Kindra has recently developed an interest in the Branch Davidians, so we slipped away for a weekend trip to Waco so she could visit the site of the old compound at Mount Carmel.
Overall, it was an interesting trip.
We rented a tiny house north of town for two nights and had a cozy stay.
The days were sunny and clear, but chilly, and the locals were none too excited about the forecast calling for snow. I have seen Texans drive on snow and was happy that we’d be back in Oklahoma long before the flakes were supposed to fall.
We had breakfast one day at Tortilleria Santana and Kindra had her first bite of barbacoa.
“It’s the best in Waco,” said the proprietor, and I believe him. Traditional Tex-Mex barbacoa is slow-cooked, seasoned beef cheeks that you roll into a tortilla. It has the texture of pulled pork, but the taste of beef. If you haven’t tried it, you should the next time you’re in Texas.
We got enough to bring some back for the kiddoes, and the two who tried it gave it as many thumbs up as they could.
We also did the Dr Pepper Museum, which is in the old drug store building where the drink was invented, and we took a few photos with the statues of cowboys and longhorns at the Suspension Bridge over the Brazos River. Back in the days of the Chisholm and other trails, that’s where the herds commonly crossed the Brazos on their way to Kansas and the railroads.
Waco itself has changed a lot in the 25 years since I lived there. Especially downtown along the river, there are new buildings aplenty, with many of them hotels and restaurants. It’s clean, well-kept and has an exciting vibe.
There were lots of tourists, judging from their conversations, and the line to get into the Silos stretched across the street.
East of town, where the Davidian compound once stood, it was a different story.
The last time I had been at the compound was a couple of years after the fire. There were still questions about ownership of the property and no one had cleaned up much after the fire, during which 76 people died. There were toys, bikes and artifacts of life still scattered.
All that is gone now and a church sits in place of the compound.
A sign marked an opening in the ground where women and children tried to take shelter in a vault when the fire started. All died.
Kindra had brought flowers and left them at the opening after spending several quiet moments.
It was a pensive place that morning, far, far different from Feb. 28, 1993, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms staged a military style assault that led to the fire on April 19 and then to the bombing of the Murrah Building in 1995.
I showed Kindra the route the ATF agents used to enter the property, where I was on the road when the shooting started, where the undercover house was, where the helicopters landed after the first few minutes. She saw the remnants of the school bus the Davidians had buried and their swimming pool.
There were a lot of facts and specific places to point out that day, but not many answers, event after all this time.
It is still difficult to absorb how so many bad decisions could be made in the names of religion, law enforcement and government and lead to so many deaths and shattered lives.