Remember the Alamo: Or what it was without the trinkets
By John David Powell (03/06/07)
March 6 marks the 161st anniversary of the fall of the Alamo in what is today San Antonio, Texas. The day will go unnoticed outside of Texas, except for those with ties or interests in the historical events that shaped our current relationship with Mexico.
The Alamo is Texas. Walk into any bookstore in the state and you will find shelves filled with books on the subject. Sometimes authors hold book signings with the site of the siege as a backdrop.
What remains of the old Spanish mission is a shrine that is central to Texas and U.S. history. All lovers of history and lore, therefore, should mourn what has happened to this hallowed ground.
Although I do not believe in ghosts, I do believe in the Eastern Orthodox teaching that all time exists simultaneously. That belief explains, for me at least, what some folks label as supernatural occurrences.
All time existing at the same time allows the possibility of thin places in time. Sometimes those thin places have tears or outright holes. Rips in the time/space continuum if you like science fiction. It is through these thin places or holes that we glimpse the past. (OK, then why don’t we see the future through similar holes? Maybe we do, only we don’t know it. But be careful, someone from the future may be watching you right now.)
Traumatic events, like war, puncturing the thin veil of time with their psychic energy explain the eerie sightings at Gettysburg: tales from credible sources of troop formations or scenes from a battlefield hospital. To my knowledge, there are no such sightings (or at least not with as much regularity) at the Alamo. Why is this? Well, as you may have guessed, I have a theory.
Commercialism.
If you blink, you’ll miss the Alamo. Although it is a giant among our legends, the remaining site takes up about a block, surrounded by hotels and shops. The Menger Hotel is just across the alley from the Alamo. A department store occupies a corner across the street, while a mall sits right behind.
And directly across the street, literally feet from the scene of fierce hand-to-hand fighting during those final predawn minutes is, believe it or not, a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not emporium filled with mechanical dinosaurs, flashing lights, carnival sounds, and other cheap tourist trappings.
Walk inside the Alamo and you will find yourself shoulder to elbow, nose to hairy back, with a hundred sweaty tourists, many on their way to the gift shop where trinkets and other cheap tourist trappings beckon with their tempting siren call.
Want a coonskin cap for the top of your head? You got it. How about a rubber Bowie knife? Plastic paperweights? Badges? Badges? They’ve got lots of stinking badges.
Wooden nickels. Postcards. Texas flags. Tapes. CDs. T-shirts. Caps. Hats. Mugs. Books. Pins. Pens. Charms. Rings.
You will even find boxes of animal crackers. Only these aren’t animal, animal crackers. They are the heroes of the Alamo crackers. You, too, can eat your heroes. It must be a Eucharistic thing.
There is no time or space for reflection on the events of those 13 days and of the last hour for the defenders. Just time and space for the exchange of hard currency for cheap mementos.
Some clowns on too much pixie dust, a few years back, tried unsuccessfully to put a theme park next to the Gettysburg battlefield. Lincoln said we cannot dedicate, consecrate, or hallow that ground, yet some folks would like to desecrate it with thrill rides and magical kingdom crap. Next thing you know, Native Americans will be putting up casinos on their sacred lands.
They have? Never mind, then.
It may not be too late for the Alamo, though. If you visit the place, close your eyes and imagine what it was like more 161 years ago. For 12 days each man, woman and child looked over the walls, waiting for reinforcements. Each day they endured shelling from the enemy without the loss of a single life. And, each day they knew that unless reinforcements came or the army of Santa Ana withdrew, they would die within the walls of the Alamo. And they did, on the morning of Day 13, March 6, 1836.
Victory or Death, wrote William B. Travis.
Now, we can add Believe It Or Not.
John David Powell is an award-winning columnist, university lecturer in communication, and a contributor to the Christian History Project.
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