Balinese Room Had Two Last Hoorahs. (original) (raw)

Lawmen�s raid after raid tried to wipe it out. And one hurricane after another tried to blow the house down, but the flame would continue to smolder and eventually resurrect in one form or another.

But Hurricane Ike dealt it the true fatal blow. When the winds subsided and the gulf returned to calm waters, there was no longer anything out over the water at the corner of 21st and Seawall. The Balinese Room was gone.

If you�ve lived around Galveston and Houston, even Texas, for more than 5 minutes, you know the legends of former Houston sheriff Johnny Klevenhagen and hard living, drinking and womanizing criminal defense attorney Percy Foreman.

But there was another Johnny Klevenhagen. He was Sheriff Klevenhagen�s father. And he rode into the gulf coast in 1941 as Texas Ranger Capt. Klevenhagen.

One time Capt. Klevenhagen was on the stand and Percy Foreman was cross-examining him. Percy was up to his old tricks, impeach the witness at all costs. So he decided he�d start by questioning Capt. Klevenhagen�s integrity. The jury was sitting there taking it all in.

Finally the Texas Ranger had had enough. He flew out of the witness chair, drew his gun and chased old Percy out of the courthouse. No one seems to know for sure what happened after that. But the next day as the trial continued, the jury saw Foreman was bandaged everywhere, was on crutches and complaining about his broken leg. And he didn�t mention a thing about the Texas Ranger�s character again.

Galvestonians and tourists like to talk about the Island�s days of debauchery � the gambling, drinking, prostitution and high-style living. Lots of authors, including me, have written books about it. My friends Dr. Robert Wilkins and Broadway�s Mark York even wrote a musical about it.

But I don�t recall that any of us ever got around to revealing how it got closed down and who did it.

Well let me right now give that credit to Capt. Johnny Klevenhagen. Here�s how he did it.

In the mid-1950s, he brought in his troop of rangers, known as Company A. And they just walked into the Balinese Room every day when it opened, and they just sat down, ate dinner, drank coffee and enjoyed the show and stayed till closing time. They did this for months. In fact to make their point, they moved into the Buccaneer Hotel across the street, and they lived there for 2 � years!

With those guys chowing down and hanging out at the Balinese and the other Maceo gambling joints on the island, how could the other patrons gamble?

And while we�re at it, how could the houses of ill-repute operate with a Texas Ranger sitting in the cat house�s living room night after night drinking coffee? They were there, too.

Texas Ranger Johnny Klevenhagen did what no other lawman before him had been able to do. It was his last accomplishment as a lawman. He took gambling out of the Maceo empire for good.

And while I love the story and memory of Capt. Johnny Klevenhagen, quite frankly I�m sorry that he showed up.

Bill Cherry's Galveston Memories