This article serves as the second installment in an ongoing series on the Old Spanish Trail auto trail, describing a road trip heading west out of San Antonio, Texas in the spring of 1926. The first article, covering the section between San Antonio and Kerrville, can be read here. This article picks up where we left off and covers the section between Kerrville and Fort Stockton.
The noontime sun bears down on you as you gingerly scrape the loose tar off of your bumper with your old flint chisel. You try your absolute hardest not to chip the paint, although…
The verdict is in. As of March 21, 2019, the seemingly inescapable fast-food juggernaut and sacred cow of hungry American evangelicals, Chick-fil-A, has officially been banned from the San Antonio International Airport by the San Antonio city council for their “legacy of anti-LGBTQ behavior.”
“Wait a minute”, you stop and tell me, “isn’t this old news? Hasn’t this happened before?” It sure has. Multiple times. Perhaps you’re thinking of the well-publicized incident in 2012 where the mayor of Boston blocked Chick-fil-A from opening a new restaurant in the city due to their inflammatory remarks on gay marriage and financial contributions…
Saturday, June 24, 2017. Not a great deal happened that day. I didn’t go anywhere particularly interesting. I didn’t do anything that anyone else would consider altogether noteworthy. All I really did was have the best day of my life; one that I would remember down to the moment almost two years later. I suppose all it really takes is a change of scenery to really put things in perspective, even if said scenery is provincial and fuddy-duddy in the eyes of most.
At this point, it’s only fair that I provide some context. This story takes place during the…
Beloved children’s cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and fascism: two things that, to your average John Q. Public, would seem to go together about as well as peanut butter and syphilis. From an ideological perspective, the two seem pretty much diametrically opposed: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which extols the virtues of friendship, tolerance, acceptance, and kindness; versus fascists, who extol the virtues of violence, division, cruelty, and subjugation. How could somebody possibly profess allegiance to both things simultaneously without the severe cognitive dissonance tearing them in half? Spoiler alert: there’s no real answer to that question…
You take a deep breath and try and soak in your surroundings. You pick up the delightful smell of frying eggs and bacon very close by and, in the distance, a faint whiff of mountain laurel. The warmth surrounding you seems unseasonable for spring, especially this early in the morning, but apparently, it’s typical San Antonio weather, which “Yankees” from the Northern states flock to during the warm season. You hear a great deal of cross-chatter from campers, day trippers, families, and other leisurists speaking over a chorus of sparrows and white-winged doves. You’re surrounded by ragged canvas tents and…
It is past midnight, and I’m sitting on an itchy blanket next to a roaring campfire with a roasted sweet potato and a paper plate full of chickpeas balanced precariously in my lap. Next to me sit a motley crew of reporters and media professionals, some conversing in Arabic and others in English. The local guide, donning his kefiya as the cool desert breeze sets in, sings a traditional “baladi” song to nobody in particular. We are surrounded on one side by the vast Sahara Desert and by the viridescent Nile Valley on the other, just a stone’s throw away…
