San Antonio, TX. This burg will never be accused of being a book town. Visiting the city – which possesses one of the loveliest downtown areas in the country – only one rare book shop was found: The History Shop, located across the street from the Alamo. It was not impressive; concentrating on weapons, maps and some books, its diorama of the Alamo is about the best that can be said for it. The Antiquarian Book Mart is located outside the downtown area; I did not have an opportunity to check it out. As far as new book shops, the only one found downtown was closed, as in out of business.
San Antonio does, however, possess one very special attraction for book lovers. In the early 1880s, William Sydney Porter, aka O. Henry, moved to Texas for reasons of health, settled in San Antonio, and later rented a tiny, two room house for $6 a month.
He was fascinated by the city’s community and set about chronicling the languages and culture of the native populations, which he absorbed into his bloodstream during many happy hours in the town’s cantina saloons while drinking up the local color and ardent spirits of its characters.
In 1884, O. Henry published The Rolling Stone, a humorous tabloid filled with poems, stories and caricatures of the local population who were not entirely thrilled with the newcomer’s sense of humor; The Rolling Stone was soon in dire financial straights. Several of O. Henry’s stories were set in San Antonio, including Fog in Santone, The Higher Abdication, and Hygeia at the Solito.
He left San Antonio for Austin in 1898. Working as a bank teller, he was was accused and convicted of embezzlement, and served three years in prison where he wrote like a fiend and memorized every word in the dictionary.
The O. Henry house was built John Kush in 1855 and was typical of the homes built by the German settlers of San Antonio. O Henry lived there 1895-96.
The house originally stood on South Presa Street. In 1960, the descendants of John Kush, in concert with Lone Star Brewing, bought the house, and in 1998 a private partnership moved the house to its present location at the corner of Dolorosa and Laredo just slightly east of the Market Square district, its surprise end as a lonely and forlorn squatter on the southwest corner of a parking lot.
Better there than nowhere.
There is a welcome sign inviting visitors but in a strange plot twist I discovered that when you push the buzzer, ostensibly to gain entry, one is instead treated to a recording, a disembodied voice narrating the story of the house and O. Henry’s occupancy. In a further plot twist, no online biography of O. Henry makes any mention whatsoever of his residence in San Antonio; the only information on O. Henry in San Antonio is found on San Antonio-related sites and there are factual conflicts. Houston, Austin, and San Antonio appear to be locked in a struggle for bragging rights to the author as citizen.
Though there is no evidence that the O. Henry House is a popular tourist attraction (the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum and Louis Tussaud’s Wax Works seem to be second and third behind the Alamo in tourism sizzle, and the O. Henry House is off the beaten path), too many visitors apparently wore out their welcome. Of course, when you can only fit three people in it at a time, the possibilities are limited. Why keep a full-time curator on site when the chances of anyone actually wanting to visit and go inside are, unfortunately, slim and none?
The O. Henry House needs to be moved, yet again, and to a spot where it will be noticed and appreciated. For maximum exposure, I suggest it be relocated to Alamo Plaza adjacent to the famous site of the 1836 battle symbolizing Texas independence. Though Texas ultimately gained its separation from Mexico, the battle of the Alamo was a lost cause. So, I fear, is the prospect of throngs anxious to see where the great American short story writer lived.
But I still have hope that one day a battle cry to stir the souls of book lovers will be heard throughout the land and seen on souvenir t-shirts: “Remember the O. Henry House!”
Yet for that fantasy to occur, the conservators will have to undertake an expensive promotional campaign. For an end worthy of an O. Henry story, they’ll have to sell the house to raise the money.