About Galveston's Historical Galveston

UPDATE 4-26-2009: Beatrice Gutierrez, who owned the Original for eons, and who sold it to John Bannon, when she was ready to retire, passed away recently at 94. RIP, Beatrice.

One of the most famous of the Galveston restaurants is not a seafood restaurant but a Mexican one. In fact, it is one of the two oldest cafes in the city. The other, and it's running neck-and-neck, is a seafood restaurant -- Gaido's.

Gaido's founded in 1911. The Original founded in 1916. But only the Original remains at the same location where it was when it sold its first taco.

The Original Mexican Cafe is a sort of corner grocery store looking place that's on the corner of 14th and Market Street, in the shadows of the mammoth University of Texas Medical Branch. In all of its years, until recently that is, it has had only had four owners.

Now the last one, John Bannon, sold The Original to A. Louis Servos, a former partner in the group that owns and operates Houston's very famous James' Coney Island cafes. So one can't help but wonder if Mr. Servos plans to take the recipes and concept and build other Originals -- perhaps throughout Houston?

John Bannon has had an interesting business career. Just out of high school, he wanted to be a telephone repairman. They wouldn't hire him because he was too short to climb the poles, so he joined the military service. Home again, he took advantage of the GI Bill, and became a special education teacher.

Then he went to work for Chrysler. Why? Because John Bannon was the one who figured out that people with low IQs could be taught to do repetitive jobs and that not only would they not get bored doing them, but they would get to enjoy the sense of productivity -- usefulness. And Bannon literally invented the iconic training program that made it happen...the program that is talked about in every special education textbook that has been written since.

And Chrysler, and all of the companies that followed them, all but stopped the immediate attrition that occurred when average IQed people were placed in repetitive, boring jobs.

Bannon took early retirement, then opened computer training schools throughout Houston. He made a king's ransom, then retired again, selling his interest in the thriving business to his brother-in-law. He then moved to Galveston to fish, got bored, so he bought the Original.

He knew in his heart that Mexican food was unhealthy, so he developed recipes that ARE healthy, and he had his cooks discontinue using lard altogether. Bannon, who is an Italian-American, substituted what else? Olive oil!

And that's the secret of Galveston's most famous Mexican restaurant, and the story of one very interesting man.

Oh, I forgot to tell you that he is also a member of a chaplain program that counsels hospital patients, an advisor to a business for the mentally handicapped, and on and on....things he sees as his obligation to contribute. And he does an enormous amount of volunteer work through the Rotary Club and the Episcopal church.

And I heard the other day that he's going to go back into the Mexican food business -- a new concept. And this guy's 78-years old.

Galveston Island is full of historic properties, dating back to before the great storm of 1900. Many homes are registered as national historic properties, and are also recognized by the Galveston Historical Foundation.

Located in one of the many historic districts of Galveston, such as: The East End Historic District, The Strand, Downtown, The Silk Stocking District and the Lost Bayou Historic District, are homes ranging in price from 150,000.00 to over 1Million.

Some homes feature modernization of the interior, but most keep with the traditional victorian and european/victorian style of the era in which they were built. Many times, a historic property can be purchased for under market value when it may need work. This allows for many owners to obtain an investment, as well as preserve the historic quality of the home.

Some of the unique qualities of owning a historic property, is that many have histories, dating back to the family that first built the home. The history might include how it survived the storm, and also, how it survived the "grade raising" of the island, when 500 city blocks were raised up to 11ft. in varying levels. Other benefits to owning a historic home in Galveston include such cosmetic details as: transform windows above all doors, some with pocket doors, high ceilings, original hardwood flooring, expansive porches and balcony's, beautiful staircases and banisters, some with original fireplaces, crown moulding, cornice's and much more.

Most historic and older homes lack things such as closet space, garages, and even sometimes central air conditioning, but more and more, modernization has allowed for most homes to be updated with these ammenities.

Visit Galveston Island, Texas to view some of our beautiful and historic homes.

A few years before Patty and I left Galveston Island for Dallas, I sold my company offices in Galveston, in the Island's resort-second home community, and the one in the Museum District of Houston.

I primarily needed a breather from managing people and paying bills, so I became a sole practitioner. I thought you'd like to see the sign that hung under the canope of the four story 19th Century building where I moved my office.

Note the name of the company. I figured that in order to add an employee or agent, I'd have to spend the money to change the name. That was all of the assurance I needed to make sure I thought about it good and hard.

Webb and Yankee Had Different Solutions to the Bank's Move

By Dallas Realtor Bill Cherry

It may be common place today, but 40 years ago when Galveston, Texas' Moody National Bank wanted to move into a modern facility, it was considered almost an act of heresy to leave the building where a bank had been founded for new quarters.

Something about the bank not looking stable to the customers.

So trying to find executives and labor and law enforcement who had ever moved a bank wasn't an easy task, even if the move was to be no more than a block away. This one was to take place on a Friday night after the bank closed, president Carey Mayfield reasoning that the bank in its new facilities could certainly be up and running by the following Monday morning.

"Good lord, we're only moving around the corner," he kept reminding the skeptics. "And all of the office furniture is new and it's already over there, so we won't have to move any of that from the old bank," he would then add, almost like he was giving himself some needed logic and assurance to hold on to.

It turned out Mayfield was right about everything except the moving of the enormous banks of safe deposit boxes that were recessed into the wall of the vault. And that was forgivable, for after all the accrual of all of the weight in those things was unmeasurable by staring at them. And you certainly couldn't expect the customers to line up and let you see inside of their boxes so the weight could be estimated. So it was difficult to know how to prepare.

Mayfield liked to steer bank business to customers. When the move planning was going on, Don Webb was in to make a deposit one day. He owned a wrecker service, locksmith shop, and vehicle repair business out on what we called S Road in those days.

Mayfield came out of his office and said, "Don, got any idea how we might move those safe deposit box vaults to the new building?"

"No problem," Webb said right away, "I'll take care of it and send you the bill. You know I'll treat you right. Leave it 100% up to me." So Webb was hired on the spot..

But as the day of the move approached, Mayfield started to get concerned that Webb might not be able to deliver on his promise. So the Friday morning before the move, Mayfield called a safe company in Houston, explained the problem and the dilemma, and they said they'd take care of it.

Now how to tell Webb that he was un-hired. Mayfield came up with an ingenious plan. He made Webb a temporary "vice president" of the bank, and immediately promoted him to being the bank officer in charge of the move, and he not only called and told Webb of his good fortune, but also reminded him that bank officers were required to wear suits. He needed to come in his coat and tie, Mayfield said.

So all day Friday, Don Webb was walking around the bank surveying the situation, giving advise here, and instructions there. And then about 5:30 P.M. the safe movers from Houston showed up. Webb told the fellows he was in charge, and asked them how they planned to get the huge banks of safe deposit boxes out of the vault wall, across the lobby, down the stairs, into the huge moving truck, over to the new bank building and into the wall of the new vault.

The superintendent gave him some cockamamie story. Webb responded, "Have you ever done this in your entire life?" He assured Webb that he had. Webb defaulted to his own intuition and he began hovering over them like a vulture in his Sunday church suit.

They removed the trim pieces of the safe deposit vaults, then started to try to pry them out with long pry bars. They wouldn't budge. Webb said, "OK, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to back my wrecker up to the front door. We'll add some lengths to the wrecker's cable, and we'll bring it across the bank lobby's floor, and thread it around the back of the safe deposit vault. Then I'll go turn on the wrecker's winch, and we'll ease them out. Then we'll manhandle them onto dollies and then we'll be all set."

What a plan, they thought. Webb went into Mayfield's office and asked for permission to take off his coat and tie for this procedure. He explained to Mayfield, "Wreckers are like Harleys. You just don't get any where around them in a coat and tie." Mayfield gave in.

Webb backed his wrecker up to the steps, unhitched the long cable, and attached another couple of lengths. About then the superintendent from the safe company came up to Webb and said that he was taking over. "We need my experience here," he told Webb, in a condescending manner.

Webb went to the restroom, put back on his tie and coat and combed his hair and came back to supervise. When he came into the lobby, the big cable was about five feet off of the floor and taut. It was wrapped around one of the big banks of safe deposit boxes in the wall, and the superintendent was standing beside Webb's wrecker getting ready to engage the winch.

"Are you sure you want to do that, Yankee?" Webb shouted. Webb always called people from the north side of the causeway, Yankee.

"Stand back," Yankee ordered Webb, and then he revved up the wrecker's engine and pushed the winch handle forward.

Out of the recessed wall flew the bank of safe deposit boxes. For a moment they actually looked like they were flying, and then they realized that they were nothing more than massive dead weight, so they crashed on the lobby's floor with a noise that would rival any reasonably size explosion. Everyone in the building fell to the floor, too.

Webb yelled, "Good job, Yankee. Hope you've got insurance,"and then he and Mayfield went across the street to the Turf Grill for coffee and chit chat.

Copyright 2006 - William S. Cherry

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