Back to San Antone

Hey, what’s the deal with San Antonio?

That may sound like an opening line from a cut rate comedian, but seriously, people, why does this Texas city that I’ve never visited keep popping up in my life?

San Antonio is the second-most populous city in Texas after Houston, as well as the site of the Alamo Mission, where Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and many others died in 1836 in the infamous battle with Mexican troops.

The city of 1.4 million people is also known for Paseo del Rio, a 15-mile-long river walk, the McNay Art Museum and the Natural Bridge Caverns.

I once had a five-minute crush on a woman from San Antonio many years ago. She was an operator for a credit card company, or some other outfit and I was just so pleasantly surprised by her kindness.

We chatted for quite some time, long after she had helped me solve whatever problem I had called about. The conversation was flowing so naturally that I dropped a hint that, hmm, maybe we should stay in touch?

I know this sounds weird, but I’m sure stranger things have happened. And it would’ve made for a great story had we actually met and fallen in love.

Brooklyn guy meets flies to Texas to meet the love of his life? C’mon, man, that’s a romcom just begging to be filmed. But it didn’t happen, so that movie won’t be coming to a theater near you.

The city popped up again my life last year when I wrote a story about a man in San Antonio who had used an Apple AirTag to track down his stolen truck and wound up shooting the suspect to death.

“If you are to get your vehicle stolen, I know it's frustrating, but please do not take matters in your own hands like this,” a police department spokesman said at the time.

Another suspected car thief was shot to death in San Antonio a few months later by, only this time there were no AirTags involved.

And then last week, I sat down to watch Rolling Thunder, a 1977 film starring William Devane and a very young Tommy Lee Jones that takes place in San Antonio.

Winding Rivers

The film is credited to Paul Schrader, who wrote the scripts for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, to name a few, and tells the story of a recently-returned Vietnam POW who loses his family—as well as his right hand—during a violent home invasion.

Schrader later said that the main character in his original script was a racist psycho, not unlike Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, who winds up murdering innocent Mexicans. In fact, the Bickle character made a brief appearance in Schrader’s original screenplay, according to IMDB.

The script, which was intended to be a metaphor for Vietnam, never got made, but the storyline is disturbingly reminiscent of a real mass shooting in 2019, when a yet another gun-toting psycho murdered 22 people at an El Paso Walmart store.

The shooter, who had driven more than 10 hours from Dallas, posted a racist screed online that railed against an influx of Hispanics in the U.S.

Rolling Thunder comes off as a rather standard revenge story—"a fascist film,” as Schrader called it—but it opens and ends with a song called “San Antone” by Denny Brooks, a singer and voice over artist who was a background singer and guitarist for John Denver.

I am so not a fan of country music fan, but I have to say I really enjoyed this song, which has a slow, almost mournful feeling to it.

“San Antonio, it’s really good to see you, it's been a while, but you've been on my mind,” the song begins. “I've seen your rolling hills and winding rivers so clear that I can almost make them mine.”

The song describes “the old Bandero highway, stretching out towards old Mexico” and how “I might be coming back to only memories.”

After a disastrous sneak preview—where audience members reportedly tried to attack studio personnel--Rolling Thunder was a box office dud, which probably explains why “San Antone” didn’t catch on.

I googled “songs about San Antonio” and learned that the city has been the subject of roughly 30 or more songs by such artists as Willie Nelson, Charley Pride, Emmylou Harris, and Marty Robbins. But I didn’t see any mention of Denny Brooks.

However, I learned that it was the A side of a Japanese 45 RPM, which someone, thankfully, posted on YouTube. The song, which was written by Barry De Vorzon, also appears in the 1980 film The Ninth Configuration.

Give it a listen and let me know if I’m crazy.

I’m wondering if I should take a trip San Antonio and see the place for myself. Heck, maybe I’ll look up my operator buddy and make that romcom come true.

I’m sure stranger things have happened.