The Twelve Days of Thanksgiving: Day Eleven
When I was little, Sunday night meant watching the Wonderful World of Disney and eating Jack in the Box. Good stuff, both. The combination of Tinkerbell, Davy Crockett reruns and secret sauce was magical.
Life was pretty predictable back then. Dinner meant in the dining room, unless it was a birthday, and then it meant steak and potatoes at the Stables, with a glimpse of the poor lobsters in the tank on the way in. Appetizers meant port wine cheese; drinks with dinner meant Shirley Temples, Roy Rogers and scotch. Wine was something that sat, ignored and mistrusted, in a pottery Lancer's bottle in the middle of the table.
That was H'town. Of course, when my parents weren't watching Disney with me and my brother and sister, it was also major Menehune's at Trader Vic's at the Shamrock, rare roast beef at the Red Lion, high fashion at Mr. James, and glamorous dancing in Pucci dresses at clubs at Allen's Landing and bachelor pads on Courtlandt place. But they didn't invite the elementary set.
That would have been really bad parenting. And my parents had boundaries. Good ones. And weird ones. One of my mother's boundaries was that she would never take us to places like Disneyworld or the Alamo. For different reasons, all stemming from the fact that she was a Virginian.
What that meant for me was that I never saw the Alamo until I was a grown up. Never heard a lot of Crockett/Bowie/Travis stories. Didn't have a middle name that you could find on a downtown street sign. Didn't even have a ranch. But I could tell you lots about Williamsburg, Thomas Jefferson and the Swamp Fox of the Carolinas.
We grow. We change. We keep parts of our heritage, and we reject others. I'm thankful to know so much colonial history, thankful to know how good a ginger cookie is from the Raleigh Tavern. But I am particularly proud--the zeal of the convert, I suppose--that I remember the Alamo. And I've been to Disneyworld three times.
Don't think they are related? I never realized how closely they were, until we published some books by Alamo experts, Bill Chemerka, Allen Wiener, and Jim Boylston--real Crocketteers. While I was focusing on secret sauce and the Escape from Witch Mountain, these guys were channeling Fess, absorbing every detail about the King of the Wild Frontier.
But they didn't stop there. They went on and learned all about the man under the coonskin cap. They read history, joined societies, and became known for their eruditon on the man we now know around our office not as Davy, but as David Crockett: the Poor Man's Friend. The astute politician who befriended the common man against powerful interest groups way before powerful interest groups had a name. The passionate politician who innately knew more about branding than we'll ever hope to know.
Among the three of them, they know about the Music of the Alamo, all the political writings of David Crockett, and all of the profound historical things he ever did. But what delights me the most is that as serious as their study has gotten, they have never forgotten what originally turned them on to the legend that is Crockett.
Fess Parker and his show are part of what they love. It's a whole package, and now that they are experts in the real history--now that they give lectures at the Texas Book Festival, get reviews from Pulitzer prize winning historians, and are called "The Google of Alamo Buffs"--they still acknowledge the show. And they acknowledge that Fess, too, has grown and changed since those Disney Days. If you ask about Fess, they'll tell you he's winning awards for his pinot in the hills around Santa Barbara. He's still a king. And his wine is a far cry from Lancer's.
We grow. We change. But when we are lucky, we hold our heritage close to our hearts. I remember Jamestown. I remember Virginia Dare. In a history book sort of way. But because of my own Disney days, because I am a Texan, and now because of these three historians, I remember the Alamo like I was there.
I am thankful these guys watched TV. That it didn't rot theirr brains, but that it moved them enough to study, document, and bring Crockett to life for those of us who were too distracted by Thomas Jefferson to fully appreciate what was going on in Tennessee and Texas.
When Crockett left Tennessee, he crossed a line. He crossed another in the Alamo. Once you cross it with him, you're a Texan. No matter where you live.
It's a state of mind.
Thanksgiving Tip #11 The hat makes the man.
It is a line that not all the piety nor wit of research will ever blot out. It is a grand canyon cut into the bedrock of human emotions and historical impulses.
~J. Frank Dobie
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