Wildflowers and Rebellion

March and April are the two months when Texans remember our war for independence from Mexico, 182 years ago. It is also the time of year when wildflowers bust out across Central Texas. So this blog post is a meshing of wildflowers and rebellion.

     The pretty color photo is of the monument built in 1936 (oddly, paid for with Federal dollars, not state or private funds) to commemorate the massacre of over 300 captive Texas militiamen at Goliad on Palm Sunday in 1836. The granite monument sits atop the charred bones of the Texas patriots in a mass grave.

The next image is also from 1936, the year of the Centennial celebration of Texas’s victory over Santa Anna’s army, which established Texas as an independent nation.  This photo is of course the Alamo in San Antonio during a renovation project, putting a new roof on the chapel.

This final photo is once more from 1936 Centennial and is the frame of the giant three-dimensional ‘Lone Star’ that sits atop the tall monument at San Jacinto, the site of Santa Anna’s unlikely defeat.

I like this one because my grandfather—Jackson Robert McBride, Jr.—worked for the pattern shop that designed the star and made it. When all the star skeleton’s fasteners on top of the completed tower did not fit exactly, Granddaddy McBride was the guy who climbed out on the scaffolding and the skeleton on top of the tower and fixed the fasteners. The San Jacinto Monument tower is as tall as the Washington Monument in DC. The star hasn’t fallen off after 82 years, surviving who knows how many hurricane-force winds, so I guess Granddaddy did a good job of it.

     All this relates to my new manuscript, A Different Dragon Entirely, by virtue of the 1840 setting for this Texas adventure with a fantasy twist, and that three of the main characters fought with General Sam Houston at San Jacinto—in my imagined world.

To everyone—Happy Easter. Christ Has Risen! He Has Risen Indeed! Rejoice!