A Slice of Life
Bill Lites
Day 5 – Saturday 4/21/2018
After a very nice complimentary breakfast of eggs, sausage, toast and orange juice, I gave Greta the address to take me to visit the Texas Air Museum located adjacent to the Stinson Municipal Airport there in San Antonio. This is a large one hanger museum that is filled with memorabilia and artifacts, covering aviation from its inception to the present time. The museum’s outdoor static display aircraft were in bad need of some TLC.
Next I ask Greta to take me to the Aero Accessories Inc. facility located just a few miles south of the Transportation Museum there in San Antonia. This turned out to be your basic aircraft small accessories overhaul and repair station. This business was operating in what I would call “primitive conditions” with respect to the modern equipment they were working on. There was really nothing much to see, so I moved on.
Now I headed for a try at getting into the Fort Sam Houston base, there in San Antonio, to visit the Army Medical Museum. I had given up trying to visit the USAF Airman’s Museum yesterday, after being turned away from three different gates. I wish if military establishments (bases) are going to advertise their museums as being open to the public, that they would provide instructions for how the public is to gain access to those museums. Today I called the museum first, and that was a big help. I asked them which gate I should approach first in order to get a pass onto the base to visit their museum. This worked out fairly well, as I was able to get a pass, and I was impressed with the museum’s large number of displays and memorabilia. They had a 1917 U.S. Army ambulance similar to the one my father, as a corps man, drove during WWI.
Next I had Greta take me to the Alamo Plaza located in the Historic District of downtown San Antonio. After getting some pictures of the Alamo, I took a one-hour trolley ride around the city, stopping at the Marketplace Plaza.
The Marketplace Plaza was brightly decorated and crowded with people. As I strolled through the Plaza, the crowd was entertained with live music and breakdancing, as the smell of freshly cooked foods of all types attacked our nostrils. At one point I came across a tiny Hispanic woman (someone said she was 83 years old) jiving away on the walk-way to boom box music. She was moving like a saucy senorita. She wore a long, hot-pink tiered skirt that fell just above her ankles and exposed her sturdy white shoes. A lace shawl and a feisty pink hat decorated with flowers completed her ensemble. I Hope I can move that well when I’m that old. Wait a minute. I am ALMOST that old, and I can’t move near that well now!
A rain squall came up about that time, so I put off my track along the famous River Walk. I’m not sure how much I really missed. Maybe next time I’m in San Antonio it won’t be raining. I called my friends Ken & Debbi, who live there in the San Antonia area, but they were in Florida on vacation.
By now I had been bumped, pushed, and jostled enough for one afternoon, and asked Greta to take me back to the motel, where I could relax and enjoy my delicious leftover Chili Relleno dinner.
—–To Be Continued—–
Bill is a retired Mechanical engineer living with his wonderful artist/writer wife, DiVoran, of 58 years in Titusville, Florida. He was born and raised in the Southwest, did a tour of duty with the U.S. Navy, attended Northrop University in Southern California and ended up working on America’s Space Program for 35 years. He currently is retired and spends most of his time building and flying R/C model airplanes, writing blogs for Word Press and supporting his wife’s hobbies with framing, editing and marketing. He also volunteers with a local church Car Care Ministry and as a tour guide at the Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum in Titusville. Bill has two wonderful children, two outstanding grandchildren, and a loving sister and her husband, all of whom also live in Central Florida, so he and DiVoran are rewarded by having family close to spend lots of quality time with.
Bill’s favorite Scripture is: Philippians 1:6
Old Things R New 
I loved this post, especially the saucy our age almost senorita.
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