Now & Then
Thanks for getting a blurb and cover foto up so quickly Gary. The book actually came out just before Christmas and is available from Borders at the Quarry and elsewhere like Barnes & Noble or On Main Off Main. It is also down at the Alamo Museum/Gift Shop. Mel
Mel requested that if anyone would like an autographed copy then you may receive one by purchasing directly from him.
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Texas Custom Art by Mel Brown
2007 Book Award Winner
front that this old town has always fascinated me. It has so far led
to five books on various aspects of the Alamo City’s rich and
colorful history with number six just now in the beginning stage. And
ironically perhaps, I have not lived in SA since 1974 having returned
that fall to Austin and UT so I could go back to school having earned
a BA there in 1969. This followed an elopement and marriage to a
wonderful young Chinese-American lady named Lorraine Lee. My return
to UT lasted exactly one semester but then the kids began to come
along and we stayed put here in the capital, eventually raising three
bright and beautiful children, now all grown.
San Antonio; Then, Now & Always is the most recent of my versions in
telling the SA, Tx. story. It is an exceptional book in being a
compilation of 350 images taken between 1907 or so and 2007. The
imagery is mostly in postcards old and new, plus a smattering of
archival images along with a handful of personal photos shot by me or
by my brother Bob. This book begins by showing the reader how the
city came to develop its meandering namesake stream into the world
renowned River Walk that millions of tourists have delighted in for
the past 60 plus years.
Being primarily a postcard book, it offers views of the city thought
by publishers to be the most photogenic, appealing or otherwise
interesting to the masses of visitors that our city enjoys annually.
What makes this book unique is that my editor allowed me the freedom
to tell my stories in pictures my way and sometimes that way is
personal. Several images show relatives of mine doing their thing in
San Antonio in many different ways over many different years. Found
within the 350 captions is a lot of what I call “hard history”, that
being facts on people, places, and things captured by camera. Also
found among those captions are many anecdotal bits and pieces of
information gleaned from my first 20 years growing up in SA. This
gives the book a personal flavor not usually found in books of this
type so that the reader is both educated and perhaps entertained, I
hope.
Following the river chapter are several others including one on San
Antonio’s historic Chinese community, another on downtown after dark,
and others covering postcards used for advertising, and those
depicting many of the old city’s more colorful places and people plus
special odds and ends. The last five chapters describe our town’s
long and significant military history as seen at the army and air
force installations dotting the map.
Most of my San Antonio theater memories center around the many nights
spent sitting in one car or another watching movies at one of several
drive-ins scattered about the East and South sides of town. With
names like Town Twin, Park-Air, The Rigsby, Mission (singular) then
later four screen, and of course The Trail next to Cap’n Jim’s
Restaurant on Loop 13 and Hi-way 281. There were several others but
those named here were most closest and most familiar. The Trail
probably had the neatest neon with a close second the Mission with
its lovely gas-in-glass tube-scene of the old church just down the
road a little ways. But The Trail’s scene of a cowboy riding herd on
a cattle drive was the most evocative, at least for us boys.
San Antonio movie experiences really began for me about 1950 in such
venues as the short lived Hi-Ho Theater out on S. Presa and the ill
fated Highland on S. Hackberry. Both were a couple of the many
neighborhood movie venues around town that entertained families and
especially kids in the dark ages before TV. Saturday mornings meant a
long line of kids in front of most of them and for me it was the
Highland. We’d get there by 9:30 or 10 am to get a good seat for the
newsreels, cartoons, and previews of coming attractions. Then we
settled down to watch the two features, which tended to be western,
war, monster or by the mid ‘50s those silly but scary sci-fi movies
like “Invaders from Mars” or “When Worlds Collide” both now
considered classics.
A truly vivid recollection for me were those moments of
primal impact in “Invaders From Mars” when the entire auditorium was
bathed in a red light as the screen was filled with the molten rock-
melting beam from the alien’s weapon. For a six year or seven old
kid, it don’t get any more visceral believe me. But a more tangible
moment came a few years later on that Saturday when we saw a couple
zombie type offerings and I was temporarily blinded by fear. Actually
it was sugar that caused my momentary loss of vision and it was self-
induced. Now maybe this has happened to countless movie-goers over
the decades but it was still a first for me.
I arrived at the Highland with among other goodies, a large,
round, saucer-size, peanut brittle patty meant to last at least thru
half a movie. Nibbling along the outer edge of the patty while
sitting knees-up on the cushioned chair eventually led to my
temporary loss of vision about midway through the first zombie movie.
It seems that whenever an especially gruesome moment filled the
screen I ducked behind my big ol’ patty and slowly but surely coated
my eye lashes with syrupy slobber. Eventually it reached a saturation
point and sure enough glued my eyelids together, which naturally
freaked me out because I knew not from whence this disablement came,
for a trying moment anyway. That tasty but sticky patty had provided
a perfect shield between the zombies and me and in such a way that my
pals seated on either side of me did not detect thus saving me from
names like baby, sissy, ‘fraidie-cat, etc. That may not seem like
much of a deal now but then and there it was a big deal.
