Texas Tidbits: The San Antonio Riverwalk (UPDATED with New Photos!) Scroll down

The Riverwalk

I have lived in some of the biggest cities in the United States - Houston, Dallas, Denver and Columbus, Ohio - and each of them has some thing or things that make it stand out in a crowd. Houston has the Astrodome and NASA, Dallas is home to the Cowboys, Denver is located just east of and has a great view of the Rockies and Columbus has The Ohio State University. While each of these cities are special in its own way, they come nowhere near my favorite big city in the US when it comes to history and cool stuff to do. My favorite big city? San Antonio, hands down.

I choose San Antonio for several reasons - the Alamo, the missions, its incredible history and the one thing that sets it apart from the others - The Riverwalk. Spending the day on one of the "cruise barges" sucking down some margaritas and soaking up the unique atmosphere and Mexican music of San Antonio is a damn fun thing to do. Eating at one of the riverside restaurants ain't too shabby either.

The Riverwalk has an interesting history, as well. According to TxTell.com, "In June 1929 a 27-year-old UT Architecture graduate named Robert H. Hugman outlined an alternate vision for the area, which combined romance and nostalgia with promotional good sense and anticipated the beautiful and evocative Riverwalk as we know it today. After almost 10 years of lobbying, speaking to civic groups, writing newspaper articles, and calling on community business leaders, Hugman's proposal was adopted and he was hired as the architect." the article goes on to say, "However, it wasn't until the 1960s that the design originally envisioned by Hugman reached its full potential. In preparation for San Antonio's HemisFair '68, another UT Architecture graduate, Cyrus Wagner, led the design effort, heading an American Institute of Architecture-sponsored team that created an updated vision for the Riverwalk, adding a lively concentration of shops, clubs, and cafes. Wagner's team garnered a national Progressive Architecture Design award for excellence in community architecture and established a national presence for the emerging Riverwalk." Click here to read the rest of the article.

I know many of my friends have been to San Antonio and took in The Riverwalk, but for those of you that haven't, click on the links throughout the post and you'll get a ton of information about what The Riverwalk has to offer you.

Thanks again, Rachel Rogers!

Revelers on the Riverwalk (photo from Rachel Rogers)

Texas Tidbits : How to Grow Tomatoes, Peppers & Missile Launchers?

I am a gardener. I grow stuff - tomatoes, peppers, squash, you name it, I've probably grown it or tried to grow it. Gardening is something I learned from Grandma Shoemaker as a young child. I was fascinated that one day she would put a tiny seed in the ground and a few weeks later BAM!, there was a tomato! Even now, in my mid-50's, that little boy of the early 1960's shows up every time I spot a new blossom on a tomato plant or some such. Wow! That's gonna be a (fill-in-the-vegetable-name-here)! And I think of Grandma. The secret to a productive garden is good dirt, so preparation is key to a bountiful harvest. And let me tell you, while tilling up the ground for a garden, you are liable to find almost anything - nails, rocks, silverware, coins, old bottles, missile launchers....missile launchers??? Yep, there's nothing like digging up discarded military explosive devices to get a bang out of gardening. That's exactly what happened to 34 year old Jarrette Schule of Comal County near San Antonio. From the article, "Schule spent Tuesday afternoon calling the FBI, Homeland Security, the Sheriff’s Department — every agency he could think of. He was stuck in a bureaucratic limbo.
“Everyone was handing it off to everybody else,” Schule said. And some people want more government? This guy found this missile launcher on a Tuesday, made all the right phone calls to all the right people and nobody seemed to care! WTF? This tale does have a happy (and safe) ending, however. The next day, Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio was kind enough to send an ordinance disposal team to pick up the military hardware and do whatever they do with rogue missile launchers found by civilians while preparing some land for a garden. I don't know about you, but a few questions come to mind regarding this peculiar situation. Questions like...where were the local cops? Dunkin Donuts? What about Homeland Security? Were they too busy at the airport frisking nuns and 90 year old women who pose a threat to our national security? And the FBI? I hear they were deep undercover at the Glenn Beck 8/28 Rally looking for right-wing extremists carrying homemade signs that "Obama is a Kenyan". Don't get me wrong, I'm not raggin' on law enforcement here, their job is tough enough as it is. I love the guys and gals in blue and the Feds, but c'mon folks. One of the higher ups in one of these agencies should have had a passing thought like, "This old boy in Comal County found a missile launcher while digging up his garden and maybe, just maybe, there's an element of danger to him and the general public. Finkelstein! Get somebody out there pronto!" But, all's well that ends well, I suppose. Excuse me while I go get my dirt ready for next year's garden. I might dig up Osama Bin Laden.