeat for would-be revolutionists helped spawn an independent Texas.

The Alamo battle has been the pawn of patriots and racists and poets and rascals. It has stood for the nobility of sacrifice and the result of shameful opportunism. Yet it remains the Alamo, a monument to the redemption of hope. Love it or hate it, the Alamo shows that we humans can engage in things that are bigger than the sums of our parts.

Viva el Alamo.

As you know by now. William Barrett Travis’ letter has come home to the Alamo. That’s as it should be. The ‘victory or death’ letter is a beautiful example of a stirring 19th Century defiant challenge that is part bombast, part cry from the heart. It’s a great letter. It’s just not my favorite one from Travis. But more on that later.

For Texans of a certain age, you learned the ‘victory or death’ letter in mandatory Texas history lessons in school. Most of us remember it well.

Commendancy of The Alamo
Bejar, Feby. 24th, 1836
To the People of Texas & All Americans in the world –

Fellow Citizens and compatriots –

I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna – I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man – The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken – I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls - I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch – The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country -

Victory or Death

William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. Comdt.

It also burnished the image of a arrogant, overly touchy failed lawyer who fled debtors in his native South Carolina to a career in the Mexican state of Texas defending slave owners and those who hunted runaway slaves. It was the looming revolt of native-born Tejanos, new and sometime illegal immigrants from the United States against the despotic rule of Mexico’s president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna became Travis’ transformation. In the town of Anahuac, Travis railed against what he saw as Mexican injustices against settlers. Effectively so. Mexican officials filed criminal charges against Travis and he fled to San Antonio with volunteers and eventually took a command in the militia that later seized the town from the Mexican Army.

My friend, Scott Huddleston of the San Antonio Express-News, has forgotten more about Alamo lore and the machinations of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in establishing the Alamo Myth of noble, largely White males, dying bravely in sacrifice for freedom. I encourage you to read Scott’s reporting on the letter and the broader recasting of the Alamo’s tale. It’s good stuff.

It’s just not my favorite Travis letter from the Alamo.

There are something like seven letters Travis sent out from the Alamo, variously asking for reinforcements and informing Sam Houston and other leaders of the fledgling revolt how the Alamo garrison was defiantly responding to the Mexican siege, and also what desperate straits their food and ammunition were. And then there’s the last letter, little more than a hurried note scratched on a small piece of paper.

Travis’ young six-year-old son, Charles, who had come to his custody shortly before he decamped for San Antonio,  had been left in the care of Travis’ friend, David Ayres at his home near Washington-on-the-Brazos. And on March 3, 1836,  exactly 177 years ago, Travis sent this note out by the last courier to safely leave. It read:

Take car of my little boy. If the country should be saved, I may make him a splendid fortune; but if the country should be lost and I should perish, he will have nothing but the proud recollection that he is the son of a man who died for his country.

There are many reasons to remember the Alamo, I suppose. And a few to forget it. But at least at that moment, Travis’ thoughts focused on his son and the hope for his future. Travis certainly knew he had no future. Just three days later, the superior forces of the Mexican army poured over the Alamo’s walls. Travis died on the north wall during the final assault. He was just 26 years old.

That’s why I remember the Alamo.