'Never forget' the old El Monterrey

There was no traffic on the street, nor any cars in the parking lot. No pedestrians milling about either. Still, I held out hope the restaurant was open.

The old building was in dire need of a fresh coat of paint. A black banner painted across the top of its facade was overlayed with white lettering that spelled out "El Monterrey." The "El" though, had grown faint, a casualty of time and weather.

The stand-alone storefront, comprised of five arches, told an interesting story. One arch was decorated with a sign that read, "Mexican Food – Exclusively since 1934." Another sported a mural of a large authentic Mexican pot with two smaller pots on either side. In a third was a painting depicting a classic desert landscape with a sign post proclaiming, "Tacos, Tamales, Enchiladas, Chile Rellenos." Doors occupied the arches at either end of the building.

As I approached the front entrance I noticed a two-by-four crossbar nailed to the wooden double door. There was no need for a "closed" sign, the boarded-up door said it all.

But there was a sign of sorts. Under the restaurant's name on the north side of building someone had scrawled the words, "Never Forget."

The instruction to "Never Forget" gave me pause. What exactly is one being asked to remember?

It was March 2021. A big blue sky with wisps of white clouds and the open highway beckoned me. It had been exactly a year since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak when the world seemingly stopped spinning. Life came to a halt, but time did not. The highway offered me a way to move on with life. Yet, here was a command to go back in time.

This section of US60, running through the heart of Llano Estacado, the high plains of the Panhandle and Texas-New Mexico border, had led me to this deserted side street in Clovis, New Mexico.

Clovis is, and always has been, a railroad town. It was founded in 1907 when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad built the depot. For years countless adventures had begun and ended here.

Coming into town for the first time I was searching for the downtown in hopes of getting a sense of its heritage. Unfortunately, I was in the wrong lane when Main Street came and went. Two blocks further I turned north onto Mitchell Street intent on circling back to downtown, but I found the El Monterrey instead.

In time, the El Monterrey found me.

In 1922, newlyweds Mary (Sis) and Gray Reed left tiny Protection, Kansas, for Clovis and to start a new life.

Clovis was a fast-growing community when they arrived. J.C. Penny came to town in 1923. The next year the highway to Grady and Texico was "hard-surfaced" with a caliche topping and a coating of oil, and the Lyceum Theatre became a movie house.

The "Abo" highway going west out of Clovis toward Vaughn was "hard-surfaced" for the first time in 1927 and realigned to follow the Santa Fe rail line.

Despite the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 construction still started on the Hotel Clovis. It opened two years later in 1931 and at nine-stories was the tallest building in New Mexico at the time.

In 1934, Sis and Gray were enjoying a night on Main Street with friends -- the specific details of what transpired have been lost to time. They might have taken in a movie at the Hardwick Brothers' Lyceum or Mesa Theatre. Or they may have gone bowling or shot a game of snooker at Red Gober's Clovis Recreation Center. For ten cents they could have gotten a large glass of Schlitz or Falstaff beer and a ham sandwich at the Grand Café. That same dime would have purchased a glass of Blue Ribbon or Blatz beer and a ham sandwich at the Antler's Hotel Coffee Shop.

They might have stood on the sidewalk outside the Coney Island Café and watched through the big front window as Louie Augustinos grilled hot dogs. For a quarter they could have feasted on a bowl of his chili. Or, maybe they ambled into John Rallis' Busy Bee Café for a hamburger.

Folklore is a little more specific on how the evening ended. The story is Sis had enjoyed a few libations that evening and wanted to get something to eat before going home. Neither chili, hot dog, ham sandwich or hamburger was what she craved. "No G-- d--- decent place to eat," she complained, vowing to start her own restaurant. No decent place to eat may or may not have been totally accurate, but it wasn't too far from the truth.

Bill Ogg was the best known of Clovis' early-day restaurateurs. Tom Pendergrass, the city's first historian, wrote that his numerous restaurant ventures, beginning in 1909 through World War II, always included "Ogg's" in its name, but the citizenry knew them simply as "Greasy Spoon."

One thing is certain though, there were no Mexican food restaurants.

In fall of 1934, true to her word, Sis converted the dining room of her five-room family home at 118 Mitchell into the El Monterrey Restaurant.

Not long after it opened, Pete Anderson, who was a one-man Chamber of Commerce, wrote a letter to his daughter, Betty, telling her of eating at the newly opened El Monterrey. The Clovis News-Journal reprinted Pete's letter in its entirety for its 1982 Diamond Jubilee edition.

"Mrs. Reed's El Monterrey Mexican food is tops," Pete wrote to Betty. "We had Grandpa Fisher over when she opened, and he ate an extra portion.

"Grampa is one of the best and most accomplished eaters I know, and when he has reached the pinnacle of his meal, his face begins to beam like the sun coming up bright but not hot, and when he swells out his lower chest for a big breath of air, you can see the curtains flutter a bit.

"He is especially heroic with Mexican foods, because regardless of weather, as he approaches the middle of the meal tiny beads of perspiration assemble themselves in formation over the ample forehead and he becomes very quiet, in a great sort of peace.

"The food itself requires little gumming, so that it slips past his lips like it was being siphoned in. At the conclusion he arises from the table like a mountain bringing forth a plateau and in a final edict manner announces, "Them was good enchiladies ...."

It seems most people across the Llano Estacado concurred with Grampa Fisher. The restaurant's reputation for good food grew and spread rapidly.

When the number of diners outnumbered her chairs, Sis expanded. In 1946 she took on a partner, her niece Myrna's husband, Colonel Chuck Smith.

The restaurant expanded again. A porch was added for customers waiting for a table.

Then the porch was enclosed. When customers waiting on the porch began spilling outside onto the sidewalk, it was time to expand again.

After Sis passed in 1954, the Colonel and Myrna Smith bought Gray Reed's half-interest in the El Monterrey. Eventually, a third-generation joined the family's restaurant business when James "Weede" Smith came on-board in 1966, and upon marriage in 1974, his wife, Renie, became part of the family operation too.

Through all the expansions, the North Room, West Room, Front Room, the restaurant's seating capacity had grown from 24 to 100. And still there were long lines to get a table.

Years passed. Then one hot August night in 1997, Weede Smith locked the wooden doors and turned out the lights for the final time. The El Monterrey's run of 64 years in the same location and by the same family, had ended.

But people didn't forget. They refused to forget the delicious aromas coming from the kitchen as the various foods were being prepared.

Who could forget the enchiladas? The sauce, a timeless color – a light, terracotta-orange hue. The sweet, smoky aroma. The crispy cheese ring around the edge of the plate.

"All that gooey, melting cheese spreading, even sizzling, on the plate sometimes," Jill Hawkins Firestone remembers. "That first bite, after blowing on it to make sure it wouldn't burn your mouth, was so delicious. The melting cheese making long strings hanging off your fork that sometimes you had to break apart."

"No matter how careful you'd be, you'd always have some cheese hanging off your chin," Diane Fitzhugh Johns recalls.

Renie Smith says the enchiladas were always served straight from the oven, the hot plates kept them from getting soggy.

Dorothy Holland Danner remembers the waitress' warning, "Be careful now, the plates are haawt."

Unlike many New Mexican restaurants today, El Monterrey didn't serve red or green enchiladas – just cheese or meat covered in their signature orange sauce. Each table had a bowl of fiery hot green jalapeno sauce, though. Customers could top their enchilada with the green sauce, if they wanted.

Although it has been 25 years since the last plate of enchiladas was served on Mitchell Street, its Enchilada Sauce is still served in many kitchens throughout Clovis and the world. At first a powder mix for the signature sauce was packaged in small paper bags and sold at the restaurant. After World War II, when the Army closed its Clovis base, letters started arriving from soldiers that missed the El Monterrey sauce and so it began being offered through the mail, too. A decade later it made its way onto grocery store shelves, and now on the internet.

Bethe Terry Cunningham swears by the El Monterrey Enchilada Sauce. "I have never gone one day since I married at 19 (46 years ago) without it in my kitchen."

Charles Ott recalls his mother using the mix at home. "My mother used to buy their powdered spice mix sold at the restaurant or at Furr Foods and make homemade enchiladas."

People are very good at remembering their sopapillas too.

When she was a young girl, before she even liked enchiladas, Terry Osborne would order scrambled eggs. If she ate all her eggs, she got a sopapilla. "To this day, all sopapillas are judged against El Monterrey ones," she says.

Marilyn Sanders also remembers the sopapillas. Her family and the Peters family would occasionally dine together at El Monterrey. "Always, during the sopapilla dessert, Johnny Peters, would say to me, "Pass the honey, Honey."

Dorothy Holland Danner remembers giggling with her sister, Dee, when their Grandmother Holland called sopapillas, "soapa pillows."

Diane Fitzhugh Johns also had an affinity for their sopapillas. "They had a wonderful puffy bread-like bottom and the top half was fried high and it was so delicate," she remembers. "I was careful to make a little hole in one of the corners to pour in the honey and spread it around carefully and then try to eat it without the top crumbling, but, of course, it did."

Nor have they forgotten the anticipation waiting patiently for a table.

"On Friday and Saturday nights the line waiting for a table stretched out the front door," Renie Smith remembers. "At closing time, 8:30, everyone in line was scrunched onto the porch so the doors could be locked. If they were in line they were eventually seated and served."

Jane Garza remembers the wait for a table. "I can still picture waiting in the foyer for a table and the excitement we felt when we were seated."

Even the noon rush sometimes had people waiting in line past the 2:30 lunch hour. But, no one went away hungry.

During the afternoon closing time, from 2:30 to 4pm, servers and cooks did yearly prep. In the fall, they roasted green chiles, peeled and seeded them. The chiles were stuffed with a secret cheese and frozen in the walk-in freezer.

Staff would prep enough chile rellenos for the entire year. As needed, the chile rellenos would be defrosted, dipped in a delicate batter, and deep fried to a golden brown.

People remember those chile rellenos. How could they not?

"The chile rellenos...oh, my goodness. I can't even describe how delicious they were. They had some kind of coating that puffed up and then the relleno was stuffed with the best cheese," Diane Fitzhugh Johns adds.

From day one the chiles were procured from the Hatch Valley. According to Renie Smith, when the original supplier died in the early 1960s, Ms. Crick, the postmistress in Array, New Mexico, approached Colonel Smith about supplying chiles from her Hatch Valley farm.

Upon her death, another farmer began supplying Hatch Valley chiles.

At other times of the year staff would spend afternoons making tamales or tortillas. Until the late 1960s the corn tortillas were packaged and sold to local grocery stores.

Most telling though is how much the El Monterrey was woven into the makeup of the community and region.

Leigh Hammond Willmon remembers it was the gathering place to celebrate everything.

It was also where everyone gathered the day after Thanksgiving. "To this day, several of us still like enchiladas better than turkey," she confesses.

Mary Finifrock will never forget her first-ever date at the El Monterrey in October 1966. She remembers entering through the old wooden doors and waiting in the crowded foyer for a table.

"I can still breathe in that same smell of the night, the smell of their spicy sauce and meat cooking, tacos, burritos, homemade chips and the restaurant's specialty salsa on that super special night, my first-ever date on my 16th birthday."

Jim Rogers, from nearby Texico, says his family's go-to restaurant was always the El Monterrey.

Elementary school students studying New Mexico history took field trips to the restaurant. "Nobody was absent that day," Leigh Hammond Willmom says.

The Mexican pottery on the shelves of the built-in armoire in the North Room, the paintings throughout the restaurant, and even the tables and chairs reflected New Mexico culture.

"The walls were adorned with big colorful Mexican paintings," remembers Jane Garza.

After the restaurant closed, Dorothy Holland Danner bought several of the restaurant's paintings. Two of them still hang on the walls of her Goodyear, Arizona home. She donated two others to the Clovis Chamber of Commerce for an upcoming renovation project at the Lyceum Theatre.

Some memories involve those who walked through the doors, sat at the tables, and enjoyed the El Monterrey experience as "outsiders."

In the 1950s, the Furr family traveled in their private railway car from Lubbock to Clovis, playing cards coming and going, just to have dinner at El Monterrey Restaurant.

Vi and Norman Petty entertained guests who were in town laying down tracks at their Clovis recording studio. Recording artists such as Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, and so many more dined at the El Monterrey while in town making records.

It's hard to fathom, but an entire generation has been born since the El Monterrey served its last customer, and so many of those that did the serving are now gone.

Diane Fitzhugh Johns recalls Colonel Smith visiting with diners at their tables. "He would come around and visit with everyone," she said. "He had the best laugh."

Jill Hawkins Firestone remembers one of the waitresses. "I always hoped she would wait on our family. She was thin, wore glasses, red lipstick, and had bright red hair piled high on her head."

That waitress was Evelyn Banister. Evelyn spent 33 years waiting tables at El Monterrey, from 1946 and until she retired in 1979. When the restaurant closed in 1997, the Smith family gave the best table in the house, the one in Evelyn's section, to her family. It is in her granddaughter's dining room to this day.

Sadly, like the "El" on the side of the building, all things eventually fade. Inevitably, someday there will be no one alive who remembers getting a "decent" meal at the El Monterrey Restaurant. But until that day, the building on Mitchell Street will continue to stir up memories for a community that refuses to forget. Afterall, Sis Reed's brand of Mexican food has spoiled them for life.

Jim Arwood is a retired newspaper editor who spends his days traveling and documenting stories he finds along the way. Contact him at:

[email protected]