Why the Kentucky Bar in Juarez Doesn’t Need to Have Opened in 1920
I first met Don Pancho Montes, owner of the Kentucky Bar, when he was 76 years old. He was standing outside his bar, smoking a cigarette. I had donned a fake “cartilla militar” that asserted I was 18 (the legal drinking age), an old sailor’s hat, and a surplus Navy coat so that I could look a little bit older than my true age, which was merely 16. Our plan was to sneak in and have a beer in the smoky bar without arousing much suspicion. My friend Roger introduced us: “Don Pancho, this is Eugenio Cotera from the Café Cotera family.” He smiled, and we shook hands.
I will never forget that day. There was Cuban music coming out of a jukebox that confused itself with the murmur of friendly conversation. We sat at the far end of the bar, close to the restrooms. I recall our bartender was Asunción “Chonito” (the nicest of the bunch). You could see the walls were covered with black-and-white photographs of famous ballplayers and boxers that reflected in the faded mirrors. The air smelled of tobacco smoke, with a tinge of raw sewage. I didn’t even finish my beer; I was too young. The dusty stuffed royal eagle (a.k.a. the cockroach hotel) perched above us as we walked out.
Francisco Javier Montes Morales (Pancho Montes) was born in 1909 in Parral, Chihuahua, right before the start of the Mexican Revolution. He was the son of Victor Montes and Andrea Morales.
In 1919, a year before Prohibition, when he was eleven years old and living in Juarez, records show that he attended school in El Paso, crossing the border regularly, accompanied by his mother, Andrea. She must have been extraordinary. Taking her son to El Paso for his education, fully conscious of the advantages that knowing another language brings.
Other immigration documents from El Paso, one from when Pancho was 17 (02/09/26) and another from when he was 21 (11/06/30), tell us that he was living downtown at 515 Justo Sierra St., very close to the Mercado Juarez on 16 de Septiembre Avenue. The first document lists his occupation as Clerk, and the second as Bartender. It is interesting to note that his address changes from 515 Justo Sierra St. on the first document to 319 Justo Sierra St.on the second. Additionally, His Father appears as his closest relative in the first document and his mother, Andrea, in the second one.
From a page of the Mexican National Census of 1930 (censuses in Mexico were done every ten years), we find more news: On May 15, 1930, Pancho was 20 years and 3 months old, and his mother was 37 years and 2 months old, registered as widowed. Sadly, his father had passed away before Pancho was 21. Pancho is shown as someone who spoke English. Both he and his mother are entered as Catholics, without any physical or mental “defects.”
An article from the El Paso Herald-Post from 08/30/57 mentions that Pancho Montes attended Lydia Patterson Institute in El Paso, that he was a good basketball player, and that he had played against the Cohen brothers, Andy and Syd, who played for El Paso High but later became major league baseball stars (Cohen Stadium was named after them). Pancho metamorphosed into a serious sports fan, and with the Cohen brothers, he developed a very close and long lasting friendship.
Prohibition began, as you all know, in January 1920 and ended in December 1933. I located newspaper articles from 1932–33 that depict a turbulent economic time in the region. The price of a whiskey shot in Juarez doubled as soon as Prohibition was lifted in the US. Many American business owners in Juarez suddenly found themselves without a modus vivendi, so they closed shop and left. The time was ripe for a 23-year-old Pancho Montes to buy a space on the Juarez strip, very close to the International Bridge, probably at a discount.
According to an article from The Pampa News by Doralisa Pilarte (AP) from 1986, Pancho Montes opened his new venture in 1933 and named it Sloppy Joe’s Bar after a trip he made to Cuba (probably related to baseball), where he visited the famous Sloppy Joe’s Cafe in Havana and, I guess, decided to steal the name.
Pancho goes on to say that there was a hotel above the Sloppy Joe’s that had the “same name” (I’m guessing Pancho is referring to the Kentucky Hotel), and that after a fire, the hotel closed and he decided to keep the name for his bar.
I found several references to the Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Juarez on the pages of the El Paso Herald-Post from 1944. Most mention that you could get tickets for the baseball games there. One from Jan 15 1940 reads: “Fined in Juarez: John Hamilton from El Paso was fined 21 pesos and required to pay 25 pesos damages on a charge of breaking a window at Sloppy Joe’s Bar on Juarez Avenue.”
We now come to the interesting part: When exactly did Pancho change the name of his establishment from Sloppy Joe’s to the Kentucky Bar, and why?
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