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This is the story of two cities joined by the Rio Grande and two men who endured that flood: the author's grandfather, Mayo Bessan, and her father, Porter S. Garner Jr., who married Bessan's only daughter in 1946. The tale sprawls across more than a half-century, and ranges from the culinary traditions of southern Louisiana to pre-Prohibition New Orleans to the dusty border towns that straddle the Rio Grande in far South Texas. The Cadillac Bar attracted wildcatters and lawmakers, celebrities and tourists. It spawned imitators across the United States until Mexico's economic and political instability caused the Garner family to hand over the keys to the waiters in 1979 and walk away"--
About the author
WANDA GARNER CASH is the daughter of Porter Garner Jr., a 1945 graduate of Texas A&M who ran the Cadillac Bar from 1946 until 1979. Cash is the former president of the Texas Press Association and Fellow of the F. Griffin Singer Professorship in Journalism at the University of Texas. The 2016 winner of the James Madison Award presented by the Freedom of Information Foundation, she is also the coauthor of
The News in Texas and other books. She lives in Ingram, Texas.
Summary
In 1924, Achilles Mehault ‘Mayo' Bessan and his eighteen-year-old bride journeyed from New Orleans to Mexico, where he ultimately transformed a dirt-floored cantina in Nuevo Laredo into a bar and restaurant renowned across the United States for its fine seafood and fancy cocktails. Step into the Cadillac Bar and take a seat.
