Tiny Arizona border town full of strange stories

Deborah Grider is a guera, one of those light-skinned, blond-haired women who look Anglo but are actually Mexican-American.

Gueras and gueros are common at the border, where stereotypes don't easily apply. But it still surprises visitors when Grider switches from English to Spanish in midsentence or when Grider tells them her grandfather, Carlos Escalante, and great-aunt, Raquel Serrano Weaver, both Mexicans, founded the town of Sasabe around 1916.

It surprises them even more if they assume she's Anglo and say something bad about Mexicans. More on that later.

If you have never heard of Sasabe, you are not alone. The tiny speck of a town sits on the border, 72 miles from Tucson. Just 11 people live here. And the only way to get to Sasabe is to drive 20 miles west from Tucson on Ajo Way and then south on Arizona 286 from Robles Junction through nearly 50 miles of nothing but desert scrub land.

Anyone who has spent time in Sasabe knows Grider. She runs the general store, along with her mother, Alice Knagge.

The store has been in their family since 1932, and you can usually find Grider or her mother behind the cash register from sunrise to sunset. It's the only store left in this town, and they are the only two people who work there.

In 1960, Life magazine sent famed photographer J.R. Eyerman to take pictures of Sasabe after Grider's grandfather put the entire town up for sale for $500,000. The price included 450 acres of land and 29 adobe buildings.

"My grandfather built all of these houses," said Grider, who is not about to tell you her age, no matter how much you prod.

Eyerman's black-and-white photographs ran in the March, 28, 1960, edition of the magazine under the headline, "Any Money Down, A Desert Town."

In one photo, the town's entire population, all 30 men, women and children, is shown standing on a hill with Sasabe's rooftops and electric poles in the background. Grider, a little girl in a white blouse, her hair freshly curled, stands in the foreground with her mother, her stepfather, Mike Knagge, her grandparents, Carlos and Luisa Escalante, and her brother Bill, who is looking down at his feet.

Shortly after, Grider's family sent her away to boarding school in Tucson. Grider spent 10 years being taught by nuns at Immaculate Heart Academy, then an all-girls Catholic school.

"My grandparents wanted me to have a good education," Grider said.

As a girl, Grider lived in Sasabe only during the summers. She remembers walking across the border into Mexico to buy candy. When she would return, the customs agents "would just wave you through if they knew you," Grider said.

She remembers playing hide-and-seek and hopscotch with the other children in town. Their parents, most of them ranch hands or customs agents who worked at the port of entry, rented adobe houses built and owned by her grandfather.

There are no children living in Sasabe now, and the entire town is owned by a wealthy Mexican businessman named Domingo Pesqueiro. The San Fernando Elementary School is still there, but the school's 17 students come from Arivaca and other nearby towns or from across the border in El Sasabe.

Grider finished high school in Sahuarita. She used to get up at 5 a.m. to catch the bus for the 1 hour and 45 minute trip from Sasabe to Sahuarita north of Green Valley.

After high school, Grider studied at Pima Community College in Tucson but came home to Sasabe after a year to help her mother at the store.

Grider never married or had children. She moved back to Tucson and spent most of her life living and working there. But doing exactly what, she won't say.

All she will say is, "I had a very interesting life."

"I had lots of jobs," Grider said. "I also ran several of my own businesses. One of them was a mail-order business. Not M-A-L-E order but M-A-I-L order."

In 2001, Grider returned to Sasabe for good. She lives with her mother in a stately ranch house with tall cypress trees overlooking the border. She has been working at the store ever since.

If you visit the store and are lucky, Grider will pull a set of keys from behind the counter and walk you through the store -- past the rows of canned food, the stacks of propane tanks and the racks of T-shirts that say, "Where the Hell Is Sasabe?" -- to a door in back painted green and purple.

A sign above says Hilltop Bar. And when Grider unlocks the door, it feels almost like magic. Hidden inside has got to be the strangest, if not the smallest, bar in Arizona. Just 12 stools and a little table big enough for a game of cards.

"Bienvenidos al rincon de los borrachos," says the ceramic tile hanging on the door. Welcome to the drunkards' corner. (Grider makes sure there is always a designated driver.)

But it's not just the size that makes the bar seem so weird. It's the way the women have decorated the place, kind of like a cross between cowgirl shabby chic and a museum.

On the cement floor are a couple of mano y metates, the grinding stones used by Native Americans in prehistoric times. An old broom and a metal pitchfork hang from one of the walls. A mounted deer head, a gift from one of Grider's hunter friends, juts out from the side of the bar.

But the most bizarre item is a female mannequin. Decked out in a cowboy hat and woolly chaps, the curvy figure is propped up on a table in the middle of the bar clutching a six-pack of beer. A perpetual smile graces her face.

"We used to have a clothing department. She used to be our clothing mannequin," Grider said. "Did you notice she hardly has any fingers? Some kids from across the line broke her fingers off. They thought she was real, so they broke her fingers off to see if she would bleed."

The mannequin is just one example of Grider's quirky sense of border humor.

Over the bar, Grider has posted a sign listing the "House Specials." Sasabe sits in the middle of one of the biggest human-smuggling and drug-trafficking corridors on the border. Using Mexican border slang, Grider has concocted drink specials that pay homage to the various characters found along the border. One drink, tequila and a "secret juice chaser that makes it real smooth," is called "La Migra" -- the Border Patrol.

"The juice is green, and what does La Migra do? They chase people," Grider said.

Another -- tequila, bloody Mary mix in a glass rimmed with salt and chili powder --is called "El pollero," or the smuggler.

"I can say these things because I'm Mexican. And in Mexico we are not politically correct," Grider says with a laugh.

Grider opens the bar just two nights a week, on Fridays and Saturdays, and for special occasions. On a good night, the bar might draw 15 people. But usually it's just Grider and four or five customers. Some are town residents. Others are visitors from the nearby Rancho De La Osa Guest Ranch, an exclusive hotel that serves gourmet meals.

During hunting season in October and November, the bar also fills up with hunters who sometimes stay at a bunkhouse that Grider rents out for $25 a night per person next to the store.

Grider has a rule against foul language at the bar. Customers who break it stick a dollar in a "cuss jar" she keeps on the counter. When the jar fills up, she donates the money to charity.

And here is the part where Grider sometimes hears people say bad things about Mexicans. It's usually the hunters sitting at the bar after they've had a few drinks. Because she is guera, the hunters assume she is Anglo. Grider, who has an easy-going manner and a charming smile, lets them dig a deep hole before she lets on.