Anyone who’s driven from the Valley to Tucson may have missed a rowdy little social recreational opportunity in the desert south of Picacho Peak.
In the small community of Red Rock, just west of Interstate 10, stand a tiny elementary school and a few houses. They’re easy to pass up, but take a second look at the dark red-and-white double-wide trailer with the words ‘‘Red Rock Bar’’ on it.

Thursday through Sunday, noon to whenever, this entire structure may be rockin’ — as it has been for more than 45 years.

The original owner of the bar, Bob Meeks, died at age 90 six years ago. His widow, Sally, just slightly more than half his age, and their two sons, Joe and Bobby, run the place now.

Beer, wine, mixed drinks and floor-thumping fun. Free barbecue, tortillas and frijoles on many holidays.

The Meekses aren’t super big on minor upkeep (the pool table lists slightly to starboard; an ancient glass-front cooler is more an occupant than functional; and most décor items have beer makers’ names attached), but they have no reason to get immaculate.

As urban sprawl pushes north from Tucson, their six private acres with freeway access are proving a beckoning little pearl to homebuilders and commercial developers. When they do pack up shop, it’ll be the end of an era.

Sally says Bob Sr. ran away from home in Texas when he was 14. By age 17, he was the foreman of a dairy operation in Tucson, and shortly after, he was buying land to farm cotton near Marana.

His linkup with Sally years later didn’t appear to be a heaven-sent match. He was a big, blue-eyed, red-haired German, somewhat a Baptist, who drank a quart of Canadian whiskey a day. His sons remember him as a man who knew how to fight. Sally was a diminutive Hispanic Catholic who seldom touched the stuff.

But they prospered. Both learned to fly, and they bought airplanes, land and cattle. The Red Rock Bar and an adjacent grocery in 1958 seemed just another logical moneymaking enterprise. Initially, the buildings sat smack in the middle of today’s I-10 route, so ADOT nudged them west a bit in the early 1970s.

Now there is absolutely no predicting who, or what, will be in the Red Rock Bar on any given day. The place may be empty or packed wall to wall with farmworkers. Busloads of sports fans en route to a game somewhere often stop in for a few rounds.

On a recent weekend, a fellow at bar’s end was having a cold one on his way home from a road race. He had two hot Corvettes on a trailer outside.
A rural-looking couple in tattered cowboy hats and dusty boots turned out to be an RN and a faculty member at Pima Community College.

A nicely tanned gentleman in button-up Henley, polished boots and Smokey the Bear hat was a highway engineer. His buddy, a freshly scrubbed cowboy, was doing major damage to the bar’s tequila supply and attempting to converse in what may have been intergalactic dialects.

Sally may or may not look the same from day to day. Sometimes (as when she became the “Queen of Halloween”) she goes blond and dons a pink fairy godmother’s outfit. Just keep an eye out for a slender little lady giving orders.
What about the painting above the bar of a well-contoured lady wearing no clothes?

“Oh, that’s my mom when she was 19,” says Bobby. He’s not your typical bartender. Once a promising contender in the national bull-riding circuit, he got caught between a bull and a hard place and wound up paralyzed from the waist down.

Bobby still gets around admirably on crutches, though, and can speedily cross the room to customer tables with two 12-ounce cans of cold suds in each of his big hands.