CHRISTMAS EVE IN MARFA

DowntownMarfaBaja

I had an idea that it would be fun to spend Christmas in Marfa, Texas.  Jae and I drove there from Tombstone on Christmas Eve.  I had somehow gotten the notion that Marfa was the sort of tourist destination that would attract holiday revelers from distant places and welcome them festively.  I could not have been more wrong.

el-paisano-hotel-marfa-texas

It was pretty much dead.  The cool restaurants were closed for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  The bar and grill at the fancy hotel in Marfa — the El Paisano, where the cast of Giant stayed when filming nearby — was closed.  The uncool restaurants were closed, too.  Even the Dairy Queen was closed, and when a town’s Dairy Queen is closed, that town is existentially closed.

Dairy-Queen-Sign

Jae and I managed to find a bar called Padre’s that was serving food, simple fare but good, and it had a small but attractive selection of beers on tap.  The bar was located in a big room with a stage and a dance floor, but there was only a tiny crowd in attendance on Christmas Eve — there was no live music and nobody was dancing.

PadresSign

The place had no heat working whatsoever — it was like hanging out in a cold storage locker.  The bartenders wore heavy coats as they went about their work — the patrons were dressed in warm-weather clothes.  Is this a Texas thing — freezing in bars?

We stuck around until the chattering of our teeth became distracting then headed back to our motel.  Marfa is a charming little place, but it’s not a place you want to find yourself at Christmas as an out-of-town visitor.