Historic Laredo

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Above: The decor and fixtures of El
Gallo Bakery on San Agustín Street, as
well as the aroma of fresh baked bread
and pastries, were a magnet for those
on coffee break downtown. The business
was owned by Guadalupe Ornelas.
COURTESY OF GERARDO SALAZAR
Below: Looking eastward from the Royal
Opera House on Hidalgo Street, it was
possible to appreciate the dynamism of
the architecture of old downtown.
WEBB COUNTY HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Light bulbs on a single strand of wire hung
from the high ceiling over the marble aggregate
U-shaped service counter, the tables, and the
glass pastry cases, casting as much shadow as
illumination on the archaic, flligreed steel of the
old National cash register.
A massive mural of a New England landscape
created irony with the arid South Texas geography
just beyond the two sets of tall double
screen doors. Two thousand miles from Cape
Cod, an El Gallo patron might sip coffee, look
past the statues of Xochil and El Indio
Cuathemoc on the pastry island inside the
counter’s U and ponder into the painting the
seaworthiness of a beached white skiff.
Some of the walls of El Gallo were brick and
others were tongue-in-groove machimbre wainscot
once enameled a light baby blue. A shiny
vein of gold scrolled mirrors at eye level ran
along the north wall above the wainscot and
below the wide painting.
Time and use had long since worn away at
the definition of sharp angles and clean, straight
lines from the counter, the wooden floor and the
fixtures. The creaky floor planks were worn by
the presence of customers at the barstools or at
the pastry cases. The wooden frames of the tall
screen doors and the wide metal handles that
were bread advertisements bore, too, the gentle
erosion of human hands.
The glass cases held artfully shaped and textured
cuernitos, regalitos, conchas, and semitas. At
the service counter, customers sat comfortably
on swiveled cherrywood seats and rested their
feet on a brass foot rail below the counters. The
Wurlitzer’s repertoire provided an array of versions
of love ballads from Cuco Sánchez and
Agustín Lara to the songs of René and René, the
local duo related to proprietor Ornelas.
It was a cavern of a building, vast and highceilinged,
with oiled wooden floors and dim lighting.
In memory, it is clear that El Gallo wasn’t just
a bakery; it was a monument to resistance, a
functioning environment of worn, sturdy
objects, that despite their advanced age and
repeated use, rendered faithful performance.
Through the archaic strains of the Wurlitzer’s
woestruck Mexican waltz of disconsolate violin
and moody tuba in three-quarter time, through
the tempting, honest vapors of pan francés just
out of the oven, El Gallo was the successful elusion
of change, an uncontrived stop-action,
freeze-frame of history suspended in flour dust.
El Gallo Bakery closed its doors in May of
1971 and was flattened along with other buildings
on the 600 block of San Agustín to become
a parking lot.
A CORNER GROCERY
Chole and Don Enrique owned the corner
grocery at the end of the block on Laredo Street.
The store was the front room of their home
which was veneered with 30s and 40s license
plates nailed end on end.
The front of the store offered the shade of a
tin-roofed porch which wrapped around the
building. A curlicued wire fence cut off the store
porch from the private porch where Chole and
Don Enrique kept lawn chairs for evening chats.
Chole entered the store from the darkened
rooms of her home, leaving the drama of
Mexican radio novelas that hung suspensefully
68 ✦ HISTORIC LAREDO