"If they come through Texas, I done played with them." - Rufus, Kill Bill, Vol. 2

The Leaning Tower of Texas. Actually, it's the San Jacinto Monument, and it has an elevator to the top. It's tilty because I was too lazy to walk back farther to get the whole thing in the picture. 570' tall.

In the eighties nineties, Texas had a series of commercials that they ran that ended with the tagline, “Texas, it’s like a whole ‘nother country®.”

Outside of the exact definition of what “nother” means (it could be defined as a test-tube mother, I suppose), I did recall from the blurry depths of high school history that Texas had gained independence from Mexico, and, for a brief period of time, was an independent nation. This would explain the US flag and the Texas flag being flown at the same height, not something you should try if you were, say, Massachusetts. If you tried it in Massachusetts, you might be asked to take a car ride with a Kennedy. Nobody comes back from a car ride with a Kennedy.

On Saturday, however, we decided to take a ride to San Jacinto to see a bit of our new nation state. San Jacinto isn’t, despite the name, a new Taco Bell™ mixture of the same six ingredients they use for everything else, yet somehow “cheesier”. No, San Jacinto is the Birthplace of Texas©.

We drove up to a monument, which is 570’ in height, making it the world’s tallest war memorial. This, for a war that lasted slight longer than the average time between invasion and surrender of France, is (in my personal opinion) a bit presumptuous.

It turns out that the Mexican President, General, and Pope, Santa Ana (no relation to Santa Fe) had been chasing the Texian independence fighters back towards Louisiana with a vastly numerically superior force. The Texians had really no choice besides retreat or listening to an eternity of mariachi music while drinking frosty Corona© beer on a beach. They chose to retreat. Santa Ana followed them, and decided to go out for an afternoon stroll with about 1200 of his troops. At approximately 4:30 PM the Mexicans were on siesta (I’m not making that part up) and Sam Houston and 900 of his Texians stormed the Mexican positions and won the battle in about 18 minutes (still not making that up), which is still longer than the average French “time to surrender”.

Having lost his army and his pants in a strip poker game with Sam Houston, Santa Ana signed surrender documents, and the nation of Texas was born. History does not record if Sam could fit into Santa’s pants.

100 years later, the San Jacinto museum was built. 71 years after that, the Wilder clan paid a visit.

The museum is neat. It costs the horrendously high $1.00 for folks over 12 (The Boy and Pugsley were free) and has a gift shop where The Boy paid his hard-won $3.00 from emptying Alia S. Wilder’s litter box (well, not really her litter box, she has cats that use it) for a shiny Texas Ranger badge. The Mrs. took a picture of me next to Santa Ana’s portrait. He looked rather somber and grim, perhaps because he was covered by about a thousand pounds of gold braid and medals he’d awarded himself, including the “Lost to a bunch of yokels in Texas” medal.

The Boy taking careful aim at a distant Klingon warship.

We also wandered over to the USS Texas, the only battleship to serve in WWI and WWII still in existence. It’s parked on A1 through D-1, if you really must know. Neither The Boy or I figured out a way to break it. The USS Texas was being readied for an overnight group of Boy Scouts, and we ran into them several times during our trip through the museum and the ship. The Boy Scouts were, frankly, polite and nerdy. The Boy joins them on Monday, becoming a miniature Cub Scout, something called a “Tiger Cub.” He’s hoping convinced that the USS Texas is haunted, so that when his troop spends the night he can see a ghost.

The Boy and I entertained ourselves by swiveling and elevating the anti-aircraft guns. We brought down two Japanese Zeros and one German ME-109. It was a slow afternoon. Unfortunately, now Japan and Germany have declared war on Texas.

I think most Texans would be okay with that.