SAN ANTONIO: THE PRIDE OF TEXAS

SAN ANTONIO: THE PRIDE OF TEXAS Story and photography by Margaret & Eric Anderson They say Texans have two homes -- their own and San Antonio. In fact, 50 percent of the city's visitors come from the state itself. They come for its convenience: it's right in the middle of the state. They come for its fun, attractions, markets and festivals. And they come for its history.

	Visitors to San Antonio are immediately engulfed by the past. No Texas city so symbolizes the style, the pride, the conceit, the courage, the élan of Texas as this place where fewer than 190 men kept the army of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at bay in the Mission of San Antonio de Valero. Here, "on the 13th day, all was lost, but a battle cry was born." But who could forget the Alamo?

And here in its shadows are displayed tributes to its gallant garrison. Amongst the flags, memorabilia, and brass plaques that have comments like "On this spot, more bones were discovered..." is a painting of Dr. Amos Pollard. He was born in 1803 in Ashburnham, Massachusetts and died while tending the Alamo's injured. Near the painting is another exhibit of medical interest -- copies of Wistar's "Anatomy," and Dewee's "Practice of Physic," books that helped train Dr. James Purdy Reynolds. Born in 1809, a physician in Mifflin, Pennsylvania, he chose to die at the Alamo a soldier.
	Visitors who choose to live and see the best of this city soon find El Mercado, the restored Mexican farmers' market where open-air shopping for piñatas, pottery and produce is still a way of life. Visitors wander La Villita, the cluster of adobe homes once the original Mexican settlement. It's now a bustling center for arts and crafts studios, showrooms and restaurants.

	They explore the Spanish Governor's Palace, with its 3 foot-thick, 1749 walls, still furnished in authentic antiques. They meander the century-old King William neighborhood built by yesterday's rich German merchants, now gentrified into an impressive street of Victorian and Deep South plantation homes. They discover the San Antonio Missions, a more recent group of settlements than ours in California. And they compare the museums:

	The Wax Museum with its inevitable section on history that attempts to show the defenders of the Alamo, the McNay Art Museum, which, with its French Impressionists, reminds visitors of the insatiable appetite some Texans have for culture, and the Museum of Art, once a brewery but now a showplace for pre-Columbian art, that reveals what Texan wealth and enthusiasm could achieve. And there's the zoo, the botanical gardens, the HemisFair Tower of the Americas and, of course, famously, the Buckhorn Saloon and Museum.