When I was a kid, I could not get enough of the Alamo. It is the Texas origin story/creation myth. I read every book I could find in my elementary school library and then at the public library after we moved to Monticello—every biography of Bowie (my favorite), Crockett, and Travis. I got a massive Bowie knife from Santa when I was 10 or 11. I could quote the John Wayne film like my adult self quotes Coen Brothers films. And I knew, like every kid in Texas, that March 6 was a high holy day. 

50 years later, I know the story is more Myth than fact. I know that the men who died that day were men and not gods. I know that it is a story of flawed humans with a full range of motivations; some noble and some less so.  I know that any story written by folks who were not there (and who never spoke to anyone who was) is as much fiction as fact. I also know that the myth means something very different to black and brown folk, as ownership of the former and othering of the latter are at the heart of the story. 

So... what to do with my nostalgia and with a symbol that so defined my childhood identity? How to reckon with a myth that greatly fueled my love of reading and taught me to use the Dewey Decimal System? I don't have an answer except to say this. Every March 6, I "Remember the Alamo." I remember the need of a boy to find heroes when they were in short supply closer to home. And I see the 50-year arc of a complicated understanding about what it means to be a Texan and an American.   

Still, almost all of my heroes are Texans... But they carry guitars and notebooks instead of muskets and cannon balls. Turns out I still need myths and legends.