A while back I talked about my crazy night at the B29 bar Ojinaga’s red light district. That was definitely a memorable happening, but thinking of that got me nostalgic for our “home base,” that night. Lajitas, Texas.

Lajitas was a good place to camp back then, when you wanted to do West Texas stuff in the Big Bend area. But back then there weren’t that many people around. There were times when it felt like you had the whole desert to yourself.

I spent a number of weekends there, so the memories get jumbled together, but I miss that era that will never come again. Back in the ’80s when the border was (mostly) chill.

I remember hanging out in front of the old Trading Post at sunset with my uncle and his friends. There were bullet holes in the ouside wall, from Pancho Villa’s men, so they told us.

There was a pool table outside. Not very level, but you could play when the store was closed. I remember somebody put on the Willie Nelson version of “Pancho and Lefty,” which felt like a perfect way to close a day.

The area got to feel like a neighborhood after a while. Distances are relative. On the River Road was “Big Hill.” Just a yellow highway department sign really, but we made it a proper name.

You made sure to see “DOM,” letters scraped into a cliff face during the filming of Fandango, my favorite Kevin Costner movie.

There was a place on the side of the road where you could get out and look down at the Rio Grande, waaaaay down. You might go to La Kiva restaurant in Terlingua – still remember the bones of a “Penisaurus Erectus” embedded in the wall.

There was a village across the river in Mexico where you could pay a few bucks and a man with arms like tree trunks would row you across, where you could eat dinner at Garcia’s. In an adobe building with no running water. The food was delicious.

There was a blonde teenager they called Panchita who spent most of her time on the Mexican side in a little curio shop with no customers, listening to corridos and rancheras on the radio.

When I read Terrence Poppa’s Drug Lord, Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin I wondered if Panchita might’ve been the daughter of an American lady mentioned in the book.

From what I was told, Lajitas and the village were basically connected. Tourists went to dinner in Mexico. Families from the village would cross the river sometimes just for something to do, like watch bootleg American movies before the copyright cops put a stop to it.