Bonus Episode: Remembering Barney Smith

The New Normal

This past month has been anything but normal. As the city of San Antonio continues to shelter in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we all find ourselves navigating situations we never have before. The stories of how we as a community are dealing with all this may not be heroic, but they’re worth sharing all the same.

Chapter 7: The Flying Schoolgirl

On the south side of San Antonio sits Stinson Municipal Airport. You may have heard of it, but you probably haven’t heard the story of Katherine Stinson. Like Davy Crockett, Theodore Roosevelt and Manu Ginóbili, she is part of a long line of fascinating characters who have passed through San Antonio and helped make it the place that it is today. This episode concludes the first season of the San Antonio Storybook.

Chapter 6: Designing for the Pope

On September 13, 1987, Pope John Paul II visited San Antonio. While he was here, the supreme pontiff celebrated an open-air Mass with 350,000 people in an empty field on the west side of town. In this chapter of the San Antonio Storybook, we tell the epic tale of the architects tasked with preparing this site for the pope.

Chapter 5: The Secret Life of Mascots, Part 2

In a previous episode, we talked about the race that occurs at every San Antonio Missions home game between a kid and Henry the Puffy Taco. The implication was that the kid always wins this race, but that isn’t entirely true. One time the Taco won.

Bonus Episode: Remembering Barney Smith

Barney Smith was both a preacher and a plumber, but he was best known as the creator of the Toilet Seat Art Museum. It wasn’t the legacy he set out to create, but it’s one he was proud to own. In this special episode of San Antonio Storybook, we pay a special tribute to Barney, who passed away last week at the age of 98.