San Jacinto Monument

Sometimes I really enjoy my job. Yesterday I was able to have an inside look at the refurbishment of the San Jacinto Monument, located outside Houston, Texas. The entire thing has been gutted and basically shrink wrapped so the necessary improvements can be made to make it safer for visitors (and make it insurable). Included in the works is the upgrade of the ancient elevator (lift in Aussie speak) that takes folks up to the 50th floor (metric: floor 38 1/2) and installation of a fire suppression (sprinkler) system.

Now I did a little research on this one, which involved quite nearly reading the entire story on the monument (okay a couple of words) and coming dangerously close to viewing the information on the above website. So from what I can surmise from this exhaustive investigation it goes something like this: it seems the monumnent is located on the site of a big battle that occurred back in 1836 between the Mexans and the Texicans (see also SECOND largest state of the Union) over who would get to engrave the sides of the monument. The guy that the city of Houston was named after, Davey Crockett (see also Fess Parker), led the Texicans in the first skirmish of the battle which was apparently fought over which rental car company would get the half-time advertising rights. With the rallying cry of "Remember the Alamo" ringing out across the prairie, these brave fighters won the day against overwhelmingly greater numbers (clearly the Mexans were supporting the "evil alliance" of Avis, Budget, Hertz AND Thrifty).

With the momentum from winning the first skirmish behind them and the additional money from their 20% share in the cable rights, the Texicans were able to afford more rifles and ammunition and rallied around their great leader - the creater of the famous knife - David Bowie (see also Ziggy Stardust), who led the final charge up to the monument and used his knife (see also Crocodile Dundee - although I have no idea why you would), to etch the tale of their victory into the four sides of the monument. The Mexans were completely wiped out and had to retire from the field and retreat to the showers in disgrace. In fact it appears that according to my on-line dictionary they changed their names at some point to the "MexICans", possibly in an attempt to distance themselves from this debacle.

So anyway, that's how the Astros won the pennant. Oh wait, they didn't win the pennant - maybe they should change their name to the Astricos...okay then, that's how the Republic of Texas came into being, then became associated with a car rental agency and coonskin hats and an over the hill rock star (?); then became one of the United States (how's that for a save?)

I really have to check on those meds.