May 16, 2006
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San Jacinto Memorial
When I moved to California, I expected everyone to be blonde and jog a lot. I predicted lots of earthquakes and palm trees. I was going to surf, because, after all, everyone in California surfs, right?
When I finally arrived in Fresno, I realized that a large part of the population is not blonde, nor blue-eyed, and Fresno is really far from the beach. While I was in the Central Valley, I was only in 1 earthquake. In the Bay Area, there were only 2 earthquakes that I was able to even feel. When I visited my grandparents in Long Beach, we spent more time in San Pedro eating crab legs, rather than going to the beach. (I miss those crab legs.)
Now that I live in Texas, I have dispelled the notion that everyone here wears cowboy hats and boots and knows how to ride a horse. (Not that there aren't a lot of people who really do ride horses here. And in the Texas sun, a cowboy hat is the most practical thing to wear when mowing the lawn.) Not everyone here speaks with a drawl or looks like they just stepped out of the movie "Giant."
When we went to Houston last week, we saddled up our ponies and rode around town. I came across this memorial on a peninsula in Galveston Bay. It had some interesting words to say about how Texas was formed. Lately popular opinion seems to be that Texas stole land from Mexico. This memorial supports that idea. Texas was made by Tejanos -- Mexicans who escaped the dictatorial government of Mexico to form a new country called Texas. To support their cause, they enlisted soldiers from the U.S. to help them win a place to call their own -- Tejas. The soldiers were ordinary men who came from far away places like Illinois, Ohio, Vermont, Germany, Italy, and so on.
Does Tejas belong to Mexico? Not if the Tejanos have anything to say about it.
While trying to get a picture of the star at the top of the memorial, I noticed a 22-degree halo peeking out of the clouds.
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