Martha and I had been in Arizona visiting one of our grandsons. Driving home, she had the thought of us finding Rosa’s Canteens that Mart Robbins wrote and sang about. So she did some research while we were driving to find where in El Paso it was located. An interesting note is that in the El Paso phone directory Rosa’s Cantina does not show up until 1961. Marty wrote the sone in 1959. It turns out that it was taken over from a previous owner in 1959, but the city records didn’t change for two years. It really was the inspiration for Marty Robbins.
Thanks to the marvelous GPS systems we have now days, we were able to drive right to it. The parking lot was full of motorcycles and a few cars. In our humble opinion, it qualifies as a bike bar. Our assessment of the crowd would put them as an older or long in the tooth group. AS a matter of fact, a couple of the bikes were Honda Dreams.
The menu was TexMex, and we found the food to be exceptionally good. We had dinner and a lot of fun with the locals dining there. It is a very fond memory and comes to mind every time I hear Marty sing about it.
