The Art of Business

Hopping Mad in San Antonio

I’ve heard lots of stories about children and railroads, but this one really takes the cake.  I’ve lived here long enough to know who’s the head cow in the herd, and I know which side my bread gets buttered on.  I’ll give you a hint: it’s the side I don’t touch so as not to get butter all over my hand.  It’s just common sense.  Now, there were lots of times in my short life when I’ve been out well past midnight, with a flashlight and a little sifter can full of baking soda, ready to make some headlines with my discoveries of ghosts, but I haven’t found anything yet that I can’t explain.

Now it might be all right for some people to come here for a vacation and have a taste of luxury.  San Antonio hotels are really something else.  There’s no doubting a good thing.  But some people like to come here looking for ghosts, because they say there are more here than in most places.  I say that’s a lot of hooey.  Any place that has people in it is going to have its share of ghosts and what-have-you.  No place is more special than any other, but maybe, just maybe, they’re a little more active here.  That’s because they’re mad.  They’re not mad at anything in history, mind you, but just annoyed at all the people who come looking for them.

Now I know all about the Gravity Hill ghosts.  Supposedly, there were some children in a school bus stopped on the tracks somewhere in yore, whenever that was.  The train hit the bus, and now whenever a car is stopped on the tracks, it will roll by itself.  That much is true.  The other part of the story is that if you put powder on your bumper, you’ll see little handprints, from these little ghosty children pushing your car over the tracks.  Well, I say it’s the powder industry that’s got us all fanagled in this one.  You’ve got to look at the bottom line, to see which direction the cookie crumbles.  And if you want to know what scares me, it’s not ghosts, in fact, it’s clowns.  Pure and simple.