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I
woke up this morning thinking about Galveston,
the island off of the coast of Texas, where I was
born and spent the majority of my life. As Christmas approaches, the sun drenched
beaches, the smell of the salty Gulf of Mexico waters and sand mixed with the
odor of Coppertone sun tan lotion stayed with summer.
And then my mind
wanders to thoughts of fresh red snapper and flounder, lump meat from blue shell
crabs, and pounds of boiled shrimp that were swimming the gulf waters yesterday.
That completes memory’s remembrances of the physique of the island.
And
that conjures a memory of its own. It’s a story about my Galveston
friend Benno Deltz. I don’t think I’ve ever told it to you. Draw close. You’re
going to love the ending.
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Benno
Deltz
Photo courtesy Robert Mihovil |
Kirwin was a boys
high school in Galveston
that was run by the Roman Catholic Christian Brothers. Dominican and Ursuline
were the Catholic girls’ high schools. After Hurricane Carla severely damaged
the Dominican and Ursuline buildings, the diocese decided to close the two girls’
campuses and move those students to Kirwin.
And that’s when Kirwin’s name
was changed to honor another of the deceased rectors of St. Mary’s Cathedral,
Fr. Dan O’Connell. The teaching nuns left and the Christian Brothers went the
way of attrition. Lay people took their places. Students no longer had to tolerate
the strict brothers and nuns who were noted for being relentless disciplinarians.
The last of the students who went through the original, traditional Galveston
Catholic schools are now in their late fifties to middle sixties. In the main,
if one were to study the lives of those whose schooling included Dominican, Ursuline
or Kirwin, they would find the alumni’s support of their religion as well as their
work and social ethics to be far above average.
Anyone who went to one
of those schools will almost always find a way to work that fact into every conversation
where it will be presented with great pride, almost with a tone of aloofness.
It’s very definitely thought of by them as a pedigree.
Armed
with his Kirwin education and a couple of years in the Navy, and married and with
young children, Benno Deltz went to work with his life-long friend, Wayne Gaido.
Together they got on their job training from famed Galveston restaurateur Mike
Gaido, as they tried their hand at operating the old Surf Drive-In. They had
renamed it Wayne’s.
A couple of years later, Wayne’s went the way of most
of the drive-in concepts, and Wayne and Benno went to work full-time at Gaido’s.
Benno managed the front dining room, Wayne managed the Pelican Club.
Nearly
twenty years later, with a new lease on a failed Seawall fast-food restaurant
and what he had learned from his mentor, Mike Gaido, Benno opened his first restaurant.
The kitchen equipment was mainly a pan or two he had scavenged, a used deep fat
fryer he had scrubbed and then scrubbed again, and some kitchen utensils from
Kmart. The dining room furnishings were makeshift and sparse.
And he had
his Kirwin values and work ethic.
Within a few months, Benno was out of
money and failure was definitely getting ready to deal him the final blow. By
chance, a prominent Galveston
businessman walked in with his accountant to have lunch. It was 1983.
“How’re
ya doin’?” the man asked before lunch.
“I’m out of money and if something
doesn’t happen quickly, I’m going to have to shut the doors,” Benno found himself
admitting in a barely audible whisper, saying it for the first time, even to himself.
The man and the accountant had a big lunch of fried shrimp and oysters, seasoned
just right. It was a lunch that would have made Mr. Gaido proud of his protégé.
Then the man and the accountant wished Benno well and left.
Within the
hour the man called. “Benno,” he said, “there is $50,000 waiting for you at the
bank. Go pick it up. It comes with only one string. If you make it, I want my
money back. If you don’t, you won’t owe me a dime, and you won’t have to worry
about ever hearing about it from me again.”
One time Benno was waiting
for me in his office suite at the 10,000 square foot building he owns that houses
his administrative offices and a catering facility that in both size and elaborateness
of equipment, rivals that of a convention center. Thirty people work for him.
The interior was designed by the man known as the “architect for the presidents,”
Ed Eubanks. The furniture, primarily antique, is from New Orleans. Benno, himself,
uses a small, highly polished Duncan Pyfe dining table for a desk.
On
the walls are photos of the famous and not so famous people for whom he has catered
– huge parties and banquets around swimming pools, those inside massive Houston
River Oaks homes, and just as important, the smaller and less elaborate wedding
receptions of island children’s and their friends’.
Meanwhile, Benno’s
starting place, Benno’s on the Beach, is managed by his 53-year old son, Tracy.
Diners there find the original recipes and the strict attention to detail that
Mike Gaido had taught to Benno. And they hear the same music Benno has been playing
there since the day he opened, the Platters’ “My Prayer,” the Penguins’ “Earth
Angel” and Ray Charles occasionally screaming to all who’ll listen, “Hit the road,
Jack!”
It’s a package that presents a subtle homage to the time when Benno’s
values were being instilled in him by the Christian Brothers, when his mentor
Mr. Gaido was teaching him to stretch a long string from table to table to make
certain all of the plates and silverware were perfectly lined up, and, of course,
to the man with the 50 thousand bucks who enjoyed standing back and watching the
young man with the Kirwin ethic accomplish his dreams. His name was Rai Kelso.
Bill Cherry's Galveston
Memories November
24, 2010 column
Copyright William S. Cherry. All rights reserved |
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| Bill
Cherry's Galveston Memories |
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