The Galveston Daily News from Galveston, Texas • Page 9

I The Maceos Isle's 'Good Old Bad Days' Remembered EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article is for the pleasure of our Galveston County reprinted from the Sunday, July 24 issue of readers. The Houston Chronicle. It is reprinted in full I I BY ZARKO FRANKS Chronicle Staff The name is cut into the diamond pink anite of the mausoleum in Galveston ark Memorial Cemetery: Rosario Maceo. Here stands the tomb of the overlord of the nightclub and gambling empire that flourished in Galveston for nearly three decades. In life, Rose Maceo stayed in the shadows and played second fiddle to his brother Sam, the flamboyant personality.

who hobnobbed with the superstars of the 'tntertainment world. Near the mausoleum, rimmed by pyra- "canthea, ligustrum and scrub cedar, are itwo graves side by side. No tombstones. They are marked by flat grave markers. One says: Sam Maceo, 1894-1951.

The other is the grave of James Barton Crabb, the Georgia boy who was Rose Maceo's bodyguard. Perhaps less than 200 feet away on the winding road of the cemetery off Road 519 in Hitchcock on the Galveston County mainland, is a massive Georgia granite mausoleum bearing the legend: Moody, and in Roman numerals, 1936. No more, really, is needed. Here are the remains of W. L.

Moody the multimillionaire king of a banking and insurance and cotton empire. Today, it's debatable which was a better known name, Moody or Maceo. Anyway, here is where the search for what happened to the Maceos, their families and kin. Rose and kin are entombed behind (bronze doors. But there was Slick and Gigolo and Little Sam.

All Maceos. And including Fertitta, known here in the era of Glenn McCarthy's Cork Club. And the old Macao partners, Dutch Voigt, A. J. (Yak) Adams, Ollie Quinn, Sam (Books) Serio, Frank Maceo and Vincent Maceo.

Names out of "Guys and Dolls." Names out of Ring Lardner and Runyan. First, a brief history of the background of Rose and Sam, the key figures in Galveston's glamorous, perhaps gawdy era of roulette and dice and slots and the Balinese Room, the Hollywood Dinner Club, the Studio Lounge and the Turf Grill. Horse parlors and football betting and tipbooks and a lottery known as hi. and low for the baseball sction of the day. Sam and Rose were two of five children born to Vito and Angelina Maceo of Palermo, Sicily.

The family emigrated to Leesville, at the turn of the century. The children were Rose, Sam, Frank, Vincent and a daughter, Olivia. They're all. dead The sons to Galveston in 1910; Sam and Rose, attended barber college. They saw no future in cutting hair for 25 cents.

How thev entered the club and gambling field is uncertain. One story indicates they were influenced by the success of the late D. D. Alexander, a natty, blade-thin Rambler, credited with bringing legelized horse racing to Galveston. They bought into the old Hollywood Dinner Club on 61st and from Jakie Friedman, who had bought an interest from Ollie Quinn, the original owner.

Anyway, Jakie Friedman moved to Houston, ran a place -called the South Main Palace for years before moving to Las Vegas. The Hollywood Dinner Club WES the first bigtime gambling and nightclub spot on the island. Guy Lombardo, Ben Bernie and Phil Harris of the big band era played there. The Hollywood goes back to the roaring '20s. The' state padlocked the Holly- wood'in 1940.

Earlier Rose and Sam and the Syndicate bought the pier and cafe over the Gulf at the foot of 21st. It originally was called the Chop Suey. later renamed the Sui Jen and again the Grotto. In the early '40s it was redone and became the Balinese Room, known for dice and roulette, cordon bleu cuisine and bigtime entertainment. Here is where big Texas money, most of it from Houston, came to dine and gamble.

Anthony Fertitta, a nephew of Sam and Rose, was the major domo. Slick and smooth as olive oil. Sometimes. Volatile other times. Fertitta today is in Leesville, in the construction business.

And there was the late Lionel Pellegrin, the maitre 'd, who later came to Houston and opened his Flame Room. And there were the pit bosses in the back room, Max Waterman and Lorenzo Grillette, and dealers, including Gene (Birdlegs) Sutton, Jack Paysee, Tony Anona, Manuel Arrego, Eddie Murillo, Happy Lenz and Freddie Schultz. Waterman is jn Vegas today. And Grillette, who'married Anthony Fertitta's sister also moved to Vegas and was with Jakie Friedman for years at the Sands. He's dead now.

Those were the glory days. A black named Jerry who parked cars recalls he made $100 a night. As Sammy -(Little Sam) Maceo, a double first cousin of Rose and Sam Maceo, tells it: "We had the pros working for us. The best dealers, the best bartenders, the best waitresses. The finest chefs." For years-yttle Sam, today 67, lived in that fast-paced world.

"I could have gone to Vegas after the crackdown here," he says, "but I wanted no part of it. I'm happy here on the island." He operates the Hilltop Restaurant on the Boulevard. "After the island shut down (by Atty. Gen. Will Wilson), lots of our people moved to Vegas.

"I tell you all they had to is that they were from Galveston and worked for Sam and Rose. They were hired. Automatic, No questions." Sam Maceo, who married a Hollywood starlet named Edna Sedgwick, died of cancer in 1951 in Johns Hopkins in Baltimore at the age of 57. He left his widow, a daughter and twin boys. His widow married Henry G.

Plitt, a partner in the ABC Theater Corp. on the West Coast. The daughter, Sedgie, today 32, is married and reportedly lives in Chicago. The twins, Jay-R and Eddie, now 34, reportedly are with the theater chain. Sam Maceo's philanthropies are still remembered on file island.

He quietly paid for college educations for a number of island boys. He gave sums of money to Msgr. Dan O'Connell, pastor of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral, and to otter denominations. He was a familiar figure on the front pew of St.

Mary's with his wife-and ch'ldren. Rose Maceo, who died at 66 in his home in Galveston in 1954, his widow. Francis Maceo, and 8 son. Rosario Jr. The widow today fives in a townhouse in southwest Houston; the son reportedly is with a food catering chain.

The Maceo empire, which included real estate interests, oil and gas holdings and the night club and gambling, began crumbling after the 1957 Will Wilson crackdown. Rose and Sam were both dead then. Dutch Voigt was up in his years; he's 85 today and still on the island. Today a bank occupies the site where the Turf Grill and the Studio Lounge once stood in downtown Galveston. The taproom bar, the booths from.the grill, and a dice table layout from the upstairs Western Room were recovered from a warehouse several years ago by Ronnie Maceo, who now operates the Turf Grill on 20th and Postoffice.

Ronnie is a son of Rosario Samuel (Slick) Maceo, whose father Frank was a first cousin of Sam and Rose Maceo. Sons were named for uncles and brothers and grandfathers, explains Sam T. (Little Sam) Maceo, the double first cousin of Sam and Rose. The old dice table layout is now hung on a wall of Ronnie Maceo's Turf Grill, and the bar and booths once in the original Turf are in his place now. And on a wall of the new Tuff Grill are blown-up, yellowed with age, pictures of the Maceos and their friends and partners, taken perhaps back in the late '30s.

Slick Maceo, Ronnie's father; A. J. (Yak) Adams, a gray fedora pulled bw over his eyes; Dutch Voigt in steel- framed glasses, professional looking; and Lorenzo Grillette, darkly handsome, in white suit, black shirt, white tie, right' out of a George Raft movie. And there's Vic A. (Gigolo) Maceo, the roulette dealer at the Hollywood Dinner Club and later the Balinese Room.

He was a son of Frank Maceo, who was a brother of Sato and Rose. Gigolo Maceo did well for himself. He invested wisely in real estate after the nightclub and gambling era ended. Therein is a piece of the Maceo history on the island. Periphery characters, including a number of Maceos and relatives, still abound on the island.

In a sense, the island still retains its freebooting style and character of the old days. A number of night clubs continue' to ignore the 2 a.m. legal curfew. They stay, open until four or five in the Lifestyles simply don't change overnight. Yon want action? You can find it with a few discreet questions.

The hookers are scattered. It will never. again be like when Postoffice was the tenderloin or when Mary Russell and Jesse Elliott were the queen madams. Diamond Athanasiou who runs the Dragon Club, near the boulevard, says: "I get tired of hearing what it was like in the good ole bad days. we all know it'll never be like that again." On West Market, in Vic's Loan Shop, Vic "Jew Vic" Reiswerg, argues with a black over the price of a goatskin drum.

Reiswerg, now in his late sixties, is known to bigtime gamblers across the nation. They flew in from Philly, Detroit, Miami and Chicago to play him a little known game, coon-can, which is a variation of but requires considerably more intellect. Jew Vic for years was known as the best and may very well still be. "They used to ship 'em in and we'd ship 'em out," he says, "But I'm too old for all that now." Reiswerg came to Galveston from Indianapolis 50 years ago and stayed. His coon-can disciples are scattered across the nation.

One, Rudy Cervera, a bartender who now lives in Houston, once said: "Sure I play coon-can. It cost me $3000 to learn the game from Jew Vic." An elderly gentleman named Jack Weiss, a retired isle merchant, was visiting Vic Reiswerg the other day. He started talking about the good old bad days on the island. "You know somethin'? I lost a lot of money at the. tables to Sam and Rose.

But I enjoyed every minute of it." I I 8 I X- vl Space Shuttle Completes Final Captive Test Flight EDWARDS. AFB, Calif. (UPI) The space shuttle Enterprise, bolted to the top of a Boeing 747 and carrying two astronauts, completed its final captive test flight Tuesday with only minor hitches, paving the way for its first free flight next month. On Aug. 12, the En- is scheduled to be blasted loose from the mother ship and glide to a landing, prefacing further tests that will eventually lead to the space shuttle's journey into space.

Astronauts Gordon Fullerton, the pilot, and Fred Haise, copilot, put the space Enterprise through its paces during the GOminute flight, simulating a separation dive and for the first time, lowerimg the shuttle's landing gear. "We had a good flight today," former astronaut Donald "Deke" Slayton, in charge of the tests, told a news conference following the flight. "I really felt like I was getting at home in the orbiter," Fullerton said. Win at Bridge NORTH V83 4K108 27 WEST VAQJ 82 4963 EAST VK 10642 4752 SOUTH (D) 4K108 V975 4AQJ4 North-South vulnerable West North East South 1N.T. Pass 3N.T.

Pass Pass Pass Opening lead 74 By OiwtM it James Jtcoby What do you lead from the West hand against South's three-notrump contract? If you know what East holds you can lead the queen of hearts, continue with the ace and jack and collect six quick tricks. If you haven't had that look at the East hand you are likely to open a spade. If you make the normal lead of the three spot your partner will either play the queen (an advanced play) or the ace followed by the queen (a normal play). In the first case declarer will rattle off 11 tricks; in the second case, he will make 12. Either way you will be most unhappy about the whole thing.

If you are playing that you lead second best (not fourth best) from a long suit not headed by one of the four top honors you will open the seven. Your partner will win with the ace, note the fall of the eight from declarer, study the hand a while, see that you have undoubtedly led the top of nothing or second best of nothing, shift to the four of hearts and wind up with the same six defensive tricks a heart lead from your hand would have produced. A Mississippi reader wants to know if we could list the play of all 13 tricks in each hand in our column. We wish we could but space limitations make it impossible to do so. We also find that most readers enjoy working the play oul.

(Do you have a question for the experts? Writs "Ask the Jacobys" care of this newspaper. The Jacobys will answer individual questions if stamped, self-addressed envelopes are enclosed. The most interesting questions will be used in this column and will receive copies of JACOBY MODERN.) "We're ready to get on with more serious business," said Haise. A couple of minor problems developed during the flight, but Slayton said they were not serious enough to postpone the scheduled free flight in August when the Enterprise will be blasted loose from the 747 and make a powerless landing. The problems were a faulty power supply sensor, which forced a shutdown of the auxiliary power unjts, and the appearance of steam around the orbiter.

Slayton said the hitches, which did not affect the' success of the captive flight, would have forced a free flight to be aborted. "We thought' we were ready to free fly," Slayton said. "But we had an auxiliary power problem, so if we ready to free fly we would have had to come back and land again." "We had what I call nuisance problems with the instrumentation," Haise said. "It's a very complex machine. But we were happy to see we only had routine instrumentation problems." The shuttle, which is designed lo be reused for up to 100 orbital round-trips, is scheduled to make its first earth orbit in March, 1979.

with the aid of two solid rocket boosters. Wednesday Morning, July 27,1977 Gardening Guides Green Beans, Fall Garden Favorite When Grown Right Here In Texas By GEORGE MEADOR County Agent By far one of the most popular, productive and tasty vegetables that can be grown in fall gardens in Texas are green beans. Everyone knows-how good fresh green beans from the spring garden taste, but their flavor doesn't compare with a plateful from a fall garden. With proper variety selection, fertilizer, watering disease and insect control and perhaps most important proper planting' time, fall grown beans will be more tasty, more tender', and without doubt, more productive. Many different types and varieties of garden beans can be grown in Texas gardens such as limas and pintos, but by far the most popular are snap beans.

Both bush and pole snap beans are grown in Texas although the bush types are by far the most common because of their early maturity and the fact they require less garden space. Bush beans are best for fall gardens because they will make a larger crop before the first killing freeze. It is important that green beans for fall he planted so that they will mature a bountiful crop before the first killing frost. In the fall, most varieties of bush beans will be ready to harvest 60 to 70 days from planting. Another advantage of bush beans over pole beans is that bush beans do not require some type of support on which to grow.

Pole beans do require a few more days mature but if given the opportunity they continue to bear over a longer period of time than do bush beans. For this reason pole beans make a better spring garden crop than a fall crop. In the spring, pole beans usually require 65 lo 70 days from seed to harvest but in the fall they often take as much as 10 days to two weeks longer. Garden soils for best production of beans should be moderately fertile. The home gardener is encouraged to avoid excess amounts of nitrogen which will result in a large amount of foliage growth but few beans.

They may also delay maturity which is a real problem when a fall frost is just around the corner. When planting beans be sure lo obtain varieties which are recommended for Galveslon Counly. Some of the beller varieties for fall gardens include Contender, Topcrop, Ten- dercrop and Greencrop. If you have your hearl set on pole beans try Kenlucky Wonder, Dade or Blue Lake. Bush beans should be planted in rows 30 to 36 inches apart The seed should be planted aboul two inches apart in Ihe row and one inch deep in a well prepared seed bed.

Pole beans should be planled in rows 36 to 60 inches apart. Pole beans are often planted in hills but many gardeners prefer to seed them in rows leaving a little more space between the seed. As previously mentioned, pole beans will require some type of supporl for growth. Bean roots grow close to the surface of the soil so any cultivalion should be limiled to the top one inch of the soil to prevent damage lo Iheir' tender roots. Since planling may occur during hot periods, be sure to maintain sufficient moisture to assure good germination and early plant growth.

Avoid lelling the soil dry oul during the early slages of seedling growlh. Maintain a uniform supply of soil moislure Ihroughoul the growlh of the beans. This is extremely important during bloom and fruit set as a dry INSURANCE PROBLEMS DUt TO CANCELLATION? We ore the Speciolists Answers and lower Rotes TfBMS AVAILABLE SARACCO INSURANCE J70? BROADWAY 765 7797 conditions will cause blossom drop and greatly reduced yields. Harvest the beans when the pods are tender and the seeds are about full size. Last week we visited with Cecil Burns of La Marque.

Burns enjoys growing pecans and has one of the best producing native trees in Galveston County. But this isn't what we want to tell you about. His "new," homemade sprayer is what we'd like to talk about today. Actually, you would have to see it to appreciate it. Burns has developed a sprayer which he uses for controlling insects and diseases on all his pecan trees.

The equipment operates on a compressed air system. Up to 150 Ibs. per square inch of compressed air can be run through the system- enough to break up spray particles and keep the spray material agitated. The sprayer nozzle is attached to a hose which is attached to a boom approximately 35-40 feet in long to reach high in the tops of large pecan trees. The tank holds about 15 gallons of waler.

This is one of the most fantastic pieces of equipment I've seen. And it does a great job of getting up in Ihe tree for effective control of- insecls and diseases. If you have a chance, why not call Burns and get more detailed information with regard to his sprayer. He will be glad to share information about his equipmenl with you. Speaking of insecticides and insecl control, don't forget to check your lawn for white grubs during July.

We get rid of fleas and fast! Just give us a call and we'll be out to take care 'of these pests positively! Don't be bugged by insects or rodents, rely on Big State Pest Control for immediate service. Big Slate FtestContrd Call 740-0281 Orange SAVE UP TO 50 AND MORE STOREWIDE SUMMER CLEARANCE HURRY IN FOR BUYS OF A LIFETIME! EVERY SUMMER ITEM IN EVERY DEPARTMENT IS SALE PRICED! SENSATIONAL VALUES FOR WOMEN, MEN AND CHILDREN, PLUS MANY HOME NEEDS. PLENTY OF SUMMER LEFT TO ENJOY THESE FABULOUS BARGAINS. STOCK UP NOW AND SAVE. YOU'LL BE GLAD YOU DID.

SUMMER HOME NEEDS SALE IN PROGRESS. SAVE ON SHEETS, CASES, BLANKETS, TOWELS, PILLOWS, DRAPES AND OTHER HOME NEEDS. STUDENTS! Register free for two Back to Classes Wardrobes to be given away in each Fair Store You Can Register Dailyl.