The Price of Freedom

We took our teenage boys (13 and 17) to San Antonio, TX on Friday to visit the Alamo. As a “warm up” to arriving at the actual plaza, we went to the IMAX theatre in the mall to watch The Alamo: The Price of Freedom.

As you walk down the large corridor to the theatre's entrance, on the right is a massive movie banner with the focal point highlighting the words, "The Price of Freedom." On the left side of the corridor is Victoria's Secret, with approximately eight (I didn't actually count them) bigger-than-life pictures of scantily dressed models with obsessively seductive expressions on their faces. Because we were in a hurry to make the show time, I didn't think much of it.

The movie was excellent, and in 42 minutes it detailed as accurately as possible the facts surrounding one of the most famous acts of sacrifice for the cause of freedom. As we left the theatre, and the first of those seductive pictures came into view, I was quickly reminded of the corridor we were going to pass through. Thinking of our teenage boys, I wanted to quickly cover their eyes, and then realizing that I couldn’t, I said the first thing that came to my mind as I tried to act out the part of a tour guide: “On the left, we have ‘the price of freedom,’ and on the right, we have ‘the price of enslavement’; let’s keep our eyes on freedom.”

After the words were spoken, and we exited the corridor on our way to the Alamo Plaza, I then had time to reflect on the irony of those opposing walls.

Let’s choose real freedom. At 26 years of age, William Barret Travis did, and is a hero in the truest sense of the word.