Voices of the
BIG BEND
Jim Glendinning continues the tradition of his popular radio interviews from “Voices of the Big Bend,” an original production of KRTS,
Marfa Public Radio. The program continues to be broadcast occasionally throughout the region at 93.5 FM.
Story and photographs by Jim Glendinning
FLORINDA MADRID
La Cueva de Oso restaurant in
Balmorhea was packed on a recent Friday
when I visited at 2 p.m. Young waitresses
scurried around carrying plates, and busy
noises came from the kitchen. Dark-
haired, vivacious Florinda Madrid
emerged after a few minutes and
explained that there had been a local
funeral and the mourners had come to La
Cueva de Oso for lunch. We left the noisy
restaurant and walked a few yards next
door to her large, Mediterranean-style,
two-story home, which her husband Joel
built himself.
Born in Odessa on June 10, 1964,
Florinda, an only child, was adopted and
raised in Balmorhea by her aunt, Socorro,
and Socorro’s husband, Pedro Vasquez, a
Balmorhea farmer. She remembers a very
safe childhood in Balmorhea, which was a
bigger place then. She went through the
school system, graduating in 1982.
After school she started work at West
Texas Utilities, a job she kept for 18 years,
even while starting a restaurant. In high
school she had worked at Mary’s Café and
in the evenings at the truck stop on I-10
and gained experience in the food busi-
ness. She was already a hard worker, but
the rewards were still to appear.
In 1985 at a dance in Fort Stockton,
she met Joel Madrid from Pecos. She said
he was fun to be with and “a dancing
fool.” Joel had a degree in criminal justice
from Sul Ross and was then a deputy
sheriff in Reeves County. They married
in Las Vegas in August 1988. The new
husband and wife were shortly to start a
business enterprise as binding as their
marriage.
Balmorhea had had no lasting success-
ful restaurant. In 1990, Florinda and Joel
started the Bear Den, a snack bar selling
burgers and burritos. They hoped to cash
in on the property’s proximity to the high
school. It took off, and next year Joel was
10
FLORINDA MADRID
Balmorhea
able to quit his job as parole officer.
The timing and location of the Bear
Den proved successful. In 1995 four more
tables were added. Joel loved cooking and
12 years later is still in the kitchen, now
cooking a greatly expanded menu, which
is mainly Mexican and includes fish,
steaks and burgers. Soon Florinda left her
job at West Texas Utilities, and from then
on they were both full-time on the premises.
Feeling that Balmorhea needed an
upscale motel, the next project was to
build the 20-room El Oso Flojo Lodge,
immediately adjacent. Joel built it himself,
taking four years to finish. Rooms are
each decorated with a different theme,
and nesting swallows add a feature, as
well as a cleaning challenge, in the court-
yard.
The Madrids have two sons. Liberty,
28, is at Texas A&M University, studying
animal science. Joel, 17, known as Bubba,
just graduated from high school.
“Life is not easy,” said Florinda, sitting
in an elegant chair in her living room.
Cenizo
Fourth Quarter 2012
JOEL NELSON
Alpine
However, with a sound work ethic, a
strong marriage and business partnership,
the luck of timing and a good location,
the Madrids prove that there are rewards.
JOEL NELSON
Joel Nelson was born in 1945 on a
farm in Seymour, Texas, near Wichita
Falls, the only child of Grady and
Margaret Nelson. His father, a stonema-
son and farmer, later became the local
deputy sheriff. Nelson’s earliest vivid
memory, at age 4, was when his father
pointed out to him how to distinguish
between horse and cow tracks. Two years
later he joined in what was to be the last
cattle drive on horseback to market.
At Seymour High School he was fortu-
nate to have excellent teachers of English
literature, who instilled in him a lifelong
love of poetry. Graduating in 1964, he
headed for Stephen F. Austin College in
Nacogdoches to study forestry. But he
yearned for the open mountain and range
HECTOR ACOSTA-FLORES
Presidio
landscape of the Davis Mountains, which
he had first visited as a 12-year-old. He
moved to Sul Ross State University in
Alpine in 1967 for his junior year and got
a taste for cowboying.
Drafted to Vietnam in February 1969,
Nelson was assigned to the 101st
Airborne. He spent 14 months in the jun-
gles as a sergeant, where he learning
about sacrifice and responsibility. Back
home, hurt by the public’s response to its
returning soldiers, he bought a truck and
headed west.
Back in the Big Bend region, Nelson
worked at various local ranches through
the 1970s learning the cowboy trade. In
1978, he started at the 06 Ranch, where
he had to measure up to new demands. In
1982 he met master horse trainer Ray
Hunt, under whom he studied for 10
years, a life-changing experience. As well
as reading poetry, he now started to com-
pose verse.
Nelson and his wife, Barney DeGear,
married in August 1971 and had a daugh-