There Is A Rosa's Cantina, But There's No Back Door For Marty

"Out in the West Texas town of El Paso

I fell in love with a Mexican girl

Nighttime wouId find me at Rosa's Cantina

Music would play and Felina would whirl" - Marty Robbins, "El Paso"

I have always been a sucker for places that were incorporated into songs, from Penny Lane to the Pennsylvania Hotel. That joint, where Glenn Miller's band once set up shop, is the Ramada Pennsylvania now, but it still has the same phone number: PEnnsylvania 6-5000.

In the South, I've hunted down Pontchartrain and the Tallahatchie Bridge, and I once spent half a day in L.A. visiting all the places Warren Zevon mentions in "Carmelita." When I told him that, he said: "And you're going to tell me there's no Pioneer Chicken stand on Alvarado Street, right? Fifteen years, people have been telling me that."

When I got to El Paso, then, my first stop was a phone book, to see if there really is a Rosa's Cantina. There is. I was later told there used to be several, but if Marty rode into town today, this is it.

It's a peeling white adobe building, across a ruined stretch of Doniphan Drive from a huge power plant. If Marty wanted to ride off to the badlands of New Mexico today, he'd have to go around the transformers.

The sign on the door says "No shoes, no shirt, no service," and indoors at lunchtime, it's a business crowd. Not a cowboy in sight, though it's a real cantina, not a yuppie theme bar. It's decorated with Cowboys schedules and neon beer signs, over a horseshoe bar and pool table.

There's only one waitress, who has to be Felina though she has no name tag and speaks no English. She's pleasant, though she's put on a few years since Marty's day.

Each table has a small typed piece of paper with the menu: Meat Loaf; Liver & Onions; Ch. Enchiladas; Beef Tacos; Chili con Queso; Bean Tostadas; Guacamole Tostadas; Red Chili; Green Chili.

Felina comes over, you point to one, she nods, and a moment later she brings you a bowl of very good vegetable soup, a soft taco shell and a glass of iced tea. When you're finished, she brings the entree, modest but tasty.

You pay at the rear counter, which is also the window to the kitchen, where the food simmers on a large stove. Everything is $2.50, except the meat loaf, which is $3.

That's the good part. The bad part is that there's no back door Marty could easily run through anymore after he shot the wild young cowboy, and even if he got out to the back, where the horses were tied, today he would find only an auto graveyard. Nothing here would make it to New Mexico, trust me.

His legend, however, is secure. On Rosa's CD jukebox, stocked mostly with Mexican music for Felina to whirl to, "El Paso" is 3011.