 "Photo: Melina Sakellakos/the Round Up")
Take a right off of Avenida de Mesilla on Calle de Santiago and you're in la Plaza de Mesilla.
Welcome to the place on the little table; a table where many stories have been written, where many beers have been drunk, where fights have started and issues resolved.
The plaza is home to a famous table, a table like no other. Walk into El Patio Cantina and sit at the table in front of the fireplace. Look at the bar full of locals.
Sitting on stools are men much like the ones that were sitting here 70 years ago, when El Patio first opened — Mexican workers, old cowboys, indigenous people, farmers and a few young college students. Some are drinking bloody marys, but most are drinking la cerveza — beer that has bonded men for years.
Look around the bar and try to capture the history. There are black and yellow photos of Old Mesilla, buildings that look the same, but roads that are dusty and unpaved. Men are in panchos and big-brimmed sombreros. Put a story together about how the village was built, who laid the bricks of the adobe building that is El Patio. Whose blood was shed, whose beer was spilt and whose sweat was perspired to get you the beer you are now drinking?
Imagine the history, make up a story— make up the wildest, craziest story you can. Make the west wild.
Sit in the bar and look at the pictures on the walls, the people drinking, laughing and talking about the past. Put yourself in the boots of locals, of workers, of drinkers, of thinkers.
Or…
Introduce yourself to the owner of El Patio, Albert Fountain. Meet the man that makes it possible for you to enjoy a Thursday night at the bar. The man who fills your beer. The man who mixes your drink. The man who turns on the fan.
Walk with him as he shows you the pictures and remembers the history of the bar his grandfather Colonel Albert Fountain opened.
The Colonel did it all. A true legend who ran the Rio Grande Report, a Mesilla Valley newspaper, located where the restaurant that recently closed was located.
A fire in the kitchen caused the restaurant to close early this year. Costs of renovation in order to get the building to close cause the patio to remain closed. El Patio however remains strong.
Albert owns the place. His son Altie runs the show.
"I only like coming in here to sit on this side of the bar," Al said, sipping on a Sierra Nevada.
Al came back to El Patio in the 1970s. After sweeping the floor of his dad's bar and picking spare change, he took off to California. He came back to take over the bar of his dying father. He was left with the choice to stay or come back to the Valley; otherwise it was going to be sold to the owners of Double Eagle for $1 million.
Al said he really didn't know what he was getting into, taking over the old bar.
"Altie didn't really know what he was getting into, either," the old man said. "But he knows the town pretty well."
So what did Altie need to know? How to get bands to play on the stage.
Nosotros, perhaps the best band in the Las Cruces area, plays at El Patio often.
"Thursday nights are our biggest, I guess," Al said.
Thursday nights are college nights. "Twos days" are another popular night at El Patio. Order any drink on a Tuesday and pay $2. Bands jam here, but not always.
If it's not a band, it's the box. There always seems to be a good tune coming from the jukebox at El Patio. If it is not Van Morrison, it is the Beatles — seen on the wall, played in the bar — the Dead, Bob Marley or…
"This is Steely Dan," a local said, leaning into the glass of CDs. "I'm old, man, but these guys are still together. I saw them in Albuquerque a few weeks ago —they're from the 70s."
A man passes by, grabs his cowboy hat and says he'll see Mike later.
These are regulars.
These are the ones that keep the bar open.
El Patio Cantina has a following. If you go there often, you know the names of the patrons. You know what to order. Any drink can be made at El Patio, but one remains the most popular to all that pass through the doors. It is the locals, the regulars, the tourists and the college kids. They are bonded by a historical bar, and they are bonded by beer.
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