Is there an El Fenix in Heaven?

Aunt Frances, 102 years old, has passed away.

If Heaven is worth it’s salt, surely there’s an El Fenix Mexican Restaurant set somewhere alongside the Pearly-Gated streets.

Why? Because our beloved 102 year old Aunt Frances headed Heavenward early this morning from Austin, the Capital of Texas. And she can’t go very long without well-salted tortilla chips, El Fenix salsa, and black refried beans.

Frances McBride Darby was a remarkable woman who was sister to our late Mom, Doris McBride Stafford, Nellene McBride Coffee, and brother Hugh McBride, Jr. They are surely eating lunch today at Heaven’s version of El Fenix Mexican Restaurant, starting on their second round of Margaritas. El Fenix is reportedly the oldest chain of Mexican restaurants in the US, so certainly there is one behind those Gates of Pearl.

Frances spent a career as an Administrative Assistant to a long list of School Superintendents of the Dallas Independent School District. Her car had GPS, long before there was GPS, between the Dallas School Administration Building on Ross Avenue and El Fenix Restaurant on Garland Road in Casa Linda Plaza Shopping Center.

She was the right-hand-woman for Superintendents with names like W.T. White, Nolan Estes and Linus Wright. She reportedly had one of the few keys to the DISD safe - located in her office on Ross Avenue. She was trustworthy among all things, and asserted to anyone who might ask an inappropriate question, “I really wouldn’t know anything about that, at all.” But she usually did. She likely knew it all.

Frances was a giant of a woman but was several inches shorter than five feet tall. She had the humor of an Irish bar-drinker and the courage of a stout German. Her father was 100% Irish from Antrim, near Belfast; her mother was from Baden-Baden, Germany in the Black Forest, a stone’s throw from France, which might explain why her grandson has lived in Paris most of his life.

As a teenager during WWII, Frances lived at 4935 Victor in East Dallas, a Greek Revival House built by her father, contractor Hugh Lee McBride. He is also known for leading major building projects at Gaston Avenue Baptist Church, also on Ross Avenue, just a hop, skip and a jump down the historical street from DISD, and Baylor Hospital, where just about everyone in our family was born at the Florence Nightingale Annex.

Frances used to feel she was responsible for everyone’s failures. I always thought she accepted responsibility for anything gone awry, just to make everyone feel better and less guilty. She had a huge heart. When my three brothers and I were children, our parents were gone to New York on a trip for a few days. We lived on Nash Street near downtown Garland, Texas. Frances and her family lived just a few doors away; the neighborhood was popular with servicemen returning from the War. They could buy a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house for $1 down on a VA Loan. While my parents were gone, an heirloom tortoise-handle hairbrush was broken. The handle snapped off clean. My older brother Allan suggested, just blame Aunt Frances, she’ll agree to anything, she’ll say something like, “Well, I could’ve have been there, maybe I was using it, and it broke off in my hand, probably.” Great, none of us would get in trouble!

Just recently at my mother’s life celebration in the summer of 2023, Mom had died at age 98 a few months before, I finally admitted that I was the one who broke the handle off the brush, alone, hitting it on the edge of the bathroom sink, mimicking the four of us getting spanked during our parent’s trip to NYC. I waited 68 years to spill the truth. I can’t remember if Frances got the blame, but I didn’t. But we can all hear her say, “I don’t know what happened, I was over at your house and brushing my hair, and that handle just snapped, I guess.”

Frances passed away last night. In the wee hours of the morning, her daughter Diane next to her side. Diane is the sole surviving child of Frances. Karen and Neal Darby died a few years back. Diane called me to tell me of my Aunt Frances’ departure. I contemplated that I should have said right off, “Diane, I think I caused your mom to get chewed out over a broken hairbrush back in 1953, I actually broke it being silly, I was five years old, but I think my brothers and I may have blamed her, I feel sick I never told the truth,” I considered confessing during the death call from Diane and imagined her saying. “Oh Dick, don’t worry she probably told everyone she broke it.” Instead, we chatted how Frances took on the world's problems and how she was the Queen of Humility. Diane ended the call with, “She was like that, taking on the world’s brokenness for the sake of peace. A huge heart, she had.”

I was invited for many decades to lunches at El Fenix Restaurant down on Garland Road in the Casa Linda Plaza Center by my mother, and her sisters Aunt Frances and Aunt Nelleen. Although we did not call Nelleen “Aunt Nelleen.” Everyone called Nelleen, ”Sister.” It would seem like we should have called her “Aunt Sister.” But the entire family of 41 relatives just called her “Sister.”

During those days of margaritas and chips and enchiladas, I learned many things. I learned about their many dates during their years as students at Woodrow Wilson High School, failures each of three sisters had endured, their successes, secrets about all us cousins from a mother’s vantage point, and a few regrets. After that second or third margarita at El Fenix, the truth often poured out like hot queso.

Frances would say, “Doris, does Dick know about the time when you were in 9th grade at Woodrow Wilson High School, and you walked over to the school quarterback’s house, what was his name, Schnitzen, they owned a Polish Sauce company, lived on Swiss Avenue in that Spanish mansion, and while his parents were gone, you asked him if you could put on his football uniform?” Mom turned her head away from me and gushed. I never saw my mother so quiet.

“Did you?” I asked my mother, as I sipped down a fresh 3rd round of margarita, raising my eyebrows, waiting for my mom to answer.

“Of course!” Sister and Aunt Frances loudly laughed in perfect unison; my mom’s eyes teary with guilt. “Of course she did, of course she did!” they repeated, my Mom’s face pale and drawn.

And Aunt Frances, emboldened by her liquified courage of lime and tequila, added, “For the record Doris, I did not break your tortoise-shell hair brush when you and Jim went to New York years ago,”

I stared at my flan not moving an inch, and suddenly felt sick. Was my Aunt Frances about to rat on me for a childish mistake? Had she seen me hit the sink with that brush? Did she know all these years?" Frances was silent.

My mom just gurgled up the last sip of margarita and used her tongue to lick a dab of salt from the rim of her glass, laughed and said, “What hair brush?”

Quickly burying the brush, I turned to Sister, “Sister, tell me your secret, your hair has always been perfect, every time I have seen you since I was a child, who does your hair?”

I have no idea what Sister’s answer was. I never heard her answer.

But today, Aunt Frances, 102 years old, has traveled to join my mom and Sister. And I’d bet an old broken hairbrush that the three sisters are at the Heavenly location for El Fenix. They are probably into the fourth round of margaritas; St. Peter has likely joined them and probably everyone else from Texas who ever ate at El Fenix on Earth and who resides up above, is reaching over their shoulders for a chip and salsa, dropping bits on Sister’s immaculate poofy hair. I am certain their hearts are strangely warm, as Charles Wesley confessed. And certainly, they are full of laughter and tears. And together, again.

Dick Stafford

Journalist and Writer

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