It's an odd oversight that, after years living in New Mexico, and two years living in nearby Socorro, I have still yet to visit the Owl Cafe:
Let me tell you a story about the history of America. About drunken physicists, the atom bomb and the greatest cheeseburger in the world.
...There were 240 people who knew about the first test; 239 of them were scientists or military personnel, high-ranking political figures, generals, and the President of the United States. One of them was grocer and a cook: J.E. Miera, the only civilian to see the flash, the boom, the tremulous mushroom cloud rising against the dawn sky, and know it for what it was. He stood at the crossroads of Second Street and old U.S. Highway 85 — the only two roads of note in the flyspeck town of San Antonio, New Mexico — and alongside some of those soldiers, some of those scientists, he watched history being born under the umbrella of light.
When that was done, he went inside. At some point, he and his son, Frank J. Chavez — owner of the Owl Bar, which sat in the lot beside Miera’s small grocery store and row of cabins — started popping beers and making cheeseburgers.
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