Time to regroup my brain...

I'm letting NWFO sit for a while before I go back into it. I may do a red pen correction, next time around. Meaning print out the text and make corrections. This is usually the best way to deal with everything in it. Typos. Inconsistencies. Mistakes in timing. It's easy to get lost in what part of the 70s Brendan is going through.

With me, the 70s were all San Antonio. I was working at Frost Brothers, an upscale department store on Houston Street, in visual merchandising. Dressing mannequins in Women's and Children's clothing and the front windows. I liked it. I was making a good wage. Had a car, insurance, apartment, and people I liked to hang out with.

I did some artwork, too, and sold a little. Helped with a few major functions, including fashion shows at the St. Anthony Hotel and the North Star Mall store. I also got to handle the gowns for the Fiesta Royal Court. (This link is to Maria Schell's commentary on a visit to the Witte Museum, when they had an exhibit of some of the gowns.)

“The royal robes were first worn in 1909 as part of San Antonio’s annual commemoration of the Battle of San Jacinto, the concluding battle in Texas’s 1836 revolution against Mexico. The celebration, now known as Fiesta, began in 1891 with a parade and rapidly grew into a citywide festival, currently featuring over 100 events.”

...It takes about three years to get the robes from idea to reality. There is one queen, one princess, and 24 duchesses. That’s 26 gowns at $42,500 a pop or approximately 1.105,000 million dollars. Now there are six dressmakers each with ten seamstresses for a total of 66 individuals working for maybe a year-and-a-half.

This was a huge deal in San Antonio, during Fiesta. There was an elegant ball at the Menger Hotel, by the Alamo, and for a local girl to become a member of the Court was great. To be crowned queen? The girl rode on that all year. The thing is, the applicants to the Court had to be well-off, because their families paid to have the gowns made.

Frost Brothers and Joske's had a deal. We both would display the amazing gowns in our main windows, for a week to ten days, and would alternate which of us got the Queen's gown, which was the most elaborate. A co-worker and I would pick the gowns up the morning after the Fiesta Flambeau Parade and set them up in the windows, where they'd stay for a week to ten days. The whole thing was like a highlight of San Antonio society.

One anecdote--when the Court and the ladies' gowns rode in the Battle of Flowers Parade, the floats would circle around by the Menger Hotel. A lot of the city's gay community would take up residence and watch the parade from the hotel's balconies, and as the floats wandered by they'd call to the ladies, "Show us your shoes!"

Which were always comfortable track shoes, not high heels. Poor girls had to be standing for hours in the hot sun wearing gowns that could weigh as much as a hundred pounds, so no way were they doing that in heels.