Texas Independence

My parents came for the weekend and the guy I grew up with, who now lives near me again, but in our new area, called me up. They were having commendorative celebrations of Texas' 170th anniversary of declaring, then winning Independence. We live just half hour or so from Washington-on-the-Brazos, where the Texas Revolutionary Legislature declared independence. Speakers, reinactments, bands. It was very nice and very nostalgic, for our heritage, and old times growing up.

We visited the rennovated Independence Hall also.

My friend actually lives just outside of Indepence. Goes to the Baptist Church there, the one that used to be the chapel for Baylor before it moved from there to Waco. Sam Houston's mother-in-law attended that church, and once when he was visiting her he carved his initials on one of the pews, which they still have. I may begin attending services there now myself. I was taken with the place.

You get so proud, so sentimental, so partriotic at times like we shared at Washington-on-the Brazos. Great to share it all with the boys too.

And I met a guy I was in the Aggie Band with too. He was telling everyone how I used to haze him, told his wife too there. After he left A&M, so I now found out, he was a Captain with the 101st Airborne. I was so impressed, proud of him. My oldest, the Marine wannabee, came over bug eyed to shake his hand. The first he had ever met from the 101st.

But even the bands. Pioneer instruments, accoustic. And one retold the events of those days, and then sang a song about it. They even sang Walt Disney's Ballad of Davy Crockett. The one that was hardest to keep from sniffling over, right after he read the letter to the Legislature, arriving to them the very day they declared Independence, from Travis, the famous one, how we shall never surrender or retreat, and how he answered Santa Anna's demand for surrender with a cannon shell. Then the band sang the Ballad of the Alamo, from John Wayne's movie. I had forgotten just how powerful those words were. It was like from the Bible or something, they were so powerful. I wanted to enlist in the Texas Marines.

You can't help but think and feel during such times as this, how this is what life is about. Not the NFL or house payments, but this, spirit, devotion, duty, and freedom.