The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 50. The River Walk

River Walk, September 13, 2018

Heavy, dark clouds loomed over the octagonal, 1929 Gothic Tower Life Building, its enormous American flag whipping dramatically against the quickly moving black band that looked like it could spawn tornadoes at any given moment.  We slammed the car doors in the uncovered parking lot and set out strategically for the nearest building we could find with awnings in case we needed shelter from rain, hail, or whatever flying debris the weather might send our way.  It seemed our luck of avoiding the torrential rains of this unusually wet and verdant fall in Texas had run its course.  We were headed to the River Walk, but I feared we might be viewing most of the day through water streaming down some cafe window as the world flashed and shook outside.   Yet, we forged ahead because when you are on vacation all you have at your disposal is each day.  It's not like you can rearrange your calendar and stay home and clean house or read through the storm, and set out on your picnic once the weather clears up.  All you have is the day, so you use it, regardless of the weather.  Tomorrow it will be time to move on to another place.

Perhaps that is the real reward of vacation.  These days we spend so much time insulating ourselves from the world.  If it snows, or rains, or even if it is just extra windy, we head inside, watch TV, get on Facebook, or do inside chores.  We really only experience the outside world on bright, sunny days, and even then, it is usually for short stretches of time.  We spend most of our existences in heated/air-conditioned cocoons.  When we are on vacation, we are somewhat forced out into the real world by the fact that now is  all the time we've got in this place, and we might as well enjoy it, regardless of the weather.  If only we had great enough vision to realize the same reality applies to our life:  This is the only time we've got on this place we call earth, and we might as well enjoy it regardless of the literal, political, or emotional weather spiraling around and through us, because when it's time to move-on, we will be moved on whether we like it or not.  The hours we consume worrying about things we would never worry about while on vacation is mind-boggling.  When on the road, you just go and do, and dress as appropriately as possible.  Life should be lived the same way.   

As it turned out, all that hit us were a few sprinkles.  We crossed some street and dropped down into the lush, watery world that is the River Walk.  I'd never seen it during the daytime.  It was less crowded, less festive, a lot less light dancing around, dazzling the mind with runs and streaks of color, but beautiful none the less.  On such a cloudy day, what was most prominent were shades of green: the lacy, almost black, branches of giant bald cypress gently swaying overhead and ferns, hostas and other shade-loving plants, tucked in the rich, black soil of flower beds between stone walls, walkways, and the green waters of the canal.  The river was doing its magic again.

This was the third trip of Marci and me doing this walk together.  The previous two times had been with our boys at Christmas.  Once Lloyd came with us too.  The River Walk is especially beautiful during the holidays, when the trees are lit up in every color you can imagine, all that light is multiplied in the undulating mirror of the river.  Everywhere you look is a streak, a splinter, a spark-- a flint, a fleck, a flash--of intense color as Mariachi bands, streets musicians, and congregations of laughing people score the dynamic scene.

River Walk September 13, 2018.  During the winter holidays, most of those trees are lit up with lights.

Visiting San Antonio today it is hard to believe the city ever existed without the beautiful, benign banks of the San Antonio River gently winding through the city center.  But the river once was not viewed so favorably.  It was pron to nasty, life-taking floods, so much so that military personnel were forbidden to go near it, and people were warned of "being drowned like a rat" if they ventured down to its banks (Wikipedia).  In fact, had we showed up 97 years and 3 days earlier, or on September 9, 1921, we would have been greeted with more than 23 inches of rain--in a single day!--and an incredibly angry river.  That's the day the streets of downtown San Antonio were flooded with one to twelve feet of water, depending on your location, after a hurricane slammed into the gulf coast September 4, and the tropical aftermath dropped 8,000 acre feet of water and took 215 lives across central Texas (Salinas), 51 of those drowned rats being residents of San Antonio (Wikipedia).

But what a way to turn tragedy into something amazingly beautiful and life-sustaining!  So, it is worth providing here a short, condensed history of the River Walk of San Antonio:

After the flood of 1921, the city planned the Olmos Dam and a diversion of the river around the natural bend located in downtown San Antonio.  Construction began in 1926, and if it were not for the San Antonio Conservation Society, which in 1926 put on a puppet show at city hall and took commissioners on canoe rides down the river, instead of having the river walk today, downtown would be graced by a concrete sewer (Wikipedia), as that is exactly what the elected visionaries had dreamed up.  What the commissioners lacked in vision was made up for by architect Robert H. Hugman, who on June 28, 1929 presented his plans for "The Shops of Romula and Aragon," the beginning of what would become The River Walk (The San Antonio River Walk Association).

We spent the afternoon and evening walking along the canals until our feet could carry us no farther, with an amazing boat ride to midway through to rest our weary soles and provide us a different perspective on the canal.  Although somewhat expensive, it was well worth the money.  The boat glides you along, and all you have to do is aim your camera at the next magical site.  Or, if you're so inclined, you can listen to the boat operator give a narrative history of the canal which your brain will dump before you ever step on solid ground.  Or you can take selfies.  I never do that, but in the enthusiasm and excitement of American tourism, I did.  I have to say it is quite the novelty.

The great American Selfie:  Steve and Marci Brown,
San Antonio River Walk boat ride, September 13, 2018

And then we did what you always do on vacation.  We moved on.  We drove back in the dark to our camp at Pedernales Falls where I spent the night gasping for breath in a hot, humid, claustrophobic hell.  But that is the next story.

References

Salinas, Rebecca. mySA.com. 3 April 2015. 7 March 2020. <https://www.mysanantonio.com/150years/major-stories/article/The-1921-flood-caused-death-destruction-new-6177194.php>.

The San Antonio River Walk Association. History of the River Walk. 2020. 14 March 2020. <https://www.thesanantonioriverwalk.com/history/history-of-the-river-walk>.

Wikipedia. San Antonio River Walk. 20 January 2020. 14 March 2020. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_River_Walk>.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 49. Alice Walker and a Night Along the River Walk Long Ago

It is possible San Antonio and the River Walk would not be part of my life if it were not for my obsession with Alice Walker in 1989.  I was taking the second semester of Women's Literature from Dr. Ford.  We were assigned to read The Color Purple.  I couldn't get enough of Alice Walker.  I headed for a bookstore and purchased Living by the Word, a collection of her nonfiction essays, and devoured each word methodically.  Walker spoke plain English.  Her descriptions were short and sharp.  Sometimes she walked in circles around a subject like a good story teller, and sometimes she wandered back and forth in wavy broad strokes right up the center to claim her territory.  What she didn't do is construct a standard five-paragraph thesis paper, mechanically leading you to adopt her conclusion, like I'd been taught one had to do in order to make an argument.  In fact, she didn't seem interested in convincing at all.  She didn't build her writing on traditional Western rhetorical techniques.  She lived it.  Breathed it.  Her writing said, This is what I have experienced and this is my story.  Here it is.  Whether or not you want to hear it, so be it, I'm telling you anyway. I will not be silenced anymore.

She was also a voice for the poor.  I was a working college student without financial aid, and I felt very poor at the time.  I'd worked minimum wage jobs in high school as well, and I saw people in their 50s and 60s trapped in low-level management jobs in fast-food and retail.  I'd lived in apartments with roaches and twenty-year old rotting carpet.  And I knew I had it good compared to most.  I came from a good home.  I experienced no domestic violence.  I was a man.  I'd never been raped.  I knew I'd been lucky, but I also felt I saw the world clearly, and that the deck was stacked against most in favor of the privileged few.  I was ready for revolution.  Alice Walker was the voice of clear-eyed anger.  Even her hair stood for something.  Those long, black dreadlocks.  Her broad face, big eyes, and warm, knowing, full-lipped simile.  Her bright, African apparel.  I had an idol.

One spring day Professor Ford announced that she'd just found out on short notice that Alice Walker would be reading in San Antonio, five hours away.  I was in a class of young women who I hoped would be revolutionaries too, although they didn't always seem that way.  They nearly bit my head off when I observed that whenever they went to a club on those "ladies get in free" nights, they were participating in the subjugation of their sex.  I think I said something like, "If you want to be equal, you've got to stand up and demand to pay equal; those courtesies come with expectations."  They did not agree and let me know it, although Professor Ford seemed to.

Their resistance to my message might have had more to do with the the messenger than the message.  I'm sure I seemed pretty creepy to my all-female class.  I sat in the back most of the semester, the only male, without saying a thing, and then I'm up there at the pulpit rattling rapturously, preaching fire and damnation against anyone who enjoys ladies' night out.  That was the way I was.  I was incredibly shy, so I generally never spoke.  But my mind was always ticking.  I could see patterns in society--especially patterns designed to keep people down, as that was  my main paradigm--and I'd get so worked up over the injustice, I'd break out of my shell, come raging forward with a torrent of words, and then retreat back into my safety zone.  I could argue like a lawyer; I just couldn't say "Hi."  I'm sure the combination of the two made me seem like an unstable menace to society, an extremest secretly making pipe bombs to right the world of its wrongs.  And perhaps that could have been a direction I'd have taken if I hadn't had such good parents, and if my all-time hero (even more than Alice Walker) hadn't been Gandhi.  I believed then, as I do now, that generally a beneficial-end can never justify impure means and that seldom is violence a solution to anything.

If anything, it was my firm belief in the need for pure motives that was my real psychological abnormality.  I was born to feel guilty.  I loved those lines from "Something So Right" by Paul Simon: "When something goes wrong / I'm the first one to admit it / And the last one to know."  I was too keenly aware of any mixed-motives I might have to function properly in the world.  For instance, I knew that on the one hand, I really did care about the feminists movement, but on the other hand I took Women's Literature because I wanted a woman.  And not just any woman.  I wanted some little beauty with fiery midnight eyes, wearing a jeans-jacket and combat boots, and holding picket signs or maybe an acoustic guitar.  She had to be cute, but she had to be tough also.  The woman of my dreams was basically what Darlene on Rosanne would later be when she went to college, although at the time that show was just beginning to air, and she was a child.  Anyway, I figured Women's Literature was the best place to find a revolutionary spit-fire beauty, and so I signed up.

I never thought anything realistic about the scenario though--how I would approach her, what I would say, or more importantly, how I would get up the courage to say anything at all.  I never thought about how the woman I desired on the inside might not match how I envisioned her at all on the the outside. I never imagined that the girl with the cute figure wearing combat boots and a jeans jacket might be a shallow ditz playing the part of a college intellectual, and that the real revolutionary might weigh 300 pounds, have bright red hair, wear a purple and pink daisy-print dress and shiny black low-heal grandma shoes, and have an accent from deep down in Alabama.  Nope, no other possible reality need apply.  I had my mind made up.  The woman I wanted would be scripted to my every wish:  short; slender; nice hips, cute butt; kinky, long, black hair; midnight eyes; sarcastic, knowing smile.  She would just appear in the shape and form I desired, absorbing all that feminism, and when she saw me, she would immediately recognize that I was a poet, a pilgrim for the male species, ready to fight the good fight alongside her in the liberation of womankind.  We would demonstrate by day, sing anthems to the working class by night , and make passionate love in the early hours of the morning, and then get up, make coffee, write poetry, and then do it all over again, day after day.  She would be my Yoko Ono and I would be her John Lennon.

Instead, I found myself in class with girls who just wanted to go out at night (not with me), have a good time, and enjoy "Ladies Get in Free" without having to think about the impact they were having on humanity; girls who were bored by Professor Ford's long, draw- out lectures on the subjugation of women; girls who thought of her as some crazy, geriatric hippy who was bitter towards the world.  Still, I had hope.  Perhaps if I could go to that Alice Walker reading, bring back a signed book or something, and show it to them, sharing a word or two about the power of language and what words can do for the movement, perhaps it would light a fire in one of those lovely ladies' heart and mind, and the movie that was supposed to be my life would finally begin.

That is what I wanted to believe anyway, but I'd also read "Araby" by James Joyce. I knew nothing ever turns out positively.  Mangan's sister is a mirage, and any hopes of bliss evaporates at some bazaar while the world ignores you, everyone going about the business of feeding their own selfish desires.  Still, if I left right after class, I could make the reading.  Who knows?  Something could happen.

When I got back to the apartment and told my roommate Molly, she wanted to go with me.  Looking back, I realize she was probably a lot closer to my dream girl on the inside than I would have been comfortable admitting, which is probably why we fought so much.  She read all of the time and she was definitely a feminist, but she didn't match my filmmaker's vision, so I never considered scripting her into my life.  Truth is, I was the same sexist pig I so deplored, which is why, perhaps, I was so drawn to women's literature in the first place.  I was fascinated by the guilt of my own species.  Why are men such pigs?

However, Molly was a good friend.  I had no problem with Molly tagging along.  It's just that I knew Molly well, and from the moment she said, "I want to go," I was terrified the whole thing would fall apart.  I feared that I would never come back victorious with an autographed book by Alice Walker, and that I would never be received by that class of girls as an enlightened man of the women's movement, ready to be embraced and loved by all.  Of course, part of me knew those girls cared less about Alice Walker, feminism, or Dr. Ford's class, but I wasn't yet prepared to give up the fantasy.  I'd scripted it, and was determined to make it happen against all odds.  Unfortunately, without even knowing it, Molly was more than happy to jump in and play the role of my antagonist.

And so one hot, humid spring day in 89 we headed south under a  boiling sky to meet Alice Walker and get my copy of Living by the Word signed.  If I remember right, another hero of mine, Paul McCartney, was playing Texas Stadium that same night.  We had to go east to get south, and passed it. The freeways were wet, the traffic was bad.  Molly wasn't as ready to go as soon as she said she would be.  I had paced the living room, saying loudly, every two minutes, "Are you ready yet?"  We left late. Although I worried about getting to San Antonio on time, I still imagined seeing McCartney live.  I didn't even try to get tickets.  They were sixty bucks!  But oh how magical it would be.  I could see the lights; I could hear the piano intro to "Live and Let Die" and then the explosion of sound--an orchestra on steroids.  No rules.  No fear.  Just a wall of sound.  All-encompassing sound.  Life!

And here beside me was Molly.  Molly with her foot up on my dashboard, talking on and on and on.  Molly who wasn't ready when she said she would be.  Molly who made it so we didn't get on the freeway before rush-hour started, which in Dallas is at 2:00 p.m.  Molly, who talked as if it didn't really matter if we saw Alice Walker.  Molly, who although she skipped class all of the time to read, read mostly pulp fiction.  Molly, who left dishes piled in the sink.  Molly who left spaghetti on her plate--for days at a time!  Molly, who did not conform to my vision of what a woman should be.  I was mad as hell at her for obstructing my doorway into the world of feminism.

Yeah, I know.  I didn't get it. The story goes on.

I don't remember much of the drive.  I didn't want a drive.  This was no pleasure ride.  I was on a mission, and my mission was to get to San Antonio, hear Alice Walker read, and get my book signed.  We were late and I was terrified my traveling companion would destroy the whole thing.

And after miles rushed by in a blur--just when it looked like I might cross the finish line--Molly stepped up to play her antagonist role.

"I'm hungry."

"We can get something to eat after the reading."

"I'm hungry now."

"Yeah, so am I."

"You don't understand.  You know, I'm diabetic."

That I did know.  I'd seen her carried out of the apartment on a stretcher as a result of her blood sugar getting messed up.

"Can't it wait?  We've only got 40 minutes?"

"No, not really."

And here's the really stupid thing.  I'm not sure what explains it.  It probably wasn't Molly.  We didn't just swing by some fast food drive-through.  I remember we got off some place near downtown.  There were old brick buildings from the early 1900's.  I remember Molly shooting up with insulin outside the car and a hard light hitting the brick facades.  It was gorgeous, but I wanted to be furious bad enough I stayed in my anger.  And then--this is the part I just don't get.  We went inside some diner and got these great big, wonderful burgers.  I think here, that the conflict must switched to man vs. self.  I abhorred fast food and was always looking for real food--an early Anthony Bourdain, I guess--even on my budget.  Somehow though, if we were late, it would be Molly's fault, not mine.  My thought process was, If I were alone, I'd go to the reading first, and then find a great place to eat afterward, spending hours slowly savoring the food as I read Alice Walker and looked admiringly at her very pretty signature, dreaming of reaction of the girls in Women's Lit.

Somehow, we still got to the place--some university, I think, although I don't really remember--before the event started.  There was a huge line, but I had my book, and we were in line.

And then they closed the doors.  "Sorry folks, we're full."

My heart sank.  This was no time to be a coward.  I stepped out of line and walked up to authority.  "Is there some way my friend and I can get in?"  I said, pointing to Molly.  "We drove all of the way from Dallas."

Those close by in the line next to me, who like me hadn't moved, who hadn't given up on their dream, were clearly impressed.    There was an audible approval of such dedication to the arts.

"There aren't anymore seats."

"We can stand," I said.

Several others in line agreed they could do the same.

Authority went to talk to someone with greater authority and came back.  "I can let in the two from Dallas and the first eight in line.  That's it.  You'll have to stand at the back, out of the aisles.  To everyone else, I'm truly sorry."

And so we got in.  My dream wasn't demolished.

The lights lowered.  The stage lights went on.  Out walked some dean to introduce Alice Walker, beauty, hero, icon.  The crowd stood up and clapped as Alice walked out.  Wow, I thought, you really can achieve something akin to rock-star status as a writer.  To me she was as beautiful as in her picture, although clearly older.   If I remember right, she wore little round John Lennon spectacles.

And then it happened.  Someone tapped me on the shoulder.   I turned around and saw someone in a fire chief suit.  "Sorry, you're going to have to leave."

"What?  They let us in.  See, here's my ticket."

"Yes, but I'm the fire marshal.  Sorry, we're over legal capacity."

Shit.  The man.  Real Authority.

Out in the foyer, one of the organizers greeted the dejected souls, and was clearly moved by human compassion.  I remember her as a little, frail woman in silver hair in her late sixties, although I have no idea if that is accurate, or just my mind weaving myth.  But, I do know she said something like, "I'm so sorry;  come back though, the book signing will be afterward in the gymnasium; I'm sure Ms. Walker would love to sign a book for you."

If I wrote this story, it would end here.  I'm not much of a fiction writer, and I don't really understand plot.  In fact, I try to avoid it whenever and wherever I can.  I want the plot-line of my life to look like the vital signs of a dead man.  I want it to look like the topography of Kansas.  Who wants goals and problems?  I just want a casual stroll across a mowed field outside Garden City on a perfect fall day.  That is the all of the undulations in life that I want.

Life, however, often understands plot better than even the best of writers.  Again, without knowing it, Molly stepped up to play antagonist.

"We've got a couple of hours.  Let's go see the River Walk."

I really thought that was a bad idea.  I just wanted to walk over to the gymnasium, sit on the concrete walk, and be first in line to get my book signed.  However, Molly went on and on about how beautiful the River Walk is and what a crime it is to come to San Antonio and not see it.  She promised we could be back on time.  If I had been more wise, I probably would have realized this was her real agenda in coming with me--to walk the River Walk.  Life really was "Araby," a plot of dissatisfaction spurred-on by everyone's own selfish desires.

Anyway, we ended up downtown.  We parked in some parking garage and got out.  I thought, What's so miraculous about this place?   It's a freaking ghost town.  The streets were all but void of traffic.  Not a single restaurant open.  It was deader than downtown Dallas after work hours, which in the 80's, made downtown Toledo, Ohio feel like the Las Vegas Strip or Times Square.

Then we walked across some silent street, stepped down some stairs below a canopy of big trees, and Wow!  A world of wonder opened up.

Stone, vegetation, water, light, music, people, life!  Absolutely stunning.  There simply is no way to get down the beauty of the San Antonio's River Walk on paper, especially at night.  It's spectacular no matter how many times you go back.  But, the shock of finding it there in all its glory on a night when you just knew nothing could go right.  Well, I was stunned.  Then mesmerized.  Molly and I walked around giddy as could be, and Alice Walker and the girls in Dr. Ford's second semester of Women's Literature became a distant memory, at least for the night.

At some point Molly said, "We better get going, if we're going to get to the book signing."

"No, let's walk," I said.  "It'll be alright."

On the drive home, I found my anger again, and silently seethed as I drove down the wet, congested interstate towards a reality nothing like the River Walk.  I had to.  If I didn't, my world might have unraveled that night.  No more dreams of the little revolutionary girl with midnight eyes and kinky, long black hair, wearing a jeans jacket and combat boots, holding picket signs.  I just couldn't let go.

No, it would be years later, when I met Marci, until that dream would be shattered.  She was simply so powerfully right for me I gave up on my expectations of life and just followed her.  Yet, that wonderful night with my good friend Molly was my first taste of really understanding that, as Paul's good friend John put it,  "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." (Lennon)

References

Lennon, John. "Beautiful Boy." Double Fantasy. By John Lennon. 1981. LP.