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109 The Casa Blanca was a combination Mexican restaurant, bar, and dance hall. An Alpine landmark, it was frequented by an eclectic mix of cowboys, college students, and townspeople. It was generally referred to simply as the Casa. The restaurant was located one block south of the railroad tracks that divided the town, in a sort of cultural neutral zone. Alpine was split in half by the railroad in more ways than just geographically. North of the tracks was the Anglo portion of the town, and the traditionally Mexican area was on the south side. These divisions evolved at a time when Texas was still a segregated society,when many of the same prejudices toward blacks in other parts of the country existed for Mexicans in Texas. Those prejudices and separations had not disappeared entirely,but they had been greatly diluted or blurred in recent years. Old customs died slowly, and the majority of Anglos still lived to the north and Mexicans to the south of the railroad tracks, though now as much from habit and preference as from societal pressures. The Casa was a large, white, wood-frame building. A red neon sign above the front door identified Casa Blanca in script lettering. Entering the front door put me in the restaurant, a wood-floored room taking up roughly one third of the building.Metal chairs surrounded metal tables with well-used Formica tops.The kitchen was to the rear of the restaurant section, and as I walked in I was immediately besieged by the pungent scents of chilis, fried meat, tortillas, and assorted Mexican spices. The sharp aromas reminded me that I was hungry.I wove my way through the tables of relaxed diners into the bar and dancehall. Passing through the door from the restaurant I was enveloped by a cacophony of noise. Just past the door, a wide mahogany bar stretched the width of the room, complete with a brass foot rail that was currently supporting the boots of a dozen or so cowboys standing at the bar. Two bartenders were working furiously to keep up with demand, rapidly filling drink orders that were loudly delivered by several waitresses and the cowboys at the bar. At the opposite end of the room was the bandstand. The cowboy band that had sung at the funeral occupied the bandstand. As I entered they were executing a furiously energetic rendition of “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” An enthusiastic group of dancers was engaged in line-dancing to the song on Chapter 22 8:00 PM, Saturday, October 9, 2004, Alpine, West Texas 110 the dance floor between the bar and bandstand.The tune and its communal dance are a Texas tradition that fills any dance floor in the state. The crowd was almost completely cowboy. Most of the male dancers wore hats, as well as jeans and boots, and almost all the women wore jeans and boots, but no hats. The dancers were moving rapidly as a single unit—almost as cohesive as a military drill team—in a huge counter clockwise circle on the floor.The laughing and whooping of the dancers, mixed with the sounds from the bar and the music from the band, resulted in a din so intense and powerfully joyful as to be irresistible. On each side of the room flanking the dance floor, tables and chairs of the same variety as those in the restaurant were crowded against the walls. The walls themselves were covered with pictures of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, George Strait, and other country singing stars; Frederick Remington and Charles Russell western art prints; old posters of Roy Rogers,Gene Autry,and Tom Mix movies; and old tin beer signs advertising Lonestar, Pearl, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. There were branding irons, spurs, and even pieces of several varieties of barbed wire also attached to the walls. With most of the crowd on the dance floor, it was easy to spot my cousins. Billy Rex, Robert Earl, Starlene and her husband Vernon, Roy Don, and Charlie occupied three tables they had pulled together into a single unit. An impressive array of empty beer bottles already littered the tables where they sat. My cousins had not wasted any time getting into the spirit of a wake. Between Starlene and Roy Don was an empty chair with a white hat hanging on the back. I recognized the hat as Son Cable’s hat, the one that had been laying on his chest at the funeral...

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