At Texas Inn, son will continue father's legacy

Once during the long and colorful history of the Texas Inn, a pickup truck lost its brakes on the steepest part of Fifth Street and barreled downhill, finally smashing through the front of the restaurant like a meat-seeking missile.

A reporter was delegated to call Texas Inn owner Wiley Eagle for a damage report, and the conversation went something like this:

Reporter: "Mr. Eagle, I understand you have a truck in your restaurant."

Long pause.

Eagle: "So?"

Wiley Eagle, who died earlier this month at the age of 73, was like that — short of conversation, sometimes short of temper, but with an admirable ability to adapt to changing circumstances. He adapted by staying exactly the same.

"We would talk from time to time about moving to a bigger place," said Eagle’s son Eddie, who now runs the venerable establishment at the corner of Main and Fifth, "make it better for our customers. In the end, Dad never wanted to leave where he was."

Eddie, a pleasant fellow who — like most second-generation business owners — was sucked into the "Tea Room" more or less against his will, is of a newer breed. To Wiley, making the customer comfortable was a foreign concept. The Texas Inn was all about making customers uncomfortable, and they loved it.

The place served, and still serves, "1,000 a day, 10 at a time." That’s the number of stools available, and at busy times, those left standing stare hungrily at you from the shadows as you polish off your cheesy Western or bowl of chili. Patrons who tarried too long after eating have sometimes been hauled off their perch bodily by the next wave.

The menu was always rather limited, involving some combination of meat, cheese, chili, fried egg and special relish, with pie for dessert. Veterans often washed it all down with a glass of buttermilk as an antidote.

Like the Dahlia, whose founder also died within the past few months, the Texas Inn was, more than anything, an exer-cise in democracy.

"When you get the urge," wrote a recent correspondent for a Lynchburg blog, "it all works, sitting there on a stool in a tiny restaurant, breathing second-hand smoke and passing pleasantries with a homeless drunk on one side of you and a bank president on the other."

Because it was, for years, one of the very few local joints open all night, the Texas Inn had its share of late-night rowdies (mostly inebriated college students). Nevertheless, Wiley Eagle and his staff ruled those 10 stools with an iron spatula.

Eddie, meanwhile, worked for a time with the Lynchburg Sheriff’s Department at the Regional Jail as well as the Texas Inn, probably seeing some of the same customers at both places.

"My Dad was well-respected around town," Eddie Eagle said. "He was really a hard worker — that place was his life. That’s one reason I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into this, because he was always gone."

The youngest of 11 children, Wiley Eagle came from Appomattox to Lynchburg, working for 15 years at the Lynchburg Foundry before buying into the Texas Inn. Despite what you might hear, he wasn’t the inventor of the famous "cheesy Western" (a cheeseburger with fried egg and relish that probably originated at the original Texas Tavern in Roanoke), but he kept the flame — and the grease — alive.

In his later years, Wiley became a regular visitor to the Tree of Life Church.

"He was already pretty sick by then," said Rev. Mike Dodson, "but he would make it to church if there was any way he could. Then, when he was in the hospital, I’d come to see him with my Bible and he’d break out in a big smile and ask me to pray with him."

That side of Wiley was quite different from Wiley Eagle the restaurant owner.

"Dad never got robbed in all those years, as far as I know," said Eddie Eagle, "probably because he used to take his pistol out when he walked from the restaurant to his car with the receipts."

Eddie Eagle was accosted in the parking lot a few years ago, however.

"Two guys," he said, "and I had left my gun inside. I managed to get away from them, and then I called my Dad. He said, ‘You didn’t give ‘em nothing, did you?’

"I told him, ‘No, and by the way, I’m OK.’ He said, ‘Oh, I know that, because you’re on the phone.’ That was Dad.’"