Jfet
AH legend
I was born in Texas in the late summer of 1964. Summers in Texas have a habit of running really late. I was not born into one of the flashy up and coming cities of Texas like Dallas or Houston but in the sleepy backwater of San Antonio. A city at that time was still very connected to its past. I have fond memories of family walks along the river. The smells of freshly made tortillas coming from Casa Rio on Commerce Street. I was always fascinated by the sounds of a mariachi band as you walked under the live oaks on Military Plaza on your way to the Alamo. It did not take much imagination to hear the Spanish voices on the street in front of the Spanish Governor’s Palace for a boy of 10 to 12 years to imagine the fate of the Spanish Frontier being decided on the patio besides the tree shaded garden.
My parents came to Texas in the late ’50’s. Maybe like many southerners, trying to escape a clouded past but mostly looking for opportunity. They would both earn college degrees and become educators. Dad would become a college professor. My father came from a family of story tellers. In the times that I spent at my grandmother’s house in Alabama there were many evenings in the summer with the kitchen windows open and the soft southern breezes drifting through that I listened to my uncles tell amazing stories. Yes, I have an uncle that during WW2 engaged a Japanese submarine off the coast of Attu Island with his M1 rifle and sunk it. Well, he did empty his clip at the sub and the sub went down. I never remember those evenings being sweltering. I recall being amazed and hoping that one day I could have stories to tell like that.
Most of the year I was isolated in Texas from these amazing men and their stories. One day, though, Dad came home with a book entitled, “I’ll Tell You a Tale” by J. Frank Dobie. It was filled with stories that enchanted a young boys imagination. These were stories of a time in Texas when the six flags were colliding. There were stories of Spanish Conquistadors surviving brutal winters and severe draughts in search of El Dorado. There were tells of pioneer women outsmarting Comanche Indians and of bears fattening their own pigs on pilfered corn in the stump of a dead live oak tree. It was great reading made even better when my Dad would read aloud. He could master the accents of the characters which made the stories real.
As I moved into being a teenager, my uncle’s stories and J. Frank Dobie’s’ books were not forgotten, but put aside. High school football, girls, college, Princess Bride, jobs and man cubs brought me into the 21stcentury. In 2016, as I was preparing for safari in Namibia, I was at a local used book store when I ran into Dobie once more. The book, “Coronado’s Children,” had been placed on a table haphazardly with other books but like an old Spanish treasure map, it was just visible to the passerby. I knew I had found a gem. I had not read this book. So, I decided to bring it with me to Namibia as reading material
during the daily siestas. In this book Dobie compiles the stories of lost gold in the southwestern U. S. It start with Coronado and his search for the golden cities of Cibolo. Eventually, you read of others that have gone on that search for Spanish Gold and thus can trace a lineage to Coronado. Little did I know as I sat in the shade of the camel thorn acacia tree reading this book while waterbuck came to drink at the water hole in the warmth of a Namibian winter day that I would be starting my search for Spanish Gold and join the family of Coronado.
My parents came to Texas in the late ’50’s. Maybe like many southerners, trying to escape a clouded past but mostly looking for opportunity. They would both earn college degrees and become educators. Dad would become a college professor. My father came from a family of story tellers. In the times that I spent at my grandmother’s house in Alabama there were many evenings in the summer with the kitchen windows open and the soft southern breezes drifting through that I listened to my uncles tell amazing stories. Yes, I have an uncle that during WW2 engaged a Japanese submarine off the coast of Attu Island with his M1 rifle and sunk it. Well, he did empty his clip at the sub and the sub went down. I never remember those evenings being sweltering. I recall being amazed and hoping that one day I could have stories to tell like that.
Most of the year I was isolated in Texas from these amazing men and their stories. One day, though, Dad came home with a book entitled, “I’ll Tell You a Tale” by J. Frank Dobie. It was filled with stories that enchanted a young boys imagination. These were stories of a time in Texas when the six flags were colliding. There were stories of Spanish Conquistadors surviving brutal winters and severe draughts in search of El Dorado. There were tells of pioneer women outsmarting Comanche Indians and of bears fattening their own pigs on pilfered corn in the stump of a dead live oak tree. It was great reading made even better when my Dad would read aloud. He could master the accents of the characters which made the stories real.
As I moved into being a teenager, my uncle’s stories and J. Frank Dobie’s’ books were not forgotten, but put aside. High school football, girls, college, Princess Bride, jobs and man cubs brought me into the 21stcentury. In 2016, as I was preparing for safari in Namibia, I was at a local used book store when I ran into Dobie once more. The book, “Coronado’s Children,” had been placed on a table haphazardly with other books but like an old Spanish treasure map, it was just visible to the passerby. I knew I had found a gem. I had not read this book. So, I decided to bring it with me to Namibia as reading material
during the daily siestas. In this book Dobie compiles the stories of lost gold in the southwestern U. S. It start with Coronado and his search for the golden cities of Cibolo. Eventually, you read of others that have gone on that search for Spanish Gold and thus can trace a lineage to Coronado. Little did I know as I sat in the shade of the camel thorn acacia tree reading this book while waterbuck came to drink at the water hole in the warmth of a Namibian winter day that I would be starting my search for Spanish Gold and join the family of Coronado.