Palomas, Mexico; A Return to The Pink Store

I‘m going into coast mode over the next two weeks. That’s for several reasons. First, I just struggled to complete thirty-four articles in rapid order for prescheduled publication. Second, by the time you read this, I’ll have just returned from seventy-one days away, which is why I needed over ten weeks’ worth of blog articles. So, I’m also preparing this two-week series in advance so that I can recover. And, thirdly, it’s been nine years since I last showed you The Pink Store, and the owners Ivonne and Sergio Romero have since completed a full revamp of the entire building. The interior looks nothing as it did when I first showed you The Pink Store back in 2013. Indeed, here’s how it looked back then:

Interspersed among this two-week series will be a review of the restaurant inside (this week’s Fun Food Friday) and some recent photos I’ve taken of desert flowers and an El Paso sunset. So, it won’t all be boring, I promise.

Puerto Palomas, Mexico is a border town directly across from Columbus, New Mexico. And, unlike Ciudad Juarez, Palomas is a safe place to visit.

And if Columbus, New Mexico doesn’t ring a bell, perhaps the “de Villa” in the sign above might refresh your memory. Still drawing a blank? Well, on 9 March 1916 the town of Columbus was the sight of the very famous Battle of Columbus, in Pancho Villa’s (born José Doroteo Arango Arámbula) División del Norte (Division of the North) attacked the town. This resulted in the Pancho Villa Expedition (at the time referred to as “Punitive Expedition, U.S. Army”), which saw the U.S. Army under the command of General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing pursue Pancho Villa deep into Mexico. Serving in that expedition was 2nd Lt. George S. Patton Jr. in his first military campaign. This expedition also marked the first instance of the use of U.S. military aircraft (1st Aero Squadron) in a combat role. Yeah… I’m a military aviation buff; can’t you tell?

The Pink Store is simply a wonderful destination on a day trip from El Paso, or any of several southern New Mexico locations stretching from Lordsburg to the west to Las Cruces in the east. It’s not just a destination for great Mexican food. It’s also a place where you can spend hours shopping for handcrafted Mexican arts and crafts:

Some of their more popular items are Catrinas (La Calavera Catrina — The Elegant Skull), which are skeletal female figures, and other Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) items. I have in my home office a rather nice depiction of Day of the Dead Beatles reenacting the Abbey Road album cover, for instance. No such statuary here today, but they did have Day of the Dead Freddy Mercurys on hand. Here are some other examples:

Beyond Day of the Dead articles, there are lots of others art forms available here:

Well continue this tour on Wednesday and through next week.

Слава Україні! (Slava Ukraini!)