By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas |...The next day was the day, a rainy Tuesday of all days, Lurleen Garcia opened the first sports bar in town. She was something of a known figure to locals, she being the great-great-granddaughter of the town's founder, Col. Epigmenio Garcia, himself a son of a landed something or another back in cold Mexico somewhere.
The bar was not needed in town. Some said it was just Lurleen's latest devilish dig at her dusty hometown.
"We'd rather have a goddamned dry-cleaning business, but why should we be so damned lucky," one resident had been driven to write in his letter to the newspaper.
What pulling for the Nebraska Cornhuskers had to do with life in Rio Grande City was anybody's guess. But there was Lurleen's bartender, Lucho Gomez, helping erect the bar's marquee along the face of the downtown building, there next to the bank and, directly across the street, a finance company.
Lurleen's name, of course, monopolized the marquee, yet everyone could see that the Huskers football logo seemed a bit much.
When ranch hand and family friend A.D. Ramirez strolled in for the first time, it was Lurleen who greeted him with a bottle of beer, one she'd been drinking. "Happy trails," she said, going western. Ramirez took the bottle and walked it to the jukebox, where he dropped a few coins on a string of songs by Phil Collins.
Shortly, he heard, "Su-su-sudio..."
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Is it by the LaBorde House hotel?
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