A toast to Excalibur Bar & Grill

Excalibur Sports Bar & Grill is one of those Winter Texan watering holes-restaurants-dancing places where the elderly customers have been married for hundreds of years and hardly anyone drinks martinis.

The preferred beverage is beer, followed by margaritas.

You enter upon a cottonfield of white hair and packed long tables where the number of people is exactly divisible by two because everyone is there with spouses or boyfriends/girlfriends.

 The C&W music by such outfits as Stan Hamm, Reddy Teddy, Sweetwater, Driftin' Cowboy and Melody and Alan is loud and surrounding, competing with conversation.

Indeed, Excalibur is as far removed from an East Side Manhattan piano lounge as Pluto is from Earth.

The servers - Marisa, Eva, Cindy, Janeth, Jose and Ricardo - cater this crowd efficiently and politely. Tall and trim, Janeth could pass for a New York City Fashion Week runway model and  indeed becomes one as the margaritas flow.

It is exhausting to watch this staff serve principally Mexican food (prepared by Fernando Treviño, Eva Miranda and Marta Macias) to 75 to 100 Winter Texans. It makes my feet ache.

One Friday night in Excalibur is pretty much like any other Friday night, just like a Thursday night in Excalibur is like any other Thursday night.

The music starts, and a handful of couples from Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Ontario and other snowy northern places embrace and dance like old folks do - slow (but sometimes upbeat) and smooth and close, enveloped in the comfort of safe familiarity.

Eleazar Rivera is Excalibur's bartender. He's known as Ele, pronounced "Elly." His martinis are nowhere near the equal of the National Press Club's - he doesn't get much practice in them - but he can whip up an excellent margarita in about 18 seconds.
On a busy night, Ele's hands move quickly from glasses to spigots to pitchers to shakers, his head down, his eyes fixed on his tools.

Then came the night that Ele danced.

Now, dancing is either in your DNA or it isn't. A Colorado woman I dated was an excellent swing dancer in the late 1990s when swing briefly was back in vogue. No lessons. She just picked it up.

If you are endowed with that dancing talent, your body moves rhythmically. If you aren't, it shows. It's necessary to feel the music, not merely toetap to it. If you must think at all about the salsa, you aren't a dancer and your parents probably weren't either.
Author Gore Vidal described dancing as the connection between the soul and the feet (I think I've got that about right) and imperiously declared: "Dance like nobody's watching."

But you didn't have to tell that to Ele.

During a lull, he walked from behind the bar and hit the small dance floor - twisting, flailing joyously, shaking, swaying - all in perfect sync to the pounding music.

The crowd spotted him and shouted: "Go bartender! Go! Go! Go!"

They clapped. They laughed. They were enthralled.

Ele rocked and rolled, masterfully commanding the floor and his partner. He danced from his heart, and soul was everywhere.
"Where'd you learn that?" I asked.

"From the girls here," he said of the waitresses through an interpreter. "I dance with the girls." (Ele's English is as good as my Spanish.)

Excalibur, with its accompanying Palmview Inn Motel, has been at its original location on North Palmview Drive for seven years. It is owned by Sweeta Ram, 38, who bought it from his cousin a year ago. Ram lives with his wife and two children in McAllen,
Born in Punjab, India, Ram has been a U.S. resident for 22 years and moved to the Valley from New York City, where he ran a grocery at 94th Street and First Avenue.

Excalibur runs in two shifts - 4 to 8 p.m. for Winter Texans (when margaritas go for 99 cents). Then, almost as if on cue, the northerners clear out, leaving Excalibur nearly deserted. Then, couple by couple, locals trickle in, staying until the wee small hours, 2 a.m. on weekends.

Ram plans to keep Excalibur the way it is. "This is a happy, family place," he says, noting that children are welcome during the day. "It's already good. No changes."