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.