The Plot to Steal the Alamo Flag

In February 1998, two Texas officials arrived in Mexico City on a confidential mission, carrying the qualified blessings of Governor George W. Bush. They were met in the Mexican capital by the chief of the narcotics affairs section of the U.S. Embassy, although their visit had nothing to do with interdiction or money-laundering, sniffing dogs or electrified fences.

The Texans, one of whom was the state librarian, had specific instructions from the U.S. Embassy about how to behave in Mexico City. They had been advised to demonstrate a sensitivity to the less-than-rosy view which Mexicans have of their historical relations with the United States, and especially with Texas. Included on their two-day itinerary, as outlined by the embassy liaison (parentheses included), was “the National Museum of History (a.k.a. Chapultepec Castle) where there is a small display on the ‘Texas Insurrection’ and the Mexican-American War, the Ninos Heroes Monument (dedicated to six cadets who died defending Chapultepec Castle from the U.S. Army in 1847) and the Museum of Foreign Interventions,” the last of which is devoted to invasions of Mexico by French, British, Austrian, Spanish and, of course, American troops.

“Visiting [the exhibits] shows that we are aware of Mexico’s enduring pain from this period of its history,” the Texans were advised by their embassy guide. “President Clinton, incidentally, laid a wreath at the Ninos Heroes Monument when he was here last May. Through all of this, we should hope to establish the necessary rapport to get a green light for….” The Texans’ effort to “understand” the tortured Mexican historical consciousness must have seemed particularly surprising to their hosts. Texans have spent most of the last two centuries not caring much what Mexicans think about anything. The reason for the new-found sensitivity was that the Mexicans had something the Texans wanted – wanted very badly.

In the fall of 1835, two companies of volunteer riflemen crossed Louisiana’s western border into what was then still, officially, Mexico. Called the New Orleans Greys because of their distinctive uniforms, the volunteers had come to fight for the rebellious Republic of Texas.

The arrival of reinforcements was so welcomed that the colonists of East Texas gave the Louisianans a special gift: a flag, made of blue silk, about the size of a bath towel, bordered by white fringe. The silk featured the likeness of an eagle, wings spread, and below the eagle the words, “First Company of Texan Volunteers from New Orleans.” The riflemen carried the flag to San Antonio and the Alamo mission where rebels were preparing to defend their position against the Mexican Army. The flag remained at the Alamo, and was captured and sent south as booty of war.

For almost a century – until 1934, when the flag was discovered by a Texas official in a drawer of the Mexican national archives – the Greys’ banner remained forgotten. But in the more than sixty years since the Texas Centennial (when Texans first officially became obsessed with their own history) the piece of faded silk has been the subject of pleadings and requests – and at least one private bounty, of $36,000, for its return by any means. A kind of ritual has developed for representatives of the Lone Star State, from Governor John Connally in the mid-Sixties onward, to ask the Mexican government for its return. During the Texas Sesquicentennial, for example, U.S. Senator Phil Gramm flew to Mexico City on a one-man mission, promising to return with the banner. The Mexican president refused to see him. An attempt was later made to attach a clause to the North American Free Trade Agreement, requiring Mexico to give back the flag as a condition of ratification. The Mexicans resisted. Over recent years, the Greys’ banner has seemed to grow again in importance to Mexico, in direct proportion to which its return is demanded by Texas. The plan was to take the flag on loan from the Mexicans for an exhibit and refuse to give it back. The devious Governor Bush didn't think of the idea, he's not that smart, he just approved it. Even then, as he would later do in the White House he viewed himself as an executive chairman, reviewing options presented to him and making the final call. There's a lot of deviousness in foreign affairs and W was apparently cool with that in Austin.

The State of Texas’ most recent strategy for repatriating the banner dates to a proposal made by a former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, actor John Gavin. Tired of being asked to intercede with the government of Mexico to request its return, in 1982 Gavin suggested instead that Texas officials find something that the Mexicans wanted and trade. With Ambassador Gavin’s prompting, authorities in Austin searched the state’s archives. Among the “vast amount of property taken” which General Sam Houston reported capturing at the battle San Jacinto (when the Mexican Army was defeated and President Santa Anna captured) were three battle flags, belonging to the battalions of Toluca, Matamoros, and Guerrero. The three flags were apparently restored by the state of Texas.) Although none of the banners individually had the importance of the Alamo silk, together they became the foundation of the attempt for the Texans to get what they wanted.

The wheels of state government turn slowly. The effort to trade the three Mexican battalion flags for the Greys’ banner began in earnest almost a decade after Ambassador Gavin’s suggestion, with the quixotic intervention of Carlos Truan, state senator from Corpus Christi. “It all originated with a conversation I had with the consul of Mexico,” Truan later explained to selected colleagues in the Legislature. “We had worked on a couple of projects that resulted in a [good] relationship with Mexico and then in our discussion we just stumbled into the flags and he thought it was a good idea if we could have a display of the flags, not necessarily an exchange of flags, and unfortunately one thing led to another and people assumed, particularly in Mexico, that we wanted to take their flag back and bring it over here.” When the project was publicized, the reaction in Mexico was outrage. In the earliest grades Mexican schoolchildren are taught that their country’s destiny would have been far different if not for the intervention of Americans, starting with U.S. assistance to the treacherous Texans. The idea of returning the flag was, therefore, repugnant south of the Rio Grande.

But after Senator Truan’s misinterpreted suggestion, stateside support (including radio call-ins, and mass mailings to the Mexican government) began to grow in Texas for a swap. It was in this context – Texans trying to promote an exchange, and Mexicans feeling the pressure – that George W. Bush was inaugurated as Governor in 1995.

Caught up in the pomp and circumstance of his upset victory over a media-friendly incumbent, at first Governor Bush seemed bemused when reporters insisted on asking about the issue. “I think it is important,” the Governor-elect said doubtfully. “[But] it is going to require Texas and Mexican officials to have a cordial relationship before any flag swap or swap of artifacts takes place.” Just after his inauguration the new, Spanish-speaking Governor amplified his goodwill theme. “I believe that the best way to retrieve the Alamo flag is to have a cordial relationship,” he told the Dallas Morning News. “I believe that the best way to accommodate matters is to have a respectful relationship so that when and if the flag is returned … that it is done out of friendship as a gesture of goodwill.”

And, “Whatever we have of Mexico’s – I understand that there are paintings or other flags – we’d be willing to make a swap,” Bush promised, suggesting an ignorance of the exact details.

George Bush’s conciliatory approach was circumvented by direct legislative action. During the new Governor’s first legislative session, state lawmakers granted authority to the state’s chief librarian (whose office includes responsibility for Texas’ archives) to negotiate with the Mexicans for the flag’s return. At the same time the U.S. Congress was also passing a resolution asking the Mexicans simply to give back the Greys’ banner. All this legislative activity seemed to irk the Governor, who favored personal diplomacy: “The truth of the matter is, if I could go and convince the right Mexican official to work a loan agreement for the flag, I suspect that would be a more efficient way to do so.” Still, in a private letter to State Librarian Robert S. Martin in October 1995, Governor Bush seemed to acquiesce to the Legislature’s plan. “There would be nothing more pleasing,” he wrote, “than for all of us to affect an exchange of things of history, whether it be on loan or forever.” In public Bush was going farther: “I hope I’m the Governor that is able to hold up the flag.”

Both tracks, diplomacy and arm-twisting, were rendered ineffective a few months later when the Mexicans announced that they had “lost” the artifact in question. Sylvia Moreno, a reporter for the Morning News, attempting by telephone to track down the flag’s exact whereabouts, was told at each Mexico City museum she called that no one had the Alamo silk. Mexican archivists indicated that the flag had been mislaid – or taken – by unknown hands. In Texas, this news was greeted not for what it was, a face-saving excuse, but as fact, and was widely ridiculed: the Mexicans had mislaid or allowed to be stolen, Texans believed, what Mexico had been refusing on principle to return for sixty years.

Progress came the following year, on two fronts. An Austin attorney, attending a “high-level” dinner party in Mexico City, reported back that Mexican officials were no longer claiming to have lost the Alamo flag and, in fact, that the Mexicans suddenly seemed receptive to the idea of a trade. About the same time an isolated Congressional inquiry arrived at the U.S. Embassy asking about progress in the search for the banner. “Such inquiries are normally assigned to the Embassy’s political section for action. I had no professional interest [in] the issue,” wrote Alan Smiley in a recent letter about the controversy. At the time, Smiley was the Embassy’s narcotics control officer, responsible for coordinating U.S. policy regarding drug interdiction efforts in Mexico. But Smiley happened to see the cable and took responsibility for the inquiry nonetheless. Smiley’s interest was actually quite personal. His great-great-great-great uncle, a Tennessee lawyer named Daniel Cloud, had died defending the southeastern palisade, near the chapel of the Alamo, in 1836.

After consultations with Texas officials, including the librarian Robert Martin, and after learning all he could about the Alamo flag itself, Smiley developed a three-part plan to get the flag back by, well, less than direct means. “Phase One was to suggest [to the Mexicans] the formation of a bi-national team of textile restoration experts to restore not only the Alamo flag but [the] three Mexican Army battalion flags as well,” he said later, explaining his efforts on Texas’ behalf. “Phase Two, only to be presented to the GOM [Government of Mexico] after Phase One had been approved and restoration was well underway, was to have been a traveling exhibit of the four newly restored flags – first in Mexico, then in Texas. Phase Three was to have been the indefinite extension of the Texas exhibition of the flags, so the Alamo flag, in effect, remained in Texas forever. Both Phase Two and Three were tightly held secrets, not to be discussed with either our GOM counterparts or our Mexican operatives. We didn’t want the GOM to think there was anything more to this than scholarly interest in preserving all four flags before they all turned to dust.”

The effort to dupe the Mexicans began with limited success. As an embassy officer Alan Smiley had contacts throughout the Mexican bureaucracy and he was eventually able to locate the flag itself. It was being housed in the basement of the National Institute of Archaeology and History (INAH, as it is known by its Spanish acronym). One of Smiley’s “operatives” was even able to get in to see the flag and to assess its condition, which was not good. At the same time a plan of sorts was being developed about how best to approach the Mexican bureaucracy. Early on the decision was made to cut a wide detour around the foreign ministry, on the theory that the Mexican diplomatic service would not be helpful at the best of times: the foreign ministry was apparently under a new, American-bashing management. “Rosario Green, the new Secretary of Foreign Relations,” Smiley wrote to librarian Martin in early 1998, “is very nationalistic and at least a little ‘anti-gringo’ (although she has been very well-behaved so far). I may be proven wrong, but I see this project coming to a dead standstill when it hits SRE [the Secretariat of Foreign Relations] unless it already has a lot of forward momentum behind it.”

The decision was made, then, to restrict Texas’ approaches to officials of the Mexican national archives. Smiley found, however, that the response even at this level was not warm. A series of letters was written, composed at the Capitol in Austin and reviewed for Spanish grammar and Latin sensibilities by Smiley at the Embassy in Mexico City. The result was nada. The lack of response was particularly troubling, because Alan Smiley’s tour of duty in Mexico was coming to an end, and he would no longer be able to assist in regaining the flag that his famed ancestor had died for. As Smiley’s time in Mexico approached an end, the Embassy official wrote to Dr. Martin in Austin: “I will draft another letter to INAH for your review. We may want to say that you are perplexed for not having received a response to your offer, especially since you had understood that there was a definite interest in preserving these artifacts of the past. I would then suggest that we give INAH only about two more weeks to respond. If no answer is forthcoming at that time, I propose that I (or we) meet with the INAH director personally to find out how HE would like to see this issue advance. There is a tremendous risk in this latter approach. A visit from an Embassy official is very likely to get an all-or-nothing response; the door could close and stay closed for years to come.

“On the other hand, as it now appears that I’ll be concluding my tour in Mexico as early as the end of April, now may be the time to push the issue. Since we are no longer receiving Congressional inquiries on this issue and since you are unlikely to find another Embassy officer with as great a personal interest in these artifacts, support from the Embassy will probably dwindle significantly after my departure. For this reason, I think we should consider ‘going for broke’ if there is no response to your next letter.”

There was no response, and the Texans began to pressure their Mexican counterparts for a face-to-face meeting. “Most of the appointments that I was able to set up,” according to Smiley, “were cancelled at the last moment due to any number of excuses.” But eventually the Mexicans were tied down to an exact date, in February 1998, and Martin, together with Carolyn Palmer, a prominent San Antonio Republican and a former museum administrator, who serves as chairwoman of the State of Texas’ board of historical archives, flew south. “We have pursued the matter very quietly, working with the Secretary of State’s office. We [had] conferred with the governor’s office, who encouraged us to pursue [the effort],” Martin said in later, unpublicized testimony before a committee of the Texas Senate. “We went down for two days in Mexico City. We met with the national archivists. We met with the deputy director of the Instituto Nacional [of Anthropology and History]. They were very gracious and very polite but the net bottom result was that I came away with the distinct message that they are completely uninterested in even discussing any trade or sale or repatriation or anything else.” Ms. Palmer was of the same opinion. “We got the idea,” she testified, “that they felt like they were taking quite good enough care of the flag and they intended to keep it.” Alan Smiley, more experienced in Mexican affairs and customs than either Martin or Ms. Palmer, described the Texans’ reception by Mexican officials as “rude by Latino standards
”

“Latin Americans in general, I have learned,” Smiley (who before joining the State Department was an Army intelligence officer serving south of the border) said later of his failed mission to highjack the flag, “are suspicious of conspiracies. Mexicans in particular are gravely suspicious of anything and everything the United States says or does, no matter how slight the perceived impact on the interests of Mexico.”

Smiley and his compatriots seemed unable to acknowledge that they were, indeed, “conspiring” to trick the Mexicans into surrendering the Alamo flag. The plan was simply to refuse to return the flag to the Mexicans when its came to Austin as part of the exchange. Dr. Martin, for his part, offered a unique view to the Texas Senate of the reasons for his failure – and at the same time demonstrated that face-saving was as important north of the Rio Grande as south: “In the entire history of the army of the Republic of Mexico,” the state librarian explained, “they have won four battles – the Alamo and Goliad were two of them – and [the flag] was a powerful symbol to them that on occasion they have beat the yanquis, and they’re not interested in giving it up.”

Despite their unwillingness to trade, the Mexicans did, however, make a proposal of their own to the visiting Texas officials. Instead of a traveling exhibit of the flags, the Mexicans suggested a presentation in the United States of the Latin viewpoint of the historical relationship between the U.S. and Mexico. Following his visit to Mexico City, Dr. Martin wrote to Luciana Cedillo Alvarez, a high-ranking cultural affairs officer in Mexico City, “I am preparing my report to officials here in Texas, and remain very hopeful that we may be able to proceed along the lines we discussed, with an exhibition presenting the Mexican viewpoint of the history of relations between our countries. It is extremely important that citizens of the United States, and of Texas in particular, become better informed on this important subject.”

Dr. Martin’s letter was, of course, a last grasp at the flag itself. Not long after reporting to Senate leaders, from whom he took a beating on an unrelated matter, Martin retired from state service and returned to academia. Eventually Alan Smiley took his new posting, this time to Honduras. The Alamo flag remained, and remains still, in Mexico City.

Recent historical evidence has not been kind to Alamo-era Texans, or Mexicans. Researchers have begun to accept as authentic the diary of Jose Enrique de la Peсa, a Mexican army staff officer who fought at the Alamo and who was later imprisoned for opposing the dictatorship of Santa Anna. De la Peсa’s mention of the seizure of the flag is brief but colorful: “Before the Sapper Battalion, advancing through a shower of bullets and volley of shrapnel, had a chance to reach the foot of the walls,” the Mexican soldier wrote, “half their officers had been wounded. Another one of these officers, young Torres, died within the fort at the very moment of taking a flag. He died at one blow without uttering a word….” De la Peсa’s diary confirms accounts of Mexican brutality, and also explodes the “to the last man” legend of the Alamo defenders – which is, even more than the flag, the great treasure of Texas’s heritage. Even though it's not true. Nonetheless the state has built an $80 million museum in downtown Austin (featuring films glorifying Texas history) for which the Alamo flag, “tainted” by surrender or not, would be a major attraction.

There are several theories circulating in Austin about the exact circumstances under which the Mexicans might actually return the flag. The first, of course, features the “Bush factor.” If George Bush is elected president, according to one hypothesis, the Mexicans might decide to give back the Alamo flag in order to ingratiate themselves with Washington. The problem with this hypothesis is that it’s not entirely clear how much the Mexicans want to please the powers-that-be in the United States. Another theory may be more probable. This scenario likens Texans’ attempts to recoup the flag to a seduction, in which a woman agrees to sleep with a man not because she desires him, but because she is exhausted from the pursuit. In a weak moment the Mexicans may simply get tired of saying no. This seems to be the theory that Texans are working under, and it might be successful given enough time.

The clock is ticking, however, on this particular approach. The colonists of East Texas did not sew a flag that was intended to last for centuries. The last report obtained by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City describes the Alamo silk as being in a “very deteriorated” state (which in part explains Smiley et al.’s haste in trying to acquire it): “virtually all the fringe on the edges is gone, there is a large hole that has obliterated one of the eagle’s wings, and the flag has faded almost completely to white.” When the two Texas officials visited Mexico City they were shown records documenting scrupulous care but they were never allowed to see the flag itself, and its condition may be worsening with each year. (The care of the Mexican banners in Texas hands has been a little better. One, which was for a time on display at the San Jacinto Battleground Museum near Houston, underwent restoration. In fact the two others were also restored, per report, including the removal of 160-year-old blood stains, after the visit of the Texas officials to Mexico.)

Probably one day the remains of the Alamo flag will make the long trip back across the Rio Grande. But before an exchange can take place two changes in consciousness will have to take place: the Mexicans will have to come to terms with what they did, and failed to do, during their time as sovereigns north of the river. (They will, in short, have to get over the loss of their northern territories.) For their part the Texans may have to admit that the “Texas myth” is just that – a myth, designed to entertain the tourists, and to encourage school children. Of these two mental changes the Mexicans probably have the easier adjustment to make.

OLD AUSTIN

 

        1.

        My hormones have been running pretty high these last couple of years. My tolerance for bullshit is low. Call a bitch a bitch—that's my motto now, let the chips fall where they fucking may. It just hurts so bad because this town was, at one time, so cool. Good herb, fine pussy, low rents and all, or comparatively low to now that everyone has moved here. The growth is mind-boggling even if the selection of women has improved from very good to excellent. Even on what may otherwise be a bad day in River City you can see some really fine hos. 

        Swimming at Barton Springs, drinking at Scholz’s, sitting on the Capitol lawn in the twilight of a spring evening, doobie in my hand, that was the old Austin for me. State troopers were too intimidated to say anything, they didn't want to seem like hicks. Today you try that shit on the Texas Capitol grounds and you may end up dead. 

        For me personally the memory of a time is actually mostly audio. The de rigueur L.P. for my early years in the World Capital of Live Music was Rumours, you just couldn’t get Fleetwood Mac out of your head, even today "Rhiannon" or "Landslide" playing somewhere can still make me stop and just listen. Some of my memories of the old town are visual but most of those came after getting high and technically don't count because tripping is not real. Just call me Old School. 

Saw only four live acts during almost five decades unless you also count the house band at the Chili Parlour or the Elephant Room, this should give you an idea of what the music was like back in the day: Dough Sahm playing “96 Tears” on the University Drag, at The Hole in the Wall, relatively recently which to me now means, like, in the last quarter-century, you know?

Springsteen with Clarence Clemons, thank you very much, and the Beach Boys, both at the Super Drum on campus, back in the prior day, like early 80s. Junior Walker maybe five years before that, at Antone’s, a long long time ago in a different town. Later, in Africa on my pilgrimage to see the motherland, just for the record the most significant music was "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty. The last few years? Also British, it’s Simply Red, "Holding Back the Years." Looking back now at whatever this is, memoir or confession, that was the “old Austin,” back in the day. The town just isn't the same anymore. Let me ask you a question, this may seem incongruous: 

        You ever ride the Number 1? 

        2.

        If you want to get a quick and dirty view of what River City has become you just need to take the Number 1 Bus. The route starts somewhere far south in, like, almost San Antonio? Comes up Congress Avenue past new and trendy shops, restaurants, saloons. Crosses the river, past the Capitol, past the Governor’s Mansion, past the Travis County Courthouse, past the UT campus, then past the State Hospital—and rolls by the headquarters of the Texas Rangers. Look for a building with antennae like a crawling and repugnant insect. 

The #1 covers many of the social services stops in town, then and now, if you're unemployed or “at risk” or just out of your fucking mind which has always been a significant demographic in ATX. The head-jobs and druggies used to mostly come out at night but my most formative experience in Austin, in almost a half-century, actually took place during the day and south of the river where there’s usually less chance of mischief. 

It was a Saturday, late morning, coming back on foot from Big Stacy Pool on the edge of Travis Heights? So, like, you walk up the hill from the pool to South Congress and there’s this little park on the corner, across from what was a X-rated theater, now a tech start-up, remember what it was like back in the day? 

On the opposite side of the street from that nursing home, you know the location, you could almost smell the dried pee from inside when you walked by on the sidewalk? So, like, homeless have always used the park as a place to hang out during the day, especially when it’s hot, which is like most of the year. Cops are usually not too far away waiting for a chance to bust some balls or break some heads. If memory serves me this was like right around where that Biblebelt East Texas white boy State Senator, Nixon was his name, same party but no relation to the former president, got busted as a John back in the day. 

        Now you remember? 

He picked up what he thought was a working girl but she was actually carrying a badge in her panties! That may have been before your time if, like so many, you’re new to River City. 

So, like, a lot of hookers work or worked the South Congress area after the Eastside became just another part of Hipsterland. That was kind of the way things were beginning to roll in Old Austin, back in the day. So, like, this was the turn of the century, turn of the millennium, 2000, or just before, and on the bus my preference is always to sit up front, like, to watch the road?

Sometimes chat with the driver, like, if he’s got anything to say? Some of the drivers just sit there, it’s all they can do to handle downtown traffic, dodging all the new construction, but others got a decent rap. 

        That was part of small town Austin life, while it would never have occurred to me to chat with the driver on a bus, for example, on a visit to Houston. Bus drivers in Austin can get a rap going if they want to, this is a pretty high-brow town. Anyway sitting up front with me behind the driver that day was this couple, looked like small town folks, Ma and Pa Peckerwood from Giddings or Milam or some East Texas shithole like Bastrop County before Elon Musk arrived and the City of Bastrop got fern bars and French restaurants to replace the feed stores and Western wear shops. Not to sound all ignorant or bigoted or anything.

So, like, there were a couple of black guys in the small park on South Congress Avenue, up the hill from Big Stacy, two niggers just chillin', minding their own black business which the U.S. Constitution says a man has a right to do? Maybe getting high too which is cool, each to his own herb, indulge or not, that's supposed to be the mantra of this town. At least if you white. So, like, the bus was stopped at that corner next to the park, waiting for a green light. 

The old guy from Bastrop looks out the window at the two brothers in the park and he speaks to his old lady, straight up like they're still in Bumfuck, East Texas, or wherever, not like he’s in the New Trendyville on the Third Coast where he actually is. 

“There’s two kinds of coon," he says. His wife looks at him expectantly. "Them that walk on four legs and”— Bubba bends a finger toward the window, indicating the two brothers chilling in the park—“them that walk on two.”

 His wife chuckles. He slaps his thigh. Has a good laugh and smiles big. With both teeth. And then he looks over at me just sitting down on the other side of the bus aisle but pretty close and he realizes that he spoke loud enough for one of the ones that walk on two legs to hear. And he stops smiling. So, like, if this was Chicago or even L.A. the motherfucker would have been dead right there, boom boom boom, at least two in the chest, nine mil or magnum, no explanation needed. But this was happening in the old Austin where we always tried to be civilized, where we tried to be understanding even of rednecks—our challenged brothers and sisters from Bastrop and beyond. 

And what he said didn’t really bother me, you know? 

        Because he was up front about it. 

        You knew what you were dealing with until relatively recently, because you knew what prejudice looked like, like Billy Bob, like this motherfucker here sitting at the front of the bus with his old lady. Like white trash or just plain trash irrespective of color. Nowadays the dentition is better but the sentiments can be the same. Hipsters have replaced hillbillies. That was the way it felt to be a Black Man in the World Capital of Live Music at the time. That was actually one of the last times that this changing city felt “real” to me, to tell the truth, that day on the bus with Ma and Pa from Milam County. It wasn’t the last day or anything, wasn’t the beginning of the end like Winston Churchill talked about but it was the end of the beginning like the great man said too. 

For me in the beginning, which meant arriving here along the banks of the mighty Colorado River when the Democrats had just moved out of the Texas Governor’s Mansion for the first time in over a century? A kind of gloom was hanging over this allegedly liberal city. The D's in Texas were dead men walking but didn't know it yet. To set the scene.

        My first crib was on the third floor of the Alamo Hotel between the not-yet-extant Elephant Room, which would one day officially become my bar, my drinking hole, and the original location of Whole Foods. Which hadn’t yet been built. Not because the two sites, Whole Foods and the Elephant Room are related somehow but because they were my primary reference points downtown for years, basically the years when George W. Bush was in office as governor and as president. 

       The Elephant Room would become my personal bar like the Cedar Door was my professional bar back in an earlier day, as my principal place to sit down with colleagues for serious drinking. Long before the origins of Whole Foods, actually, as a funky little organic grocery store. Back in the day only hippies and nature freaks/Druids or the wealthy shopped at W.F., btw, which had a selection the size of a convenience store and had not yet become a nationwide symbol of conspicuous consumption. To set the scene geographically, every significant location in my life was within a 30-minute walk from the State Capitol. Most involved water.

        The Alamo was a residence hotel full of pensioners and transient musicians and people who couldn’t put together first and last month’s rent for a real apartment—people like me. The hotel had a barbershop and restaurant on the first floor but you probably didn’t want to get your hair cut there and you definitely didn’t want to eat the food.

        My room had a four-poster bed, half-bathroom, hot plate and windows that opened out over Guadalupe at Sixth Street. Who could ask for anything more? The Alamo was a few blocks from the back door of the Governor's Mansion, too, which was about to be briefly occupied by a family of Republicans from Dallas named Clements, the patriarch being an oil guy and ex-Reagan Administration defense official. To set the scene. Anyway for a year the Alamo was my home and the hotel still has a special place in my heart, not to sound super sentimental, because my first and most enduring drug addiction was nurtured there, in that tiny little room on the 3rd floor. The hotel’s most famous resident, btw, living downstairs from me, was Sam Houston Johnson, former President Johnson’s little brother, btw. No lie—it was super-cool living that close to Texas Royalty! Sam Houston had been at The Alamo for years if not decades before my arrival. We met once in the hotel elevator and he looked to my innocent black eyes just like any other old scary white man.

        This particular member of the Johnson family was already in his sixties at the time, some ancient age like that, like me now btw, and was alleged to be involved in a wide variety of improprieties and maybe even illegal shit and was not a favorite with the rest of the Dead President’s family, hence his chosen location, the Alamo Hotel. A kind of exile, sure, but still on the LBJ Ranch so to speak. The city then, lo those many years ago, was what people moving here think they will find today, accessible in every sense of the word. My life and work almost never took me south of the Colorado River, except to swim, no farther west than Deep Eddy Pool or east of Montopolis Dam and only then not to swim but to score a baggie. A task that seemed to occupy a good deal of my twenties, actually, back in the day in River City, looking for weed. On the north side my effective range was the university or an occasional chat with a minor drug dealer or disgruntled graduate student, often one and the same, cooking crystal meth in the alphabet avenues beyond campus. 

        Today people would call the area inscribed by these borders "downtown" but back in the day it was the whole town and you ran into important people a lot on the few blocks of Congress Avenue between the south face of the Texas Capitol and the Colorado River, not because you were important or somehow “in the know” but because you lived in a small town. The Capitol, the county courthouse and city hall, and the federal courts and federal offices were all located within a few blocks of each other off Congress. Austin was a one-horse town and the horse was government.

        So, like, he dies one day—Sam Houston Johnson we’re talking about because the great Lyndon Baines Johnson had already gone to the Last Round-Up, like, five years before my arrival in River City. To set the scene chronologically. Hearing one day of Sam Houston’s demise my first instinct was to run home and check out his room and see if he left behind anything interesting and/or incriminating. But the door was locked and the room had probably already been cleaned out by the Secret Service detail from the ranch or whoever takes care of those matters.        

        Generally-speaking my first impression was that Austin was fucked up but it was a largely holistic experience. 

        My metrics: Weed was cheap. As a young adult with a job, trying to be responsible, no longer just smoking other people's shit? Bought my very first bag, a full oz, for $35 dollars in 1979. It was called “Bastrop Special,” which was marginally better than homegrown although it most likely came from Mexico like every other smoke you bought locally. This weed had a lot of stems and seeds that you had to remove first, not to sound all underprivileged compared to today's pothead. And pussy in ATX was free or reasonably-priced. 

Just like a bag of weed, $35 for a “half and half,” a vice cop told me, that is a suck and a fuck, in East Austin, along 11th Street, but at that time maybe not yet on Congress Avenue where Senator Nixon got busted later. The senator would have probably been looking to pay around $100, that's my estimate, including inflation, unless he wanted something really kinky or he got the legislator's discount. 

       God knows what you would pay for similar services today after the city's expensive high tech transformation. Anyhow in the old Austin, overall, a black man, if he had the right rap, could still run his game with enough dissimulation and white guilt to get away with shit seven times out of ten. That's my personal calculation. Any of the other three-out-of-ten chances a cop might shoot you but call me an optimist, seven out of ten was good enough. That was the old Austin too, it was kind of beautiful back in the day, but RIP, motherfucker, because that way of life is dead and buried now. 

If you asked me to put a date on when the world started changing for the worse that would be kind of hard to say but it was an era—a political era, a "social climate” you might call it, that coincided with a new family arriving in town. Basically when the Bushes moved into the Governor's Mansion, yeah. You didn't want to say there goes the neighborhood but it was kind of like that, bro.

        

        3.

        At first it was still go-with-the-flow even after they hit town. The family was kind of cool, especially the twins, even if they were Republicans. Weekends you could walk by and see the parties on the grounds of the Mansion, the back fencing didn't include barbed wire yet, and machine guns, you didn't feel like you do now that snipers are tracking your movements, waiting for a step too close. When the prior resident Ann Richards lived in the Big House, before the Bushes, and you passed by on the back sidewalk at night you could swear that you heard women's laughter and you probably did. 

At Governor Bush’s parties on the grounds of the Mansion, though, during those late summer afternoons, the women wearing sun hats and holding cool drinks—even if W himself was on the wagon, which he was, born again and all that. It turned out he only drank blood. 

Sometimes, also in the late afternoon, if you visited Central Library down the street from the Mansion which was a place to hang out if you were on foot, and needed to cool down, and drink water, you might see the twins allegedly studying upstairs on the third floor. The Bush girls are old Austin, too, in the best way, first LBJ’s daughters and then Jenna and Barbara, they were all somehow cool but their fathers were not. 

Anyway if it was a weekday just before the millennium you could stand on Congress Avenue and look up at the front of the State Capitol and if it was anytime, say, after 10 a.m. but before four in the afternoon there was a silver Lincoln parked out front like the owner was home, W's car. He was in. If he was already running for president, or so it is said, but not having seen this myself? 

        Are you interested in a little political gossip that is a sure thing?

You would see W walking south on Congress Avenue, towards the river, headed in the direction of the Elephant Room actually, but not for the booze. But because his campaign headquarters for president was in the building next door to the club. Next door to the club that was my bar, actually, not that there’s anything wrong with that, the old Austin was a small town in every sense of the word.

If it was early in the campaign before the Secret Service was all over him the Governor might be walking alone, or so it seemed, because there was almost certainly a plainclothes guy in a car and on foot. Governor Clements for example always had the same black state trooper in civilian clothes at his side when he was exposed to the public, even the press. Anyway if you watched Governor Bush, the soon-to-be President of the United States, go into his campaign office and you kept watching the door, or so it is said? This is a great anecdote even if it's not true—but it is true. A few minutes later you might have seen a less familiar white guy follow W into the building. Michael Dell. 

        Yeah, that Michael Dell, the computer guy. 

He was an early backer of W’s, a principal money guy, so they say or said and that's true too. Today all you'd need to do is look at the police surveillance tape to know about political hookups in downtown Austin, Texas, with the Colorado River as a backdrop. There are more cameras covering the Capitol District now than in all of Hollywood. That is another change this black man is not entirely comfortable with, the New Austin, but it's progress, no? Point is that you knew shit, even important shit, without having to work at it, back in the day. The lazy man’s way to be informed: You just had to be in ATX. At the time you were still seeing people downtown or you knew people who were seeing people downtown. 

My boss came into the office one day during those years, the Bush years, and said, like, he just saw former Governor White at a wine store on West 6th Street, a few blocks away. Which blew my boss’s mind. 

“Mark White buys bad wine just like me!” or words to that effect. That's what my boss said. A small town, yeah. Whole Foods was a few blocks past the wine store and was pretty much the center of my social existence at the time—no longer hanging out at my dealer’s apartment up near the Drag, which had been Ground Zero for me back in the day, not the Central Library anymore either, management didn't like too many Negroes at the main location. Suddenly my principal hang-out was W.F. 

        To set the scene.

Not the current Whole Foods, not the present mothership but the prior mothership, next to Book People, just across Sixth Street from the main locale now. So, like, Whole Foods had these awesome muffins, outrageously over-priced like everything else on the aisles, and like only one good deal, one reasonably-priced item in the whole fucking store. Water. You could buy cold mineral water allegedly from Italy in a big green glass bottle for like one dollar and carry it around in your backpack and survive downtown during a Texas summer. When even an African-American warrior male whose ancestors ran barefoot on the savannah, hunting alongside Simba the lion—and whose ancestors also worked in East Texas cotton fields, hoeing a tough row—starts to sweat. 

        Personally, it was never my plan to shoplift at Whole Foods, even back in the day. Let me be clear. Even in the Old Austin where racist privilege was so blatant and was so very hurtful to the Black Man's soul. Not that the thought didn't occur to me to rip off the store, actually, as a kind of revolutionary justice, or wealth redistribution, you know? Except W.F. has always seemed like a risky environment for a Negro, not worth it, not in the old Austin, or even today, not for an aubergine or organic beet. 

        Done a lot of grazing thru the years, sure. 

Grazing makes up for the high prices on days you actually make a purchase, because it’s all such an outrageous rip-off? Stop me if you've heard that rationalization before. So, like, the point is that one time this state trooper working the Whole Foods front door, this one afternoon back in the day, in the Old Austin, his instincts about me were right on but his luck was bad because there was a receipt in my pocket. Not necessarily my receipt but a receipt nonetheless. This was looking to be one of those other three-out-of-ten chances of a bad outcome in River City, the black man just running his game, and for me usually involved police.

        He was cooler about his suspicions which the state puercos usually are, you know? But before the pig signals me to stop, which he didn’t really do, he’s looking at my bag of Whole Foods goodies—but doing it in a discreet way because this was an expensive store where wealthy & powerful white people came to shop and security didn’t want to make a big scene or put a liberal off enjoying his or her foie gras or Perrier by clubbing a nigger to the ground during store hours. Not while customers are still enjoying the Whole Foods shopping experience. 

So, like, you know, after his professional curiosity had been satisfied we got to talking and somehow the conversation turned to W who by then was President Bush and it turned out this state police porker wasn’t an ordinary trooper, not Texas Highway Patrol, or a mere driver’s license examiner. He was Capitol Police working store security as an extra gig. He was Mexican. We got to chatting, yeah. Black Man and his Latino brother, you know, even if he was a pig he was also my compadre.

        Austin was still a small town and people were not too busy to talk, not like today with all these greedhead techdogs who never have time for human bonding. 

        Or time for small town gossip, either.

This cop said that on Election Day 2000 or Election Day +1 when the new owner of the White House had not yet been declared, he was actually on duty at the Governor’s Mansion and W was home. Yeah, that's what he said. And that's where it got interesting. So, like, W came out of the house early that morning, onto the front lawn, in his robe and slippers or whatever, to collect his morning newspaper, trying to act like an ordinary guy in Austin, Texas, in case the media was watching which they were. 

There were news vans and reporters already camped out, on West 11th Street, as close as they could get to the Mansion. So, like, my question to this state trooper working the W.F. front door was, like, stop right there. Stop right there. 

        Stop! 

This is completely professional curiosity on my part: what newspaper? What newspaper did W subscribe to? And the trooper said W actually subscribed to two newspapers that were delivered every morning to the front door of the Mansion, the Wall Street Journal and the Houston Chronicle. So, like, not the Austin American-Statesman which meant Governor Bush was actually smarter than he looked. 

That’s a joke, actually. 

The trooper continued, we’re still standing in the sliding doorway at the old Whole Foods mothership, just far enough inside not to trigger the electronic sensor. It's cool inside, he’s still checking out the people leaving, discreetly, but no niggers or Mexicans coming or going and therefore no one with probable cause to stop, right, isn’t that how the Texas criminal justice system works? 

And he said him and the other officer on duty that morning, on the lawn of the Governor’s Mansion, said to W, that day, that morning, Election Day 2000, Y2K, the Year of the Millennium in the World Capitol of Live Music: 

        “Hey Governor, how’s it going?” 

        And W, who was always nice to the help, pretty cool one-on-one—so people said—rolled his eyes and smiled what must have been his familiar good-old-boy aw-shucks peckerwood smile and replied, half-joking, “It’s going to be one of those days,” which it was. It was actually "one of those days" for like the next month or so until the Supreme Court ruled that those votes in Florida didn't count. 

Or, like, for the next few years, actually. 

        Through Hurricane Katrina, certainly, or until the waterline dropped. Until the surge started working in Fallujah too, that would just be an uneducated guess. And that, like, fit with all the available hearsay in ATX. 

        Never saw the big guy in person during those years he was in River City but people said, both D’s and R’s, that Governor Bush was very charming personally, when they went to his office at the Texas Capitol, or at the Mansion, or wherever, a very personable guy one-on-one. Someone also said he was always the smartest guy in the room, at least in Austin, which seems doubtful now in light of later events in D.C. and abroad, like in Baghdad. But that was the impression of meeting him when he was Governor of Texas. The smartest guy in the room, no shit. 

And this one chick, a hot little Chilean “abnormal psychologist” specialist-type chick who wanted my bone, frankly, not that that’s important here. This is a true story. Like, 100%. 

She asked me once about W in a hostel somewhere during a prelude to a hookup, and knowing that Austin is my home, what is he really like, she wanted to know. 

Who? 

“President Bush,” she said, and my response was he’s very personable one-on-one because that's what everybody had told me. She looked at me and she answered, completely serious, this is absolutely true, “They said the same thing about Adolf Hitler.” After that—since then—when people ask me about George W. Bush, based upon my knowledge of this bucolic River City, my answer is to skip straight to the chase and say he’s a fucking Nazi. No lie. 

        4. 

My last memorable encounter in the old Austin was also among the beautiful people and high prices of Whole Food but not on the bulk aisle. 

In express checkout one afternoon there was a striking older white lady, one or two customers ahead of me in line, and somehow she looked familiar. Don’t know what she was buying although it was too expensive whatever it was. 

She looked like she could afford it though, not Michael Dell-rich, not like she could buy the whole store, just whatever she wanted in it. What struck me most were her clothes. 

Her apparel. 

She was rich enough to be understated which in Texas means wealthy indeed. Fashionably broken-in jeans, almost chic, like someone had worn them for her to soften them up, and a sheer very expensive maybe even silk blouse and a thin gold bracelet on her wrist, not like the ingots that ordinary Texas rich women wear. 

This wasn’t oil money, or cattle wealth, actually, it was political gold which means respectability as well as cash. Her hair, kind of golden too, actually, was perfect, a helmet but perfect. 

She looked well-cared for and sure of herself. It was Ann Richards. 

We chatted for a second. It had been twenty years, more, since we’d last seen each other, in the Travis County Courthouse when she was still Precinct 1 Commissioner whose district was West Austin back in the day. We talked on the telephone once when she was State Treasurer too but that conversation was a long time ago in a town that no longer exists. 

Ann’s rap after she got beat for reelection as governor was that she never looked back. That’s what she told interviewers if she was asked, what happened happened, she said, she lost the election, W won. That was that and she moved on with her life. Which meant going to New York or wherever, working as a political consultant, a commentator or strategist or whatever. That’s what she said. That's what she did, documentary evidence proves it. 

But by the time we ran into each other at Whole Foods that version of history was no longer holding up. What had happened in the meantime was 9-11 and Iraq, W had four years in D.C. at that point, when former Governor Richards appeared in express checkout—this was like September or October, the fall of the end of W's first term in the White House and a lot of people were dead who otherwise would not be, including a couple of hundred thousand Iraqi civilians. Exactly a decade had passed since W beat Ann and it had been a rough few years for humanity. It started, actually, at the Texas Capitol with executions that W ordered as governor. Those were the metrics of the era when old Austin came to an end, the numbers described it all, particularly body counts. 

And you could kind of see that on Ann's face. She had fucked up and she knew it. Ann Richards didn't say anything, she was too smart for that, too experienced especially after four years in the Mansion up the street and even longer in the Courthouse, across the street from the Mansion. She certainly wasn't going to say anything to someone who was not in her inner circle. She kept her mouth closed but her features were harder to control. 

Nothing was said but nothing needed to be said, it was all written on her face. You might think she was ill but the cancer hadn’t been diagnosed yet. This was something different, regret. It’s kind of like illness but the symptoms can be harder to diagnose or mimic other conditions. Not being a psychologist or anything, not like my Chilean friend who called W a Nazi. My bet was that Ann felt responsible. She felt guilty for unleashing George W. Bush on an unsuspecting world. W’s political career was one baby that needed to be strangled in the crib. Ann Richards was the last person with the motive and the means to do it. She made the error that is unforgivable in this town. She ran a poor campaign. 

        The trouble is, and this may have been Ann’s thinking, when you bring in somebody to go digging in dumpsters in Austin you can’t always be sure whose trash it’s going to be. A lot of shit happens here. Maybe that was what she feared about playing hardball. 

It's amazing that people who never knew her still talk about what a saint Ann Richards was. If she was a saint, the Texas Governor’s Mansion was the wrong place for her. Who a leader nurtures—who a leader praises—is important and she did a good job of that, encouraging women to join the process, and all, being a mentor you would call her, a role model. But just as important as whose political career you start is whose career you end. By that measure she failed. We shook hands and she went her way. 

        She was living around the corner in some condos. Whose other V.I.P. resident was one of President Johnson's daughters, Lynda Bird or Luci Bird, whichever one lives here in town. 

Watching Governor Richards walk away, no security, no assistant, nothing except the purchases in her hand. In this town that's what it sometimes came down to, yes, even “in the Old Austin.” No matter how important you were. One day you ended up carrying your own groceries out of Whole Foods. It could be a lonely walk through the parking lot. 

Anyway, that day, going back inside and collecting my shit—and the receipt—and saying to the checker, like, “Do you know who that was? That was Ann Richards.” 

The guy was a hipster, probably a glass-blower or mixed-media artist just working the cash register to pay for the $200-an-ounce herb that gave him inspiration. He was completely unimpressed. 

“I just saw,” he told me, “Sandra Bullock in produce.”