The Galveston County Daily News

John Nelson showed me a lunch menu from the days when he was assistant manager of the Hotel Galvez.

It listed 14 options. A sirloin minute steak, boneless breast of capon on a bed of rice with Supreme Sauce, a seafood platter and veal cutlet caught my eye. The cost was $2.50. The sales tax was 2 percent. The tip was 15 percent.

It was 1967. When the minimum wage jumped to $1, some people in the tourism business thought the world might end.

Nelson teaches criminal justice at Galveston College and is responsible for the police academy. But he grew up in the hospitality business. His dad was a police officer who, as a sideline, ran the roller-skating rink on Stewart Beach. Nelson would get out of class and go work at the rink. When it closed at night, he headed for a job at the Coffee Cove at the Jack Tar hotel.

“Galveston had three 24-hour coffee shops,” he said. “Coffee Cove was by far the classiest.”

Nelson might have served a million Midnight Specials — a two-egg omelet with a scoop of meaty chili in the middle, two pieces of melted cheese on top, surrounded by French fries and two slices of toast, all for $1 — working the midnight shift.

The people who came in were endlessly interesting. The Coffee Cove had a full-service soda fountain. Nelson recalled a lively evening when a bottle of bourbon was used to top off the last concoctions.

Nelson went through Ball High despite the late-night shifts and then went on to the Galvez. He left Galveston, reluctantly, to join the Ramada chain. But the moves from state to state were constant. He changed careers when he thought his young family needed to put down roots.

He joined the police force in Baltimore. He returned to the island after 20 years as a police officer.

Maybe it’s appropriate that a fellow who made a career of law enforcement remembers sirens when recalling his Galvez days.

One Sunday morning, Nelson discovered that the flag outside the hotel was stuck. He had no idea how to get it unstuck. He called the fire department.

The fellow there said there was no way firefighters were coming down Seawall Boulevard to solve that problem. Then he said it had been a while since there’d been a fire drill at the Galvez.

Forty-five minutes later, every fire truck, ambulance and police car in town was headed toward the Galvez, sirens wailing.

The drill tested the nerves of guests and staff members. “Even the general manager called and asked, ‘Are we on fire?’” Nelson recalled.

It wasn’t a highlight of his career in the hospitality business. But, while everyone was distracted by that noisy fire drill, some firefighters quietly got that flag down.

Heber Taylor is editor of The Daily News.