Hemisfair 1968

Hemisfair 1968 was birthed around 1965 when a group of businessmen formed a committee and decided that sleepy little San Antonio must have a world’s fair.  The theme of the fair was the confluence of the Americas and featured pavilions and shows from North, Central and South America.  The Hemisfair Committee included Paul Howell, an oil businessman based in San Antonio.  His son, Douglas, attended Wilshire Elementary and shared classes with Wes.  The Howells lived right in Terrell Hills and Douglas and Wes were friends until Douglas moved on to military school.

How excited we were when we learned that San Antonio would soon have a world’s fair.  We had been reading in our Weekly readers about Seattle’s world’s fair and the space needle.  Little did we suspect that San Antonio would soon be hosting a fair just as impressive, and would boast of the Tower of the Americas.

Locating the site was a first priority.  Unfortunately, the 92 acres selected were full of blighted public housing, right across the street from the iconic downtown Joske’s .  Everyone had to be booted out to make way for the dredging and construction.  Not everyone went willingly as their houses fell victim to eminent domain.    The construction was massive.  The San Antonio River was rerouted East so that a tributary could flow by the newly constructed convention center.   Unbelievably large mudholes were dredged out to make for the foundation of the Convention Center and Arena.  There were acres and acres of construction, none of it making sense in the early stages.  It would be at the end of construction before it all came together.  Every Sunday afternoon, we drove down East Commerce Street by the mud pits and the pilings, craning our necks to detect any progress behind the construction barriers.

To accommodate the expected influx of tourists, San Antonio must have some new downtown hotels and we started with the marvel of the Hilton Palacio Del Rio.  Except for the first four floors, The Hilton was put up in a prefabricated way.  Each room was a self-contained cubicle complete with plumbing, electrical wiring, art and furniture.   The rooms were constructed off site, brought in and stacked like blocks on top of each other.  Electrical and plumbing were then connected.    The hotel was built in record time by the H.B. Zachary Company.

The Tower of the Americas also had a unique construction, being fully built at the bottom of the concrete tower and then hoisted to the summit.  Horns blew all over the city when it reached its final resting place.   The tower consisted of an observation deck and a high end restaurant, which slowly spun a complete circle in about an hour.  Lucky customers enjoyed their meal while panoramic San Antonio drifted slowly by.  We youngsters visited the observation deck frequently, and longed to sit down at one of the restaurant tables and eat something, but the park admission prices had usually wiped us out.  One afternoon, we dug deep in our pockets and held out all of our cash and counted it.  It came to around three dollars between myself, Wes, and his friend Bruce (I still had a crush on him).  We had gone up the elevator to the deck because grimy unsupervised youngsters would not be allowed in the separate restaurant elevator.  On the deck, we found an exit door and slipped through before anyone could stop us.  Down the stairs quickly, we ran through the first door we encountered and found ourselves in the kitchen of the restaurant.  Ignoring all of the dirty looks, we dashed through to the main restaurant and presented ourselves for seating.  The host was reluctant, but we got our table.   The next problem was what to order for three dollars.  We carefully scanned the menu and picked out a single piece of cheesecake, with three forks please.  The waiter was disgusted, but we had achieved our goal of dining at the Tower of the Americas restaurant.

One of the most popular attractions for Wes and his hormone riddled friends was the sacrifice of the Indian maiden at the  "Los Voladores de Papantla" (The Flying Indians) show.  The young boys cared little for the four flying Indians who hung by their feet by ropes  from a telephone pole, slowly circling and  unwinding their way down to the ground.  That really took quite guts, strength and skill.   The boys were there only to see the maiden get sacrificed because she was VERY briefly topless.   An attractive, well endowed young Hispanic girl played the part.  Wes and his friends showed up at least 15 to 20 minutes early for each show in order to get a front row seat, right by the sacrificial altar.  They were regulars, attending each and every show even if it meant huffing their way from far at the other end of Hemisfair Park.

There was a very decent water skiing show as well.  All of the girls wore white Esther Williams style swimsuits and were able to climb up on each other’s shoulders during the show and form a skiing pyramid.

We rode our first monorail at the (which derailed once) and a skyride much longer than that at Brackenridge Park.

 

Our family had a lot of company that summer of 1968.  We had made our usual Missouri summer trip and my grandmother returned with us so she could attend the fair.  Gamely, she marched all over with us even though she was nearly 70 years old.  A world’s fair within reasonable driving distance was not something to be ignored. 

We welcomed other relatives over the summer.  Charlene (my cousin) and I got to skype with each other in the Bell Telephone Pavilion.  It was rather primitive, but it was skyping.  We each entered a small booth with a closed circuit television, picked up a telephone handset and chatted away while being able to see each other on the screen. 

After school began in September, we could be found most weekends at the Fair, visiting the same pavilions and shows with our friends now.  Seeing an exhibit with young friends was like visiting it for the first time.

The Hemisfair wound down and soon it was time to close in late Fall, after losing money.  It was still a landmark year for us, a grand fair that had been enjoyed and had created many memories.