A Ride To Texas With Dr. Pancho Villa, M.D.

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."

- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

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The day started like most others here in Nuevo Progreso; wake up, be angry with the alarm clock, pet Tessa, shut off or forget to and be angry with secondary alarm (I'm not a morning person, at all), "morning constitutional", wash face and brush teeth, pet Tessa, get dressed and ready for the day, pet Tessa, inform Tessa she is in charge of la casa until I return, lay out her duties for the day (hunt any vermin present, eat healthy, nap frequently, don't go too hard on the 'nip, generally be a good gato pequeño until I return), and leave to walk the arduous one quarter of a block from Carlito's Cafe to Vampiz.


After arriving I retrieved my flyer (theirs are laminated and thus reusable), said my usual pleasantries to the girls and other employees present, and sauntered off to my usual corner to do my strip club carnival barker routine. To sing for my supper, or in this case a place to live for now, as it were.  That is where the day, which until this point was fairly typical, took a series of turns I could not, under any circumstances, have foreseen.


At once I spotted him. Walking down the sidewalk, occasionally stopping to chat with the locals in very good Spanish, and looking like he always did; as if the world was his oyster and today, this very day, was the best of his life. He was no stranger at this point, he had become something of a regular, and I was pleased to see him. He is a nice man, older American fellow, who shows up occasionally and spends big at the club. This means a decent commission for me, which is nice.


I don't think I introduced him specifically to Vampiz, he seemed known when I first brought him in. We met originally on the street, and every time since. He asked me if I could help him locate friends of his once he saw that I was barking for Vampiz. He said his friends were beautiful girls, and tequila. Everyone should have friends like those in my experience.


In my usual helpful manner I informed him that I could probably point out his friends, and if I could not would be more than happy to introduce him to some replacement friends until his came along. We bantered a bit more and I took him around the corner to the club.


We entered and someone, I cannot recall who as this was several weeks and many bottles of liquor ago, probably one of the girls, called out to him; "PANCHO VILLA!". It turns out that this is his preferred nom de guerre when moving about south of the border, for reasons we will discuss later. Be patient, I'm telling a story here.


This was my introduction to the man we will refer to for the rest of the article as 'Dr. Pancho Villa, M.D.'.


As mentioned above, Dr. Villa is American, and it turns out actually a doctor. A doctor of psychiatry to be specific. He has several notable professional accomplishments that if listed would surely disclose his identity to any who were looking for such information, so I will not list them. Suffice to say he is indeed the real McCoy. He is semi-retired at this point, like a lot of the Americans who come through NP on any given day, but consults for an American federal agency of some sort on issues of mental health on a part time basis. This leaves Pancho, the good doctor, with a lot of free time on his hands and more than a little bit of coin in the bank.

"One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real." - Klaus Kinski

So once more I escorted Dr. Pancho Villa, M.D. to the friendly, family-owned-and-operated, vampire themed strip club he has come to enjoy so much. We came through the door, I smiled and gave a thumbs up to the boss, and Dr. Villa took his usual table. Not that it was a challenge to do so, as it was 10:05 in the AM on a Wednesday.


He ordered a shot of tequila to start things off, breakfast of champions I say, and when the man came around with his drink he offered a rainbow of credit cards for him to choose from for payment. It would usually be one of the girls delivering a drink to a clients table, but at such an early point in the day the girls were all still getting ready in the back room. Showering, getting into their "uniforms", eating delicious pancake breakfasts, that kind of thing. 


Wholesome, everyday stripper things.

[[What, you thought I was kidding about that?]]

The man who brought the drink soured faster than old milk in a White Russian, for Vampiz will take many things from its clientele, but it doesn't take American Express. Or any other plastic for that matter.


Like many strip clubs, north and south of the border, it is a cash-only business. The good doctor had not a bit of cash on him, save for the change required to cross the border bridge over the Rio Grande river, and this fact was not playing well to this particular audience.


I intervened in an attempt to diffuse the situation, as I said, I had come to like Dr. Villa. He is a charming older man, damned intelligent, weird in a good way, always friendly, very generous in every way a person can be, and up to this point had always been a fantastic semi-regular. For the house and for me. Once it was clear that the doctor had no cash, only cards, I offered to, and did, pay for his $5 USD shot of decent tequila with my last bit of cash and escort him to the US side of the border due to the ATM issues in NP as mentioned in an earlier post.


It wasn't as heroic a gesture as I make it out to be, I had to go to the ATM at some point today anyway in order to get the remaining cash I owed for my apartment. This way I would have some interesting company along the way and Dr. Villa wouldn't be in trouble of some sort with the management. All agreed that this was an acceptable course of action and so continued a very, very strange day.


We walked the several blocks to the bridge, through the rapidly growing mass of tourists and flyer touts that were springing up faster and far more numerous than dandelions in a field on a hot summer morning. We continued the banter and getting-to-know-you chit chat that had been stopping and starting since I first escorted him to the club, and remarked on the oddities around us. You know, usual stuff.


It was not long into our walk that I realized the conversation was going to be of my favorite variety; intelligent, filled with humor on both sides, and weird as fuck. Goddamn, did I ever call this one correctly. We spoke of many things, but it always came back around in some way to science (or in some cases spirituality, as he is a fairly spiritual man). Not shocking, as he is a doctor and I, while not ultimately pursuing a physics degree have maintained an active interest in science throughout my life. This fact seemed to please him, though I'm certain more than a few names and concepts were dropped here and there to see if I was bullshitting him or actually knew anything. Thankfully I know a few things.

"They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics. I said I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said 'Welcome aboard'." 

- Fantastic, Fallout: New Vegas

As we went through US customs he declared his already purchased medications, Valium and some obscure high grade amphetamines not available in the US. The drugs were legit, as was his prescription for them I suspect. Being a doctor I'm certain he has doctor friends, and they tend to write scrips for whatever the hell their fellows want and its all perfectly legal, if not slightly unethical, the lucky bastards.


Surely, surely Lone Star bank had gotten its shit together and fixed the ATM at the border, right? I mean, tons and tons of people, imperial and metric, go through there every day. They make a killing on the withdrawl fees ($3.75 a pop), so surely this particular cash machine must be a priority.


Nope.


No matter the good doctor said, with his typical humor, "we can go to my bank, its nearby.". Thinking he meant that his bank had a branch or ATM on this side of the border, not far, I followed him to his car.


I didn't really consider what the man drove in our interactions, but as soon as I spotted it I knew it was his. The paint faded and somewhat cracked, but a positive color, the thing dusty but well maintained, it was a car of luxury and style. At least it had been in the year it was made, which was also the year in which I was born. Dr. Villa told me the cars history and how he came to own it, but I honestly can't recall what he told me except to say that he had owned a few more recent models of car but traded one from ten years or less ago for this one. He said it called out to him, and he had always wanted to own a car from this particular German manufacturer.


More than one joke about efficient German practices and engineering were had. The phrase "efficient German sex" was uttered more than once, and we were on our way for what I assumed was a drive of only a few miles into Progreso, the Texas side of Nuevo Progreso just over the river.

"I'm a junk bond king
And I'm on the run
Me and a friend of mine
We were headed for the sunshine
I got my hands on the wheel
I got gas in the tank
I got a suitcase full of money
From a Luxembourg bank."

- Warren Zevon, Seminole Bingo

Instead we veered right about half way to the strip malls, fast food, big box stores, and bank branches, in Progreso onto the somewhat dusty back roads of southern Texas. Dr. Villa informed me he was taking a short cut so as to avoid the traffic on the highway at this time. I inquired as to why we would need to use the highway as we were close to what I assumed was our destination.


"My bank, the one I like, is in Harlingen. I don't like using the ATM, so I'll just run in and get the money from my personal finance guy, Tony."


Harlingen, Texas is not where I assumed we were going, and more than the 9 miles to the business end of Progreso we were so very close to. That is my fault, I should have asked. Or rather I should have assumed it would be something slightly eccentric and out of the way given my previous interactions with this fellow. He wanted to get the money from his personal guy, a guy named Tony, from his as-yet unnamed bank. It was sounding less like a trip to the ATM and more like the start of a film involving a deal with the mafia that inevitably goes south.


Still, I was now along for the ride so I settled in to make the most of it. We continued to speak of many things, jumping from one topic to the next like a couple of speed freaks watching a late night 'Jeopardy' marathon. We drove past barren fields, strange things shaped like cowboy boots, old farms, disused and currently being used on the road we were on tractors, and seemingly endless fields of dying, emaciated sugarcane.


There was a bit of a drought at the wrong time of year and now it looks like the sugarcane farmers of south Texas will be getting less than ideal crop yields this season. That explains why a few days ago I remarked to an English speaking acquaintance at a local pharmacy about a gigantic, mushroom shaped cloud in the sky. We both suspected it was from a farm, or rather we hoped it was. It was one of those farmers, on one side of the border or the other, burning their fields early.


The drive was very pleasant, if a bit depressing due to the state of the local farms, but still our topic-hoping conversation continued. During this time the good doctor informed me that we would be making another stop, at his hotel, to drop off his medications. He had already accidentally left two different bags of them at the club, which vanished like one might expect them to. Be it a strip club in Mexico, a Popeye's Chicken in Pittsburgh, or a cocktail party for political campaign donors in DC, I have never seen someone place unattended drugs of any sort in the 'Lost & Found'.


He was staying in a decent chain hotel, modest for someone of his apparent means. He seemed pleased with it. It was clean, in that almost hospital level of antiseptic way that chain hotels clean in order to distinguish themselves from cheaper places of lodging also found along highways. The doctor was known to the staff, and joked with the woman at the the front desk and the maid on his floor. We got to his room and in truth I was expecting the inside to resemble a dimly lit tiki cabana.


Poolside, at the Flamingo hotel & casino in Las Vegas, circa 1966. All strings of lights, tiki masks, faux grass table skirting, liquor bottles at various levels of consumption, a few sleepy looking waitresses smoking at a table in the corner who barely notice your arrival, a drunk asleep at the bar, and maybe an old CRT television from the era showing a Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis picture with the volume turned down.


I don't know why I was expecting that, except to say that if you met the man you might understand. Instead I was greeted with a clean, orderly, very professional looking room set-up. Almost, as if, a practicing psychiatrist were staying there long term. It was not a surreal time-capsule of poolside indulgence from a fictionalized version of the mid-1960's. Rather it was a respectable room where one might find a professional man between houses, as the good doctor was at the time. One of his last houses, he has had a few, was trashed in a hurricane, which he rode out on the sofa with a bottle of Russian vodka.


Dr. Pancho Villa is a man of many hats, sometimes he wears multiple hats at once. We were in the room barely long enough for him to check the state of things, for me to scribble down the address and name of this blog, and for him put away his medication after downing some amphetamines with a glass of bottled water. Remember, he said as he poured it, don't drink the tap water around here.


It was a callback to our ride there, when we were discussing the sad state of the local sugarcane crops. He mentioned that people always talk about the bad water in Mexico, but in this part of Texas, along the Rio Grande, its just as bad as it comes largely from the same source: the river. The same river all the local farm runoff feeds into. Fertilizers, industrial grade insecticides, chemicals of all varieties from both sides of the border polluting the same water source. He half jokingly blamed people drinking the river water on everything from bad drivers to the ill health of local children to basic, common, human stupidity.


I didn't argue with him, as I agreed, at least in part, with a lot of what he said. I'm not certain bad drivers can be blamed on that particular source, as nobody in Pittsburgh is drinking water from the Rio Grande regularly and nobody there uses their fucking turn signal either. The pollution found in the Rio Grande can't be blamed for why driving in Los Angeles feels like you have been thrust into the third act of a 'Mad Max' film unknowingly the moment you get on the freeway. Still, he made a compelling argument.


We left that nice chain hotel and burned rubber in his 37 year old luxury European sports car for food, and the bank. Lunch ended up happening at a nice place he knew, it turned out to be a Mexican restaurant. This provided me with more amusement than the margaritas with lunch as, well, here I was in Texas at a Mexican restaurant when I live in Mexico. Next to a fabulous restaurant. In an old restaurant. Hilarious.

"Give me a diablo sandwich, a Dr. Pepper, and make it quick, I'm in a god-damn hurry!" - Sheriff Buford T. Justice, Smokey & The Bandit

We whiled away lunchtime by eating some rather fine and fairly authentic Mexican food and telling stories. He told me about losing his house to a hurricane while he drank himself to sleep with a bottle of fine Russian vodka, about practicing psychiatry in different countries, about some of his ex-wives, his love of Mexico, its people, its culture, its food, its women. Hence his nickname.


I told him a story, partially confirmed by an old friend of mine from the intelligence community, about Richard Nixon and Jackie Gleason getting drunk together at a campaign stop in Ohio, and Nixon taking the legendary actor/comedian to see the frozen remains of the extraterrestrial biological entities from the infamous Roswell crash of 1947 at nearby Wright-Patterson AFB. Jackie Gleason told the story, among other places, at a BBQ at Burt Reynolds house after they made 'Smokey & The Bandit' together in 1977. Jackie Gleason never recanted or denied telling the story, and insisted it was true right up to his death in 1987.


It wasn't that I didn't have any stories of my own, about my own life, and I did share a few small ones. Its that I was keenly aware I was sitting down to drinks and lunch with a very intelligent, very accomplished psychiatrist. Not that I think ill of Dr. Villa or his profession, its just that I'm paranoid and prefer to share personal information in the manner I choose, if at all. Besides, I spent the last 7 years being suicidal to varying degrees (see, I share sometimes!). It just wasn't something I felt like discussing, or even anything that might lead to it. We were having a good time and I didn't want to bring things down by making him feel obliged to put on his professional hat. Though in truth most mental health professionals never take that hat off once its firmly attached, they just suppress it in social circumstances, or so another good friend in that field tells me.

With lunch completed we were off once again, this time to see his "personal finance guy" Tony. This did not lead us, as I once again imagined, to a smokey back-room of some bar filled with well dressed men of Italian descent. Instead it brought us to a standard strip mall bank branch. There was however a man named Tony there, a financial consultant, with whom Dr. Villa enjoyed doing business. He wrote the man a check, again no use of a present ATM, and received an envelope full of cash. They shook hands and we left. After a quick stop for me to buy a few sundries not found south of the border we were at last on our way back to Mexico. 

The drive back took the same back roads we used to get to Harlingen, and again the conversation took many weird turns. The future of humanity as a species, Star Trek, women, astrophysics, astral projection, how he once left $40,000 worth of Swiss travelers checks under the mattress in the spare bedroom of a mango farmer in South America he knew and how upon going back almost a year later they were still there, but also how he and someone else were once robbed by two Mexican fellows carrying fake guns. By the time they realized the guns were just wood the banditos were too far ahead for them to catch on foot. Thankfully he wasn't carrying forty grand in Swiss travelers checks at the time.

By the time we got back to Mexico it was hot as fuck, many hours later, and the goddamn border ATM had been fixed. We made our way back to Vampiz somewhat indirectly, as I had to stop to conduct some business along the way. Nothing too exciting or at all illicit, but Dr. Villa was most helpful for many reasons, not the least of which is his command of Spanish far exceeds my own.

When we returned to the club it felt like an accomplishment of some sort. Despite my absence seemingly unnoticed, when Dr. Villa entered behind me the girls cried out "PANCHO VILLA!" and he raised his hands, clutching the envelope full of cash, and declared "VIVA MEXICO!". He took his usual table, conveniently empty, and two of his favorite dancers sat down with him to begin a marathon of drinking that might give a cop of Irish descent I know pause. 

I left him there with the girls and the tequila in the club to continue barking on the corners as usual. 

After work I headed back to the club to cash out for the day, grab a cold beer, and presumably head home to finish packing. Instead I found Dr. Villa still there, still upright, still drinking, and still loudly proclaiming "VIVA MEXICO!". I should point out at this time that Dr. Villa doesn't get dances, or anything else, from these girls except their companionship at the table. He tips well, drinks like a fish, and spends the entire time being genial, effusive, and generally just having a good time. He does occasionally hug the girls, or offer a friendly kiss on the cheek, but that is the limit. He conducts himself as a total gentleman, he even told one of the girls who kept getting up to dance to the music that she didn't have to do that, she was off the clock! I explained that she does that, she likes the music, likes to dance, etc. Thats why she is perfect for that profession.

We ended up having a few beers together there, closing out the club, until Dr. Villa ran out of money. It was just as well he did, the girls were wrecked, I was feeling pretty numb, and Dr. Villa was completely wasted. I excused myself to the rest room for only a moment or two, and came back to find the girls at the bar, Dr. Villa gone, and no evidence of his passing save my unusually large tip-out for the night and the detritus of our last two rounds at the table. 

I went out on the street to find him, and perhaps offer to walk/drive him to the border as I was a hell of a lot more sober than him, but he was nowhere to be found. The streets were empty, loose papers blowing about in the unusually strong wind gave the whole scene on the nearly vacant Mexican street a very post-modern Sergio Leone feel. Dr. Pancho Villa, M.D., had vanished as quickly and easily into the cool, dark night as he had appeared earlier that day. Wherever he is I hope he reads this eventually, my spotty retelling of our adventure, and enjoys it at least a little. 

More than likely he will appear again at some point, just as weirdly and mysteriously as before, with a pocket full of cash handed to him by a now not-so-mysterious-or-nefarious man named Tony, and a hearty appetite for liquor and Mexican food that can only be sated in the company of gorgeous Mexican women. Dr. Pancho Villa, M.D. will surely ride again.

Via con Dios, mi amigo.

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This post and its original content copyright James Radcliff, and has been brought to you by Mexico, tequila, and generally poor decision making. If you would like to donate to support this bizarre little travelogue, feel free to do so via Patreon or PayPal. As always, this strange and debaucherous adventure has been brought to your screen by viewers like you. Thank you.

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