By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
GALVESTON, Texas |...The above photo shows the interior of the lobby at the Galvez Hotel in Galveston. It is a neat place to scarf-up a breakfast in the dining room just off to the right of this shot.
Bernardo's is the name of the restaurant and breakfast-for-two will set you back about $55.
Anyway, it doesn't look anything like it looked when I was reporting on island doings for The Houston Post in the mid-1980s.
For one, my old friend Claude Allen is no longer there. Claude was a caricaturist who plied his craft in the lobby of the Galvez. I knew him as the husband of a woman who became my lover that cold, cold Winter.
Her name was Kletha and she was a cutie, a petite blondie with a great personality. Our affair began oddly, with Claude telling me he thought it might be a good idea if Kletha and I hooked up. She was 31 and he was twice that old.
In any case, I saw Kletha most of that frigid season and we sort of fell in as if in some great romance. We ate in the small cafes of the island's historic Strand District and we'd follow that with some naked cavorting at her apartment or at my place at the Casa Del Mar Hotel.
But as with every great tale of doomed love, I left the island to head into the newspaper's main office in Houston and soon lost track of her. She'd come over every now and then, but those 45-mile trips grew farther and farther apart.
Some years later, I got word that Kletha had died. Yesterday, I found her obit in the Galveston Daily News. She died Nov. 2, 1992 of some form of cancer. Kletha was 38.
I remember her for many moments, but I can still see her jumping on my bed like a little girl...
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Reflection is good for the soul.
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