Texas Immersion

 

San Antonio Airport Bodega named after Adina Emilia De Zavala

My four days of Texas immersion, visiting my aunt in Dripping Springs followed by 24 hours in San Antonio, is drawing to a close. Texas pride is alive and well. Everyone I met here harbors an abiding sense of place, a love for tradition, and a fierce devotion to the idea of freedom. Not unsurprisingly, these common values lead to conflicts when people perceive them to be threatened, even when threats come from what appears to an outsider (me) as the logical results of choices and preferences the people of Texas have revealed over time.

Take Dripping Springs, where my aunt and uncle live on 10 acres of dry cedars, live oaks, and scrub brush. When they moved there 25 years ago, it was a community of 300 people with very few amenities, about 45 minutes from Austin. Now there are 30,000 people, subdivisions, lights in the hills, and no real plan to deal with the Hill Country’s perennial water problem. There is also an Art League, bars and restaurants, including two amazing Tex Mex places, and more than one HEB grocery store. 

In the Hills, enough Jewish families to make an active Havurah live among newly-constructed Christian compounds and lots still filled with rusted vehicles and prickly people. There are also an increasing number of VRBOs and Air BNBs. Austin is growing, and people are searching further afield for a Bohemian Texas. Lake Austin now supports a plethora of high-end restaurants and coffee shops. Meanwhile, local TV is glutted with advertisements for potential politicians touting their closeness to the current president and their commitment to mass deportations, dismantling “woke DEI” and protection of Texas heritage. As I enjoyed an amazing carnitas Rojas and family-recipe chicken mole, and the best flan I’ve ever tasted, I wondered what heritage they were talking about. Having spent two days looking through boxes of bags, scarves, and jewelry that belonged to three generations of strong and beautiful women in my family, tangible heritage was very much on my mind. But the heritage people guard most fiercely is often intangible and almost always ephemeral.

In San Antonio, after a fabulous spa day overlooking a hill preserved by La Cantera as a golf course, my aunt and I got ready for the rodeo, in San Antonio for a week before moving on to three next stop in its annual Texas circuit. I proudly donned the cowboy boots I purchased 20 years ago in Colorado, and a beautiful hat I borrowed from my aunt, and joined the parade of people decked out in their Texas finery. At the edge of a working-class neighborhood, a tangle of highways away from the exclusive loveliness of La Cantera, the rodeo took place in the same stadium where the Spurs play basketball. 

People from all walks of (Texas) life came in boots and jeans, dresses with rhinestone belts, and cowboy hats of every color. Together we cheered on the steer-ropers, bull-riders, and barrel-racers. Special love was reserved for anyone from Texas no matter their color, gender, or linguistic background. After the rodeo ended, a shared love of country music overtook the stadium as Dierks Bentley mounted a giant revolving stage.

This morning, after a peaceful sleep and a sunrise swim, my aunt gave me a tour of her hotel. I met the staff, a beautifully diverse group of dedicated people, and watched as visitors came and went in and out of the busy lobby. At the San Antonio airport, I was introduced to anther historian named Adina! This woman’s Texas Pride led her to organize to save the Alamo from destruction and to lobby the government to allow all the flags of Texas history— Spanish, Mexican, Republic of Texas, United States, and, yes, Confederate, to fly over the capital. Her dedication got her a bodega named after her in an International Airport. What could be more Texas and, dare I say it, American than that?