In Town, Talk Of Historical Designation...

By COSMO INFANTE

Special to The Herald-Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, TX - I remember it was the night Mexican boxer Pipino Cuevas got his ass kicked by some Black guy whose name I forget. Maybe it was the leather pusher Aaron Pryor, or maybe it was the Motor City Cobra Tommy Hearns. But who cares? Pipino bled like a knifed thug, and Mexico cried for weeks.

Cuevas faded into oblivion. And all I know is that I caught the whipping inside The Palm Lounge here that fateful night, when the joint was packed with noisy, fight-hungry Mexican fans from both sides of the Rio Grande. It would be a scene I'd not see again until Alexis Arguello was beheaded by the same Aaron Pryor in a Las Vegas deguello. Arguello's English was never the same after that beating.

What is pretty much the same these days is The Palm Lounge, a downtown watering hole known far and wide along the harsh Texas-Mexico border. Mention its name in Rio Grande City 60 miles to the west and you get raised eyebrows from the women and wild laughter from the men.

The Palm Lounge is barely a 220-yard dash to the rusting international bridge that takes you to some 5,000 other border cantinas that will blow your mind. But that's another story somebody else will have to tell. I like to amble into the Palm Lounge on any night featuring a major sporting event, like Lucha Libre from El DF, heavyweight boxing, the Super Bowl or El Mundial, the mania also known as world soccer.

The Palm is not exactly a sports bar in a Big City sense. The mirror in the men's room of any Dallas beer joint is about the same size as The Palm's sole television's screen. For the architects, it houses a neat bar running half the length of the floor and back there near the rear one finds a few billiards tables alongside the jukebox, where farmworkers and other day laborers do their best to forget about buying new Ford T-birds and laying a woman without bad teeth.

Then there's the jukebox. Ah, the jukebox! Rolling Stones. Shakira. Beatles. Mana. Phil Collins. Jose Jose. The Troggs. Los Tigres Del Norte. Garfunkle. Los Bukis. A guy could go international quickly just listening to the tunes. "It's what makes us Mexicans and Americans," said a heavyset customer who gave his name as Gilberto "Me Entiendes" Mendez. "The Mexicans play the Mexican tunes and the Mexican-Americans play The Stones, etal. But, you know, I don't give a damn, so long as the music is on."

Built on street corner for sure 50-60 years ago, The Palm Lounge is this poverty-stricken border town's answer to the press club most anywhere else in the United States. "Every reporter who wrote for the Brownsville Herald in the eighties got soused at the Palm Lounge," said local wino Johnny "Te Explico" Federico, a retired Cuban shrimper and well-known gadly. "I knew most of those guys and, let me tell you, many of their crazy stories were born after a few brews at the Palm."

He goes on: "You could sit there with those guys - McHale and Susan Crixell, Montoya, Guevara and Robbie, DP-M, Crowder, McLanahan, Schroeder, Doyle May, Reddel, Urban, Fieg - and hear exactly what they'd be writing in the next day's paper. Man, what a time it was..." The Palm Lounge lives in its past, yes. There are clues, and there are the sounds of yesteryear. If you have any point of reflection; that is, if you've ever been there...you'll see and hear things you'll think you've lived before. It is quaint and it is magical. It is an institution and a memory-maker.

"There is a movement afoot to get historical designation for The Palm Lounge," said another resident wearing a grease-stained Manuel's Body Shop workshirt. "We'd like to see that happen, yeah. What else we got, dude? - the friggin' playhouse? The train depot? That frickin' cemetery where the high school kids go get laid at night ever since they closed Boys Town in Matamoros? The Palm Lounge is Brownsville! There's nothing else, Bato..." I plunked my share of quarters in the jukebox and drank myself silly waiting on some beautiful celestial virgin to mosey in and ask for me by name.

It never happened. I spotted six or seven physically-eccentric women moseying in looking for their men, but no knockout in a black mini and red pumps out to kill the night with a three-hour sexual marathon over at the Alligator Motel. But, then, that's not what The Palm Lounge is about, any swinging Galan in town will tell you. The meat markets are elsewhere.

You can get broads in any of a hundred other local public hangouts, like while applying for a job at the employment office. You can buy it afterhours along some alley, or you can talk some smack to some boozed-out broad and get it for free. There's spirited talk about such rack action at pretty much every booth and table inside The Palm Lounge. Even from the old goobers, who'll spin tales of sexual conquests that would make Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt dizzy...

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