“Jimmy Pro Found Inspiration at a Now-Defunct El Paso Watering Hole.”
1430 Myrtle is gone from the city charts, but it still has a warm place in local barflies’ hearts.
Jimmy Pro landed up here a decade or so ago. Foraging the borderline, he was drawn in by the allure of Marilyn and the adjacent sub barrio, resplendent with its decaying funk. For a lensman in search of poetic inspiration, the dingy bar was the perfect place to conjure up a late afternoon, laconic stare; to unwind from shooting; and to jot down a few trigger riffs, teased out by ice cold Lone Star. Happy Hour can often be a poet’s salvation until it just isn’t.
Jimmy spent most of a decade sifting along The Line, honing his images, both electronic and literary. His voluminous photos further sharpen the clarity of his incisive poetry. “The Border Elegies” hang heavy with Jimmy’s prickly historical view of our enigmatic southern boundary. For sharp, visiting insight, de Tocqueville doesn’t have jack shit on Jimmy!
El Paso, for Pro, was the citadel for his wandering self assignment. Its gritty West Texas ambiance and resplendent culture titillated his most deeply held, creative instincts. Comfort, contentment, and creativity anchored him here like a rock for nearly ten years.
But the place that he warmly refers to as “The City Of The Future” is changing. He recognizes this gentrification, having sniffed its putrid spillage elsewhere in places like Gotham City’s Chinatown. Now, even this traditional barrio is tainted by ever seeping progress. This insidious creep is what finally took out a mini neighborhood icon like Goldie’s.
The place earned a sketchy score of 83 on its last Health Department sanitation inspection in May, 2013. Marilyn was still smiling, welcoming customers in for spicy tacos and tawdry conversation. But Goldie’s shelf life was nearly spent. Cheap beer down here is plentiful, and real estate near downtown was beginning to have some serious, long term prospects.
Jimmy finished The Border Elegies, but just in time for his joint to suffer the wrecking ball. When I finally showed up, he took me to another downtown dive bar, The Tap. Here, may be found, possibly, the best jukebox in Texas. I was also really inspired by the endless flow of cold Tecate. So I churned out a hot story about a mythical gunfight and our eventual escape down an endless alleyway that formed a seedy, urban slot canyon. Some editors liked it, and I even provided a dramatic supporting photo for publication.
I never got to quaff a brew with Jimmy at Goldie’s, though. But if I had, a yarn featuring Pancho Villa buying a round for the boisterous house might have spewed forth. Pancho would have probably met up with Marty Robbins, you know, “out in the West Texas town of El Paso”! They could have had a bar shoot out with the relentless Federales who had been hot on Pancho’s trail since early in the 20th century. Then, I would have provided a cool image to support my storyline. Likely the same hip photo seen here.
I am just proud to have ever off centered Goldie’s in my viewfinder. For his part, Jimmy Pro is content to have found poetic synergy in a small barrio icon, now lost to time. Gone from the charts . . . but never, ever from our hearts.
William C. Crawford is a writer & photographer based in Winston-Salem, NC. He was a combat photojournalist in Vietnam. He later enjoyed a long career in social work, and also taught at UNC Chapel Hill. He photographs the trite, trivial, and the mundane. Crawford developed the forensic foraging technique of photography with his colleague, Sydney lensman, Jim Provencher.
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