Texas Meditations
by Michael Gos
Sacred Cows
When you are heading west on 90 out of Del Rio, the town of Comstock is where the desert begins. There is not much out here. The population of the entire area called Comstock is 375 but that covers a huge amount of territory. What you see from the highway looks more like a town with a population of 10. It has one tiny combination restaurant and bar and that’s it. There is a café building down the road a few hundred yards and what used to be a gas station, but both look like they were abandoned years ago.
I was on my way back from photographing the pictographs in Seminole Canyon and was hungry. The permanent sign said “Jim Holley’s Place.” There was also a portable sign that said “J and J Holley’s Place.” The indecision on the name seemed consistent with the building itself. From the outside, it looked like a real dive, but it was the only place in town and it was a long way to Del Rio, so I pulled in.
The toilet bowl planter outside set the stage for what lay inside. I opened the door a bit and looked in. The mismatched plastic tablecloths covered three small, different sized tables. No two chairs in the place were alike. Jam-packed, the place might seat 10. It was a dump, but I was hungry and some of the best burgers and Mexican food I’ve had have come from places like this, so I went all the way in and shut the door behind me.
