[AGL] Kelso on Fletcher

[Michael Eisenstadt]

> Eddie Wilson, today the owner of Threadgill's restaurants in Austin, sold

the original Raw Deal to Boone and Smitham in the summer of 1977. "I sold it
to them for it seems like $750, and I let em pay it out $50 a week," he
recalled.


> Wilson says it was ironic that before he had sold the place to Boone, he

had thrown Boone out of the place "for overbearing loud intellectual
conversations with Jim Smitham."

That's not the story of the bar's origin that Fletcher told me poisonally.
According to Fletcher, the bar was available to be rented with all its
facilities for a modest price, something under $200 a month. This was the
bar on Sabine St. Fletcher originally wanted to set it up as a private club
with 10 members or so to pay the rent.  But he couldn't find 10 that wanted
to. Around this time, Eddy was fired from his position as manager of the
Armadillo World Headquarters and Fletcher gave the bar to Eddy to run. I
remember the Armadillo ad on the radio at that time with the throwaway line
'Yes Eddie there is life after the Armadillo.'

When Fletcher got fired from his job at the paint store (they closed the
fine arts department of the store), he and Smitham took over the bar.

Fletcher was NEVER boisterous so Eddie's story that he threw Fletcher out
seems farfetched. Fletcher had enormous gravitas and presence and I can't
conceive of Eddie running Fletcher off or even thinking to do so.