Historic Laredo

The images over time have not diminished a
memory of the posture of aproned comadres of El
Azteca visiting over wooden fences and canna lilly
hedges, the resonance of the voices of tired men
home from work, of children playing in the perfectly
cast yellow circle beneath the street lamp, a
corner palomilla of young men in baggy khakis.
Approaching downtown we drove past closed
barbershops, bakeries, tienditas, furniture stores,
schools, offices, and the doorways of lounges
like El Trovador, El Conejo, Lucky’s or the Jockey
Club—doorways that emanated essences of masculine
gaiety, the blues and reds of neon light.
Downtown was empty except for theatregoers,
book browsers at Statler’s Newsstand and
a few late diners at the Southland Cafe or the
Hamilton Hotel. The stores were closed in a
state of restful, temporary abandonment.
Merchants gone home for the day had entrusted
Mr. Paksuski, the whistling night watchman, to
make rounds until morning, checking locks,
doorways, and lights.
With our errand completed we might elect to
take a different route home past the beautiful
tiles and lit fountains of Bruni Plaza and along
San Bernardo Avenue and the prosperous, wellkept
stretch of tourist courts and restaurants.
San Bernardo moved north to south like a ribbon
ablaze in neon. The pristine swimming pools
of the Evelyn Courts, the Cortez, the Gladys, and
the Mayan Inn gleamed like lit oases against luxuriant
oleander hedges and Washingtonia robusta
palms. American tourists who wore bolo ties and
unfamiliar hat styles dined at the Cactus Gardens
Cafe and the Western Grill.
There was something all at once comforting
and exciting about that familiar stretch of San
Bernardo. Perhaps It was the rounded edges of the
art deco tourist bungalows that conjured images
of puffy yellow and pink frosted cakes. Perhaps it
was the animated neon of the bucking bronc and
rider at the Western Grill or the Pegasus at the
Mobil station, or the repetition in red neon of
VACANCY-NO VACANCY along the strip.
Beyond the illumination of the street lights
and neon horses, the clouds to the open west
amassed in billowing moonlit thunderheads that
portended rain. The evening sky above the town
was an indigo canopy of weather, stars and
moonbeams, a canopy of safe passage through
the good night.
DOWNTOWN
Long before endless lines of cargo-filled tractor
trailers were equated with the prosperity and
well being of this city, I meandered through
downtown, unfettered in the aimless absorption
of the business of the life of the town.
Early morning with its dewy newness was my
favorite time downtown. This was the hour at
which the sidewalks belonged still to the fussy,
red beaked pigeons and the street sweepers.
Along the polished, gridded Salinas Avenue
sidewalk in front of Great Western Finance footsteps
there resounded differently than on the
walk in front of the Jarvis Plaza bandstand or the
glass bricks embedded in the concrete in front of
El Sol del Oriente or the Hamilton Hotel.
Oblivious to the architecture—a splendid
smattering of Classic Revival (the Post Office
and the old Laredo National Bank building), Art
Deco (the Hamilton Hotel), Neo-Gothic (San
Agustín Cathedral) and Art Moderne (the Plaza
Theatre, the Farragut Store)—was found complicit
solace in the familiarity of porticos, Ionic
columns, fluted limestone, clerestory windows,
Spanish tiles and archways.
These structural details were as much a part
of the downtown vista as were the shopkeepers
and clerks. This was a vista shared, too, with
street vendors of fruit and ice cream, limosneras
(the beggarwomen) and the cartoneros (the cardboard
collectors) on their custom-made three
and four wheeled carts. The street scene was
punctuated at intervals with corner cops in light
blue uniforms and white caps. One whistled
operatic arias and another was round and portly,
called by his nick-name El Manzano, the Apple.
One moved through wafts of curbside debris,
fresh baked pastries, and smells particular to certain
stores. Each doorway exhaled its own billow
of fragrance and purpose, Frontier Western Wear,
❖
At the corner of Matamoros and San
Bernardo, the T.J. Hall Humble Station
operated side-by-side with the Humble
Mexico Touring Service and the Javier
Peña Insurance Agency. The one-stop
site, long a fixture in downtown
Laredo, offered tourists enroute to
Mexico an opportunity to buy fuel, get
good maps of Mexico from the General
Drafting Co. of New Jersey, and buy
insurance for Mexican travel.
COURTESY OF ROBERTO PEÑA
Chapter VIII ✦ 65