Pancho Villa's Saddle at the Cadillac Bar

In 1924, Achilles Mehault "Mayo" Bessan and his eighteen-year-old bride journeyed from New Orleans to Mexico, where he ultimately transformed a dirt-floored cantina in Nuevo Laredo into a bar and restaurant renowned across the United States for its fine seafood and fancy cocktails. The Cadillac Bar built a reputation as one of the finest eateries and watering holes in the Southwest, even surviving a 1954 flood that devastated cities on both sides of the Rio Grande. Its history sprawls across more than a half-century and its food and drink drew inspiration from the culinary traditions of southern Louisiana, from pre-Prohibition New Orleans, and from the dusty border towns that straddle the Rio Grande in far South Texas.

In her introduction, author Wanda Garner Cash writes, "I grew up behind the bar: first child and first grandchild. I spoke Spanish before I spoke English and I learned my numbers counting coins at my grandfather's desk . . . I rode Pancho Villa's saddle on a sawhorse in the main dining room, with a toy six-shooter in my holster. I fed the monkeys and parrots my grandfather kept in the Cadillac's parking lot." Readers will find themselves drawn to a different, more languid time: when Laredo society matrons passed long afternoons in the bar, sipping Ramos Gin Fizzes; when fraternity miscreants slouched into the Cadillac to recover from adventures "South of the Border"; when tourists waited in long lines for 40-cent tequila sours and plates of chicken envueltos.

Step into the Cadillac Bar and take a seat. You'll want to stay awhile.

This is the story of two cities joined by the Rio Grande and two men who endured that flood: the author's grandfather, Mayo Bessan, and her father, Porter S. Garner Jr., who married Bessan's only daughter in 1946. The tale sprawls across more than a half-century, and ranges from the culinary traditions of southern Louisiana to pre-Prohibition New Orleans to the dusty border towns that straddle the Rio Grande in far South Texas. The Cadillac Bar attracted wildcatters and lawmakers, celebrities and tourists. It spawned imitators across the United States until Mexico's economic and political instability caused the Garner family to hand over the keys to the waiters in 1979 and walk away"--