A Day of Learning of the Plight of Native Peoples

We woke to rain and wind.  Yesterday's high was 83 degrees.  Today's high was 47 degrees.  That seems like a drastic change in weather.  The cold didn't make us feel like going anywhere but we finally braved the cold to go to Box St. All Day for brunch.  It was a good choice.  

After breakfast we came back to the rental. Gayle wanted to do her laundry and rest.  Her back has been hurting since the Cathedral of Junk.  She spent quite a bit of time in that amazing place standing and verticality is what causes her trouble.  

I took her car and headed for the only UNESCO World Heritage Site in Texas.  It encompasses five missions in San Antonio that stretch along the San Antonio River and illustrate the Spanish Crown's efforts to colonize, evangelize and defend the northern frontier of New Spain.  I decided to go to Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo.  I chose it because it is referred to as the Queen of the Missions because of how well preserved it is.  The National Park Service maintains and operates this UNESCO World Heritage Site.

I stopped in the Visitor Center for a map.  The ranger told me that the only brochures they had left were in Spanish.  I said, "Well then it is a good thing that I am learning Spanish on Duolingo."  I turned on the audio tour on my phone and headed past the walls of the mission.

It was impressively large inside the walls.

The homes of the Natives were built into the wall.

The church is still an active parish that holds a mariachi mass once a week.

They had an ofrenda set up in the vestibule.

This is a Franciscan mission and they had a replica of St. Francis' corpse in a glass casket.  They had cut away the robe to show his stigmata, which they said he hid from the world to keep him from being tempted by pride.  

Since I still had some time to kill I decided to take the Mission Road to see what the other missions looked like.  Everywhere I went along the river there were signs warning of potential flooding, and it was really raining by this time.  I crossed one bridge that seemed close to flooding.  

I hurried across and stopped at Mission Espada.  There were no intact structures left.  It was windy and raining and one of the visitors before me had left their broken umbrella in the trash can.  Needless to say, I didn't stay long!

As I continued on the journey of missions I passed a cemetery.  My grandfather, a sociologist, liked to say if you really want to understand a culture you need to visit their cemeteries.  My mother often had us stop at cemeteries on our travels.  So I pulled in.  It was clear that people had come to decorate the tombstones of their loved ones, and perhaps have a picnic in honor of Dia de los Muertos.

I drove on to the Mission Concepcion.  I was running later than I had planned so I didn't explore it as much as the others.

The Alamo is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site.  Gayle and I remember being there as young children on a family vacation. We didn't feel like we needed to go to the Alamo this trip.  Gayle believes she remembers everything she heard on the tour from childhood.  But now I am interested in at least driving by.  I knew it as the fortress where Davy Crockett lost his life.  I didn't realize that it had begun as a Catholic Mission to convert the people native of this land.  It was abandoned in 1793 and later became a fortress housing a military unit.  Maybe we can swing by on our way out of town tomorrow.

Gayle and I decided that today would be our day to go to a movie.  I came back to our rental and we headed out to see Killers of the Flower Moon.  It is a 3 hour, 37 minute movie and worth every minute.  It tells the story from the 1920s of the Osage people.  After they were moved off their land to an area of Oklahoma deemed worthless it turned out to be oil rich.  Subsequently, the Osage became the wealthiest people, per capita, on the planet.  There were many, many murders and unexplained deaths of the Osage people during that time in what became known as the Reign of Terror.  This movie tells the sad tale and int arrival of the FBI.  I think it is Martin Scorsese's finest.  If you have four hours to kill, I would recommend you see this movie.

We were pretty hungry by the time we got to our car.  We found food and headed home.  Tomorrow we leave for Corpus Christi and a chance to see our Uncle Stanley.  

Dia de los Muertos

Gayle and I wanted to enjoy the Riverwalk today.  We were confused about how to get the boat shuttle but after some research we thought we finally understood.  We parked the car across from one of the ticket booths for Go Rio.  We moseyed past the sculptures at the Briscoe Western Art Museum before we got to the booth.  

We learned to our dismay that the river shuttles don't begin until noon.  We were 90 minutes too early.  After some discussion we got tickets for the guided cruise that was leaving immediately and also got one day shuttle passes we would use tonight.  We hopped on and headed out for our 30 minute ride with our Australian guide, Stew.

It was lovely and we learned some things....mostly what restaurants are along the river edge. We returned where we began and paid the $20 to get our car out of parking.  I know who is making money in San Antonio!  By then we were hungry and grumpy.  We headed to Guenther House because it had good reviews and is right next to the river.  We were informed that we would be seated in just under two hours. We couldn't wait that long. We got back in the car and started calling restaurants to find our their wait times.  We settled on Halcyon Southtown Cafe because they promised us we wouldn't have to wait.

After a parallel parking situation that included a "helpful" woman barking directions at us, we entered the restaurant to discover that while we would be seated immediately the downside was that they had a DJ spinning records.  It was so loud it was almost unbearable....but we were hungry.  We got a flight of mimosas and ordered food to share.  The food was meh and our ears felt assaulted.  We were definitely the oldest people in the restaurant.

We returned to our guest house to rest a bit before heading to the Dia de los Muertos parade near the Tower of the Americas.  Gayle opted to stay behind and rest her back.  I took her car and headed for the park.  It was traffic mayhem.  The parking lot I thought I would use was housing the event.  I drove around through heavy traffic for 30 minutes looking for a place to park before I returned to our rental feeling defeated and disappointed.  I asked myself, "When will you be in San Antonio for Dia de los Muertos again?"  So I decided to take a Lyft over.  I was there in minutes.

I missed the beginning of the parade but I got to see enough of it to make it worth the trouble.

Some people were carrying ofrendas and some were simply carrying photos of their lost loved ones.  

When the parade ended I enjoyed all the sights and sounds.  Many of the local schools and organizations had created stationary ofrendas for the festival.  Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens) was the focus of several of the ofrendas.

Most people were dressed up....some more than others.

They had two music stages.  One had a large mariachi band and the other one had a proud Chicana woman singing in honor of her Mexican ancestors.

Instead of taking a Lyft home I decided to get in some exercise and walked back.  Wind and rain are headed to San Antonio.  I could see the weather changing and I could feel it coming.  It was a lovely Fall walk with leaves blowing around me, an experience I don't get to have in Southern California.  

When I got back Gayle was rested and watching her beloved Kansas City Chiefs lose to the Denver Broncos.  Our plan was to take the Go Rio shuttle to the Pearl for our dinner reservation at the Arrosta Restaurant.  But when I looked up where we could catch the shuttle, I learned that they stop operating at 8 p.m.  We wouldn't be done in time.  We hashed out the options and decided just to drive.  The food was fine and we got home in time for a game of Scrabble.  I won't tell you who won....okay, I will.  I won.  

We decided that since the weather tomorrow will be rainy with a high of 47 we will go see a movie instead of freeze on the Riverwalk.  

Cathedral of Junk

While Gayle was looking at Google Maps to find a location in Austin she saw a location for something called the Cathedral of Junk.  We both immediately googled it and decided that we had to go see it.  Vince Hannemann created this amazing "sculpture" out of junk.  It is more than just a sculpture.  Cathedral is the right word.  He started it in 1988, inspired by a documentary he saw as a child about the Watts Tower in Los Angeles.  He is an artist who didn't want to buy material so he used junk.  Everything we read said, "Don't just show up.  Call first and make an appointment."  The voicemail on his phone said that the next appointment day would be Saturday, October 28.

So once we had our coffee and we were busy packing up to leave Austin, Gayle called Vince.  He answered and agreed we could come on by his place in about an hour.  "Please don't park in front of my house, park around the corner," was his request.

As we approached his house we could see a large pile, I mean cathedral, behind his house.  In front of his house is a small sculpture that includes Co2 cartridges, electric toothbrushes, a pair of boots, etc and the letters COJ (Cathedral of Junk).  A small bench out front has the following words inscribed on it:  "Welcome Peeps to the Point of Despair."  

Vince was sitting on his back door step.  He welcomed us in through the gate and introduced us to his three sweet and docile dogs:  Lucas, Smoky and the third one's name escapes me.  There is a donation box by the gate.  Vince encouraged us to start in a shed near the gate in which he has a brief timeline of how he got to the point of building a cathedral out of junk.  Plus there is interesting stuff everywhere.

In 2010, Vince was told that his sculpture was a violation of code requiring an engineer's letter.  It took seven months, tons of volunteers, an architect, a lawyer and an engineer for him to get the proper paperwork to keep most of his sculpture intact.  In 2019, he declared the sculpture 99% finished.  To call this 40 ton, three level artwork a "sculpture" can't possibly explain the magnitude of what we experienced.  It is impossible to capture the cathedral in a photo.

Vince told us about the two staircases by saying things like, "Turn left at the refrigerator." Gayle snapped photos of the suggested scavenger hunts (one easy version, one difficult version) and we set off.  

We found the refrigerator and started to climb up one set of stairs with interesting items seated in the cement.  

There is no welding in this sculpture.  It is all held together with wire, cement and pieces being "puzzled together", as Vince refers to the structure.  Gayle took a rest at the top.

When we got to the bottom, we turned at the refrigerator....

and headed up the second set of stairs made by using tires and cement.

Once back down we stood in the large room in the center.  It is amazingly tall.  It was raining while we were there but I looked upwards and imagined what it would have looked like to see the sun hitting all the mirrors, bicycles, cds, etc.  I was in awe, just like when I enter a large cathedral in a foreign city.  

I was on sensory overload after an hour of wandering around inside the rooms,

down the hallways

and then walking around the outside of the structure.

Gayle and I found a few of the scavenger hunt items but we missed many of them.  Back at the gate I asked Vince if he has ever been to Watts Tower.  "No," was his only reply.  We put in our donations by the gate, bid Vince good-bye and went in search of food.

My daughter-in-law and the waiter in Dallas both recommended we try breakfast tacos.  We worked up at appetite at viewing the Cathedral of Junk.  We headed for Papalote.  It turns out that I love breakfast tacos!

We still had some time to kill before we wanted to head to San Antonio so we drove down to South Congress Avenue, called SoCo by the locals.  It was a hopping place.  Finding parking was a challenge.  I turned around in the Jesus Deaf Lutheran Church parking lot to find some street parking.  The Texas School for the Deaf is located in Austin and is the oldest continually operated public school in Texas.

We found someone to take our picture at the I love you so much mural.

The street was packed with Gen Z pedestrians dressed for a night out, instead of for shopping in hot, humid weather.  We poked our heads into a couple of stores.  Austin is covered in art.  There are murals everywhere.  

And some of the crosswalks are rainbows.

We were hot and sticky.  The temperature outside was 80 degrees but the humidity made it feel like 88 degrees.  We felt like we were walking through a wall of water.  To cool ourselves down we got in line at Amy's Ice Cream (a recommendation of our waiter in Dallas.)  It was the best ice cream of my life.

Before leaving town we drove through Zilker Park.  We enjoyed some of sculptures at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden before we hopped on the freeway and made the 90 minute drive to San Antonio.

We are staying in the guesthouse of this home in San Antonio.

The guesthouse isn't shabby either.  

We unloaded, rested, wrote our blogs and then headed out for some Chinese food in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant close by.  We will begin to explore San Antonio tomorrow.

Book People

Gayle and I each do research before we take a trip together.  Then we plan our itinerary, make reservations and plan our sightseeing.  For this trip we made our plans and then we changed them several times, canceling reservations and making new reservations.  We kept finding new things we wanted to see and do.  But when it came to planning for Austin all we did was figure out where to stay.  We didn't schedule any specific sights in Austin because we were leaving it open to see family and we didn't know what timing would work in their lives.  But life happened and we will not get to see family here in Austin.  In the confusion we didn't make any concrete plans.

So many people I talked to about my trip told me how wonderful Austin is.  It is the bastion of liberalism in Texas.  We got recommendations for where to eat, drink and eat ice cream.  Our waiter in Dallas even gave us recommendations for jazz clubs and restaurants.  We didn't make any plans before we crashed last night because we spent the evening researching Branch Davidians in Waco and finding additional juicy tales of the place.

We took our time this morning drinking coffee, completing our Connections and Wordles, doing laundry and getting dressed for the day.  We left at 11 a.m. to go to Franklin BBQ, which was on everyone's restaurant recommendations.  Their hours are 11 a.m. to sold out.  We figured if we arrived around 11 a.m. we would easily get served.  The first challenge was parking.  We found a spot in a dirt parking lot next to a pile of trash and walked over to the restaurant.  The line was so long and never moved an inch the whole time we were there.  People had brought lawn chairs because they obviously knew how long it was going to take.

The man behind us said that he stood in the line yesterday and finally had to leave because he had to go to work.  He said eating at Franklin BBQ has been on his bucket list for a long time....and he lives in Austin.  We asked how long it might take for us to get to the front of the line.  He said, "Awhile."  "How long is awhile?" I asked.  "A couple hours," he said.  "Why do people do it?" I asked.  "For the good barbecue, the social aspect of meeting others while waiting and to say they did it," he replied.  The man in front of us said that he had gone to Terry Black's BBQ the night before and while the line was long it moved steadily forward.  "Was it good?"  "Yup."  Gayle and I left our spot in line and said, "Have fun!"  We headed for Terry Black's BBQ.  It allowed us to drive past the State Capitol building.

The line at Terry Black's ran across the front porch and snaked around inside but it moved steadily and quickly.  We chose our sides and then were directed up to the meat counter to chose what kind of meat and how much.  The place was packed and so noisy we couldn't converse.

It didn't matter because we were very busy eating some good barbecue.

After lunch we decided we wanted to go card shopping.  It is something Gayle and I always do when we travel together.  Austin has the largest independent bookstore in Texas.  It is called BookPeople, named for the Book People in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Book People are those people who are dedicated to preserving books in a world where the written word is forbidden and books are burned.   We enjoyed a solid hour looking at greeting cards.  Gayle even found a stool to crawl up on to make sure she didn't miss even one card on the top row.  

We left with our spoils to head back to our rental for naps and to move our laundry over to the dryer.  But as we were headed that way we saw a store called the Whole Earth Provision Co. that looked interesting.  We stopped and poked our heads in to look at cards and jigsaw puzzles.  By then we were tired and ready to be horizontal for awhile.

On the way back to our rental we drove next to this pickup truck made up to look like a semi.  It was blaring "Hakuna Matata".  I know that everything is bigger in Texas but I think he must be compensating for something that is smaller than normal.

Gayle napped and I puttered around.  I know that my sister loves jazz so I researched a jazz club where we could make a reservation for a table tonight for a late show.  Our plan was to go watch the Congress Ave. Bridge bats emerge into the evening sky.  We thought we could pick up some food and sit in lawn chairs to watch while we ate our dinner.  The best viewing time is April to August at dusk.  Oh well, there are still some bats that don't migrate.  The best viewings happen in hot, dry weather.  As I was figuring out where to pick up food for bat viewing, it began to rain and then to pour.  So we pivoted and purchased tickets for the first show (instead of the second show) at the Parker Jazz Club.  We had fifteen minutes to get ready.  We got there at 6:15 for our 6:15 reservation.  We ordered food and drinks and relaxed back ready to hear live music in Austin.  We heard the Kris Kimura Quintet perform music from New Orleans.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

We came back to our rental and made plans for tomorrow's adventure.  We are hoping to tour the Cathedral of Junk but since we don't yet have an appointment we may need to make another pivot.