In between ducking ping pong balls, some friends and I enjoyed dinner and a beer at the Cove last night. Before I go off on a tangent about what I ate and how fabulous the food there is, let me just allow you to click here if you want to see their menu. Now, moving forward with the TX History conversation.
All my dinner buddies and I are native Texans. We were all blessed to have a full year of Texas History before our burgeoning middle school minds were introduced to such paltry topics as US and/or World History. However, in all that Texas-themed schoolin' there was very little discussion of what Fiesta commemorates. The official Fiesta website summarizes it with these bullet points:
- 11 days
- 107 events
- 100 local nonprofit member organizations
- Up to 3.5 million attending
- $284 million economic impact
- A real Texas-sized festival!
- drinking
- drinking while wearing a sombrero
- drinking while cracking cascarones on each others heads
- drinking while eating lots of Mexican food and funnel cake
Fiesta is a big, Mexian-themed celebration of, first, losing to the Mexicans at the Alamo and, then, beating them at the battle after the Alamo. Betcha don't remember that battle! Sam Houston finally showed up and beat Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. So we embrace the culture in memory of defeating the military from that culture? Make sense yet?
Fiesta started with a single event, a parade. The Battle of Flowers Parade to be exact. Every school child in San Antonio gets this day as a holidy, but none of them know the history. It is worth repeating:
"The idea for the first Battle of Flowers Parade was conceived early in 1891 by the wife of a congressman who had seen a similar parade in Spain. She suggested to her friends that a flower parade should be held in San Antonio each year on April 21 in memory of the fallen heroes at the Alamo and to commemorate the victory at the Battle of San Jacinto, April 21, 1836, where Texas had gained its independence from Mexico. These ladies formed the Battle of Flowers Parade committee, enlisted the support of fellow community leaders and the planning began. The first parade had an actual "flower battle" with half of the fresh-flower-covered carriages, floats and bicycles going in one direction and the other half going in the opposite direction, tossing fresh flowers at each other as they passed." - Battle of Flowers Association
Sidenote: Personally I would love to be in a bicycle, flower battle, but that's not the point.
Back to the Cove and conversation. In talking about all of this, my friend pointed out her 'favorite' idiosyncrasy of Fiesta. The Battle of Flowers parade always includes military marching bands from Mexico city. Hmm. The irony is as rich as molten chocolate cake. (Wow, in the end I have a talent for bringing everything back around to food.)
