Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Adios Putos Google Blogspot
Google changed up their blog spot site to the point where this old fart can no longer figure out something as simple as BOLD, paragraph spacing or italitization, and spel chekk feeture is totalie fukked uup.
Here is the address for the new site
http://livingliferiverside.weebly.com/
To the seven of you who frequent this site, my apologies for the confusion.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
A History Lesson......Part III
The Riverside Hotel, Bar and Restaurant is a 13,000 square foot structure, constructed primarily of wood with a hand-laid stone and mortar foundation, situated on the eastern bank of the Colorado River, some 25 miles from its headwaters. One of my biggest attractions in buying the hotel and taking this blind leap from our comfort zone was the opportunity to be stewards and caretakers of not only this historic building, but most importantly of the innumerable yet unaccountable stories and memories ensconced within the walls of this old place; the one hundred and four previous Christmases celebrated, the births of how many Grand County babies, the weddings and wedding nights of hundreds of hopeful brides and grooms and the jubilant hoots and hollers of countless New Years Eve revelers and 4th of July celebrants. How many prayed, toasted and dined at Thanksgiving feasts, how many birthday cake candles were extinguished by the wind from how many beaming faces? How many all but tangible memories of how many lives and how many deaths in the course of the Riverside’s 104-year history lingered in the walls and the halls of this 16 room structure which we gave our all to purchase?
Very early in our ownership, this aspect of being a steward of memories as well as a caretaker of a historic structure became evident to us in a blissfully unexpected event which, to put it mildly, awed and humbled us with the responsibility that we had undertaken.
It was June 29th, 2008, and we had lived full-time at The Riverside for only three days. It was late in the afternoon, and the hotel was almost booked full. We were making last minute preparations for the evening dinner crowd, when I noticed two young men trying to get a very large, full-body wheelchair into our west hotel/restaurant entrance. As the hotel was built a few years before the ADA, it unfortunately wasn’t up to code regarding accessibility. I went to see what could be done about helping them get the wheelchair into the building; it was at this point that I took the time to notice the inhabitant of the chair.
He was an elderly gentleman, probably in his early 80’s, and he looked very much like my father looked shortly before my father died; pale, gaunt and sallow-eyed. He was unable to communicate verbally, barely nodding ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to queries from his grandsons, but he seemed fully cognizant of his surroundings and what his grandsons were saying. He also appeared to be paralyzed from the neck down – no sign of movement from his torso or limbs. I immediately gained respect for these young men, who upon first glance I’d judged as hoodlums from their tattoos, piercings and the goofy, oversized clown-like flat-billed baseball caps sitting irreverently askance upon their shaven skulls. Hoodlums? No, they were in fact the epitome of love, tenderness and human kindness in the way that they cared for their grandfather – and care it took, as getting the chair from one cranny in the old hotel through the next would have tried to patience of most. In followed the boy's grandmother, who told me that today was their wedding anniversary, and she and her husband had spent their wedding night 56 years ago to the day at The Riverside in 1952, and that her husband “didn’t have too much time left, and we wanted to see the place one more time.”
When I realized what was happening, jarring me from my immediate mental preoccupation with people checking in, the details of a big dollar restaurant night ahead and guests barking at the bar for high profit rum and cokes, it literally shook me when I took the time to grasp what was happening here; on the day of their 56th wedding anniversary, most probably the last that they would celebrate, this couple and their grandsons had driven to our out of the way town, from Denver some 90 miles to the southeast over Berthoud Pass, to visit our hotel….simply for the memory of it. I was immediately humbled to the point of embarrassment, now all but worshipful of these people and their quest.
The wife took me upstairs – the husband stayed downstairs as ascending the narrow stairways were impossible, even with the help of the resolute grandsons – and showed me the room, ‘Elizabeth’, where they spent their first night as newlyweds. (The rooms were all given female names vs. numbers by Abner, lending to his lurid assertions that The Riverside operated as a brothel at some stage in it’s past; I believe this to be nothing more than a lurid assertion, knowing Abner as I did.)
The wife paused and bowed at the door for a minute, reverentially, and then slowly walked in the room and looked around. It was a very small room, the width of it barely able to contain the full-sized bed that resided within; one of Abner’s beds that we had yet to replace, comprised of an old thin mattress on exposed springs, very probably the bed upon which they spent their wedding night. She stood quietly for only a few minutes, and without speaking a word, she left the room, passing slowly by me without acknowledging me and went back down the stairs to be with her husband. She gently took his hand and told him that she'd found the room, and it was much as she'd remembered; there was the faintest attempt at a smile from the old lion as he closed his eyes - he looked totally satisfied and complete.
I was dumbfounded, speechless, and choked up to the point of not being able to communicate with this family or any others in the lobby. Julie came to me and asked me what was wrong; I couldn’t form words, as my throat was constricted from the emotional scene that I had just witnessed. In fact, to this day I have a difficult time retelling this story to people without tears welling in my eyes and my throat constricting, as I have burned in my memory the eager face of the man who was trying to relive in that instant one of his life’s great memories.
I saw my father die, at peace, surrounded by his family in his bed at home. At the end he had a look of contentment with what he had done, and resignation with the next, final step in his life journey. This man, this 1952 visitor to our hotel who chose The Riverside to begin his post WWII journey into manhood and fatherhood, after hearing his wife of 56 years whisper into his ear, smiled and looked content, much like my father looked before his passing. I never new for certain, but I would bet that sweet closure wasn’t far behind his last visit to The Riverside.
I knew that we bought a hotel and restaurant, but it was at this point that I finally realized that we bought much more than just a business; we were the stewards of this magnificent building and the memories of thousands of unknown people and their stories. What an awesome responsibility it was to be caretaker to such a magnificent old girl as The Riverside. My thanks to this beautiful couple, whose names I didn’t even have the where-with-all to learn, for awakening me to my task, my newfound raison d’être. Thanks also to the grandsons, whose exemplary effort in locomoting their grandfather and granting him what was most likely a final wish; and for again reminding me that rarely should books be judged by their covers.
Very early in our ownership, this aspect of being a steward of memories as well as a caretaker of a historic structure became evident to us in a blissfully unexpected event which, to put it mildly, awed and humbled us with the responsibility that we had undertaken.
It was June 29th, 2008, and we had lived full-time at The Riverside for only three days. It was late in the afternoon, and the hotel was almost booked full. We were making last minute preparations for the evening dinner crowd, when I noticed two young men trying to get a very large, full-body wheelchair into our west hotel/restaurant entrance. As the hotel was built a few years before the ADA, it unfortunately wasn’t up to code regarding accessibility. I went to see what could be done about helping them get the wheelchair into the building; it was at this point that I took the time to notice the inhabitant of the chair.
He was an elderly gentleman, probably in his early 80’s, and he looked very much like my father looked shortly before my father died; pale, gaunt and sallow-eyed. He was unable to communicate verbally, barely nodding ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to queries from his grandsons, but he seemed fully cognizant of his surroundings and what his grandsons were saying. He also appeared to be paralyzed from the neck down – no sign of movement from his torso or limbs. I immediately gained respect for these young men, who upon first glance I’d judged as hoodlums from their tattoos, piercings and the goofy, oversized clown-like flat-billed baseball caps sitting irreverently askance upon their shaven skulls. Hoodlums? No, they were in fact the epitome of love, tenderness and human kindness in the way that they cared for their grandfather – and care it took, as getting the chair from one cranny in the old hotel through the next would have tried to patience of most. In followed the boy's grandmother, who told me that today was their wedding anniversary, and she and her husband had spent their wedding night 56 years ago to the day at The Riverside in 1952, and that her husband “didn’t have too much time left, and we wanted to see the place one more time.”
When I realized what was happening, jarring me from my immediate mental preoccupation with people checking in, the details of a big dollar restaurant night ahead and guests barking at the bar for high profit rum and cokes, it literally shook me when I took the time to grasp what was happening here; on the day of their 56th wedding anniversary, most probably the last that they would celebrate, this couple and their grandsons had driven to our out of the way town, from Denver some 90 miles to the southeast over Berthoud Pass, to visit our hotel….simply for the memory of it. I was immediately humbled to the point of embarrassment, now all but worshipful of these people and their quest.
The wife took me upstairs – the husband stayed downstairs as ascending the narrow stairways were impossible, even with the help of the resolute grandsons – and showed me the room, ‘Elizabeth’, where they spent their first night as newlyweds. (The rooms were all given female names vs. numbers by Abner, lending to his lurid assertions that The Riverside operated as a brothel at some stage in it’s past; I believe this to be nothing more than a lurid assertion, knowing Abner as I did.)
The wife paused and bowed at the door for a minute, reverentially, and then slowly walked in the room and looked around. It was a very small room, the width of it barely able to contain the full-sized bed that resided within; one of Abner’s beds that we had yet to replace, comprised of an old thin mattress on exposed springs, very probably the bed upon which they spent their wedding night. She stood quietly for only a few minutes, and without speaking a word, she left the room, passing slowly by me without acknowledging me and went back down the stairs to be with her husband. She gently took his hand and told him that she'd found the room, and it was much as she'd remembered; there was the faintest attempt at a smile from the old lion as he closed his eyes - he looked totally satisfied and complete.
I was dumbfounded, speechless, and choked up to the point of not being able to communicate with this family or any others in the lobby. Julie came to me and asked me what was wrong; I couldn’t form words, as my throat was constricted from the emotional scene that I had just witnessed. In fact, to this day I have a difficult time retelling this story to people without tears welling in my eyes and my throat constricting, as I have burned in my memory the eager face of the man who was trying to relive in that instant one of his life’s great memories.
I saw my father die, at peace, surrounded by his family in his bed at home. At the end he had a look of contentment with what he had done, and resignation with the next, final step in his life journey. This man, this 1952 visitor to our hotel who chose The Riverside to begin his post WWII journey into manhood and fatherhood, after hearing his wife of 56 years whisper into his ear, smiled and looked content, much like my father looked before his passing. I never new for certain, but I would bet that sweet closure wasn’t far behind his last visit to The Riverside.
I knew that we bought a hotel and restaurant, but it was at this point that I finally realized that we bought much more than just a business; we were the stewards of this magnificent building and the memories of thousands of unknown people and their stories. What an awesome responsibility it was to be caretaker to such a magnificent old girl as The Riverside. My thanks to this beautiful couple, whose names I didn’t even have the where-with-all to learn, for awakening me to my task, my newfound raison d’être. Thanks also to the grandsons, whose exemplary effort in locomoting their grandfather and granting him what was most likely a final wish; and for again reminding me that rarely should books be judged by their covers.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
A History Lesson......Part II
The new two-story structure that Charlie Free built in 1903 was roughly 25’wide and 75’ in length, and contained a narrow dining room with a kitchen in the back, paralleled by a narrow lobby, or gathering room, separated by a staircase that led upstairs to the owners living area which contained a bedroom adjoining a small sitting room and five small guestrooms. There were no bathrooms at the time of construction due to the fact that there was no running water or indoor plumbing; as was common of the times, there were chamber pots in the bedrooms and a privy out back, certainly unheated – doubtful that Byers’ Rocky Mountain News was read during the course of one doing one’s business. As the hotel was located near The Grand River, as the river was known in 1903, the name being changed to The Colorado River in 1923, an abundance of clean fresh water for cooking, washing and drinking was no more than short walk away. Maps indicate that the rivers’ course has changed since the construction of the building, as today the western edge of the building is but 10 short yards from the riverbank; back in 1903 the distance was more like the length of a football field.
The new two-story structure shared a common wall with the livery stable; however there was no interior congress between the buildings. As travel by horse and buggy was still the principle mode of transportation, the need for a livery stable was still germane, yet, one of the earliest known pictures of the structure shows a pre-Model T jalopy of unknown make in front of the hotel, the hitching post still evident to which a horse and buggy is attached.
In 1913, Charlie Free exited the hospitality business at the expense of a gentleman named Omar Qualls, who hailed from Hot Springs, Arkansas. Mr. Qualls wife was, as they said in those days, ‘in a sickly way’, requiring continual access to healing waters, waters that were native to her Hot Springs, AR, and as luck would have it, also native to their new-found summer get-away in Hot Sulphur Springs, CO. (There is but a little irony here, as I felt that I might possibly die, or at best become deathly ill, if I soaked in the sulphurous brew of those fetid waters.)
Mr. Qualls and family would venture some 1000 miles in the spring of the year, traveling from one hot spring in Arkansas to another in Colorado. They would open and then operate a 5-room hotel and a small café from May through September, then close the place up for the winter and head back to the warmer climes of Arkansas’s Blue Ridge Mountains. That business model worked well for Mr. Qualls for the next 20 years; a business model which I possibly should have adopted, as the down season was critical to our ultimate downfall.
Sometime in the 1920’s, the original structure of the livery stable was transformed into additional housing for both hotel guests and staff, and running water and indoor bathroom facilities were added. The remodeled upstairs consisted of seven guest rooms and one bathroom – a toilet with a tub; the guest rooms were also equipped with sinks with running water – these impossible to buy parts-for accoutrements are still in existence in the current structure. The downstairs consisted of eight rooms, two used for storage, two for staff, two overflow guest rooms, and two ‘utility’ rooms, used during the next few years as a barber shop and next a doctors office from 1935 - 1945. These rooms would ultimately serve as Abner’s office and living quarters, and finally, after being gutted to the dirt and rebuilt, our living quarters. Also, as the two structures were adjoined, so were the dissimilar roof lines - the livery stable had a turreted façade that denoted it as a stable as steeple denotes a church or a dome a Capitol – and replaced with a straight common ridge across the front of the structure.
Sometime in the 1930’s, an additional shotgun arm running the north/south length of the hotel was constructed, in parallel consort with the 1903 two-story structure. The purpose for this addition was to not only add four additional upstairs guest rooms, but to also double the width of the restaurant on the first floor.
The fourth and final addition, the single story River Room restaurant, was built onto the western side, or river side, of the hotel in 1970. It is the only part of the building that has foundation and structural problems. The slope of the room towards the river from a rapidly sinking foundation was so bad that a marble placed on most of the tables in the restaurant would have begun running westward and down once freed from the fingers. None of the windows in the room, and the walls were all but windows so that dining patrons might enjoy the view, could have closed flush on a bet, the building was now so out of square. Apparently they just don’t build things like they used to.
In 1968 construction began on the Eisenhower tunnel, located approximately 50 miles south of Hot Sulphur Springs on I-70, just up the mountain from Dillon, CO to the west and Georgetown, CO to the east. The tunnel construction was expected to bring an influx of workers into the area and they would need places to eat and sleep, and of utmost importance, places to drink, party and spend away their hard earned cash on the weekends. The Perry Family, owners of the Riverside at that time, like many other purveyors of food, booze and rest in Grand County, were quick to cash in on the tunnel labor, thus the final addition to the building in 1970. The tunnel construction, expected to last but three years, ran into numerous delays, including the discovery of a fault line (which apparently had a tendency to skew the efforts of the workers boring through the side of the mountain) and the deaths of six of the workers, wasn’t fully completed until 11 years later in 1979. Shortly after the tunnel was completed, and the workers depleted, The Riverside shut its doors until its 1986 resurrection at the hands of Mr. Abner Renta.
The records on all of this constructing, plumbing and general building cobbling no longer exist, if in fact building permits or any sort of official documentation detailing construction was required; all of this building possibly occurred before it dawned on the public trust that it had the legal wherewithal to filch it’s patronage for any act or attempt at commerce from which they might profit.
The dates of additions and changes to the structure are but educated guesses based upon pictures that hung in our lobby that showed the progression of the buildings architecture, starting with what we believed to be the first 1903 picture, which shows the six window, two-story clapboard structure with a large “HOTEL” and “CAFÉ” painted on the front, adjoined with the turreted building which housed the livery stable. Picture #2 was from approximately 1910 with the livery façade still evident, but the two buildings made to look as one with the use of a faux brick, tar-paper façade. The next picture was taken in the 1920’s, and the turreted roof lines of the livery stable now absent, making it look for the first time in its 20 year existence as one building. Finally, the fourth picture, taken in the 1930’s, shows the hotel with the edition of the West wing, the 15’ widening that ran the length of the hotel, adding four rooms upstairs, and doubling the downstairs dining room and kitchen.
One of the things I loved about these pictures was the fun in dating them by the type of transportation that was parked in front of the hotel. In the 1903 picture there were horses and a hitching post; in 1910, horse-drawn carriages along with a few 1910 Model T Fords. The 1920s-era picture showed no signs of hitching posts, with equine power being replaced by a fancy sedan of unknown make and model. Finally, the 1930’s brought us a regal awning spanning the front of the hotel, offering afternoon shade to a sporty, 1932 Ford Coupe. These pictures were all taken in the summer, as traversing Berthoud Pass in a 1932 Ford Coupe during the winter would have been impossible; much as it can be today, even in a 2003 4WD Chevy Suburban.
It was often while viewing these pictures that our guests would have their feeling of awakening to the history that engulfed them as the stood in the lobby of The Riverside – you could figuratively see the light go on in their head, as their eyes would widen and a smile would break the plane of their face, as many would finally get it with an “Oh wow! I’m standing here, right now, in this place that looked like that 100 years ago.” To many it served as a pleasant little lagniappe in addition to the food and room for which they were about to pay. It is a feeling you don’t often get elsewhere as we live our daily lives in the cities and suburbs of America, and it was certainly one of the feelings that brought us and our dreams to live in Grand County, in that magnificent building.
To Be Continued......
The new two-story structure shared a common wall with the livery stable; however there was no interior congress between the buildings. As travel by horse and buggy was still the principle mode of transportation, the need for a livery stable was still germane, yet, one of the earliest known pictures of the structure shows a pre-Model T jalopy of unknown make in front of the hotel, the hitching post still evident to which a horse and buggy is attached.
In 1913, Charlie Free exited the hospitality business at the expense of a gentleman named Omar Qualls, who hailed from Hot Springs, Arkansas. Mr. Qualls wife was, as they said in those days, ‘in a sickly way’, requiring continual access to healing waters, waters that were native to her Hot Springs, AR, and as luck would have it, also native to their new-found summer get-away in Hot Sulphur Springs, CO. (There is but a little irony here, as I felt that I might possibly die, or at best become deathly ill, if I soaked in the sulphurous brew of those fetid waters.)
Mr. Qualls and family would venture some 1000 miles in the spring of the year, traveling from one hot spring in Arkansas to another in Colorado. They would open and then operate a 5-room hotel and a small café from May through September, then close the place up for the winter and head back to the warmer climes of Arkansas’s Blue Ridge Mountains. That business model worked well for Mr. Qualls for the next 20 years; a business model which I possibly should have adopted, as the down season was critical to our ultimate downfall.
Sometime in the 1920’s, the original structure of the livery stable was transformed into additional housing for both hotel guests and staff, and running water and indoor bathroom facilities were added. The remodeled upstairs consisted of seven guest rooms and one bathroom – a toilet with a tub; the guest rooms were also equipped with sinks with running water – these impossible to buy parts-for accoutrements are still in existence in the current structure. The downstairs consisted of eight rooms, two used for storage, two for staff, two overflow guest rooms, and two ‘utility’ rooms, used during the next few years as a barber shop and next a doctors office from 1935 - 1945. These rooms would ultimately serve as Abner’s office and living quarters, and finally, after being gutted to the dirt and rebuilt, our living quarters. Also, as the two structures were adjoined, so were the dissimilar roof lines - the livery stable had a turreted façade that denoted it as a stable as steeple denotes a church or a dome a Capitol – and replaced with a straight common ridge across the front of the structure.
Sometime in the 1930’s, an additional shotgun arm running the north/south length of the hotel was constructed, in parallel consort with the 1903 two-story structure. The purpose for this addition was to not only add four additional upstairs guest rooms, but to also double the width of the restaurant on the first floor.
The fourth and final addition, the single story River Room restaurant, was built onto the western side, or river side, of the hotel in 1970. It is the only part of the building that has foundation and structural problems. The slope of the room towards the river from a rapidly sinking foundation was so bad that a marble placed on most of the tables in the restaurant would have begun running westward and down once freed from the fingers. None of the windows in the room, and the walls were all but windows so that dining patrons might enjoy the view, could have closed flush on a bet, the building was now so out of square. Apparently they just don’t build things like they used to.
In 1968 construction began on the Eisenhower tunnel, located approximately 50 miles south of Hot Sulphur Springs on I-70, just up the mountain from Dillon, CO to the west and Georgetown, CO to the east. The tunnel construction was expected to bring an influx of workers into the area and they would need places to eat and sleep, and of utmost importance, places to drink, party and spend away their hard earned cash on the weekends. The Perry Family, owners of the Riverside at that time, like many other purveyors of food, booze and rest in Grand County, were quick to cash in on the tunnel labor, thus the final addition to the building in 1970. The tunnel construction, expected to last but three years, ran into numerous delays, including the discovery of a fault line (which apparently had a tendency to skew the efforts of the workers boring through the side of the mountain) and the deaths of six of the workers, wasn’t fully completed until 11 years later in 1979. Shortly after the tunnel was completed, and the workers depleted, The Riverside shut its doors until its 1986 resurrection at the hands of Mr. Abner Renta.
The records on all of this constructing, plumbing and general building cobbling no longer exist, if in fact building permits or any sort of official documentation detailing construction was required; all of this building possibly occurred before it dawned on the public trust that it had the legal wherewithal to filch it’s patronage for any act or attempt at commerce from which they might profit.
The dates of additions and changes to the structure are but educated guesses based upon pictures that hung in our lobby that showed the progression of the buildings architecture, starting with what we believed to be the first 1903 picture, which shows the six window, two-story clapboard structure with a large “HOTEL” and “CAFÉ” painted on the front, adjoined with the turreted building which housed the livery stable. Picture #2 was from approximately 1910 with the livery façade still evident, but the two buildings made to look as one with the use of a faux brick, tar-paper façade. The next picture was taken in the 1920’s, and the turreted roof lines of the livery stable now absent, making it look for the first time in its 20 year existence as one building. Finally, the fourth picture, taken in the 1930’s, shows the hotel with the edition of the West wing, the 15’ widening that ran the length of the hotel, adding four rooms upstairs, and doubling the downstairs dining room and kitchen.
One of the things I loved about these pictures was the fun in dating them by the type of transportation that was parked in front of the hotel. In the 1903 picture there were horses and a hitching post; in 1910, horse-drawn carriages along with a few 1910 Model T Fords. The 1920s-era picture showed no signs of hitching posts, with equine power being replaced by a fancy sedan of unknown make and model. Finally, the 1930’s brought us a regal awning spanning the front of the hotel, offering afternoon shade to a sporty, 1932 Ford Coupe. These pictures were all taken in the summer, as traversing Berthoud Pass in a 1932 Ford Coupe during the winter would have been impossible; much as it can be today, even in a 2003 4WD Chevy Suburban.
It was often while viewing these pictures that our guests would have their feeling of awakening to the history that engulfed them as the stood in the lobby of The Riverside – you could figuratively see the light go on in their head, as their eyes would widen and a smile would break the plane of their face, as many would finally get it with an “Oh wow! I’m standing here, right now, in this place that looked like that 100 years ago.” To many it served as a pleasant little lagniappe in addition to the food and room for which they were about to pay. It is a feeling you don’t often get elsewhere as we live our daily lives in the cities and suburbs of America, and it was certainly one of the feelings that brought us and our dreams to live in Grand County, in that magnificent building.
To Be Continued......
Saturday, April 7, 2012
A History Lesson
Note: The next few postings will be excerpts from what will be an attempt at corralling many of the blog stories, and a few major stories written but not included in the blog, into a book. Your opinions and suggestions are welcome.
............................................................................
The building that now stands at 509 Grand Avenue, Hot Sulphur Springs, CO, whose construction date is officially noted as 1903, is comprised of four sections; two original structures and two later additions, which have been morphed into the seamless white façade of its current iteration. The original section of the building was a livery stable, constructed sometime in the1860’s, after the official founding of the town of Hot Sulphur Springs, which for the record occurred in 1860. William Byers, who was the founder, publisher and editor of the Rocky Mountain News, a Denver-based newspaper that ceased publication in 2008, the year we moved to Colorado, journeyed to Hot Sulphur and was enamored by the idea of turning the town and the healing waters of the natural sulphurous hot spring pool into a tourist Mecca, much on the order of New York’s Saratoga Springs, which Byers had visited some years earlier. Byers bought the springs from the Ute Indians, whose people had been frequenting the area for the previous thousand years, as they considered the springs to be sacred grounds, for a reported sum of $100.
While Byers vision never fully bore fruit on the level of Saratoga Springs, or other Colorado natural hot springs such as Glenwood Springs or Pagosa Springs, the little town of Hot Sulphur continued to grow, mostly due to it being the governmental seat for the county of Grand; and this in and of itself is a pretty good story.
Grand Lake, CO, some 25 miles NE of Hot Sulphur Springs as the crow flies, was founded in 1881 to support the influx of miners who descended on the area with the 1875 discovery of gold, lead, silver and copper in the surrounding mountains of the Never Summer and Indian Peak ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Those majestic peaks that now draw sightseers from all over the world were initially magnets for prospectors and independent men of commerce, the draw of the ore strong enough to pull the hardiest of men into this mostly inhabitable and most certainly inhospitable stretch of real estate. It would follow that anyone who would give up the comforts of late 19th Century city life for the brutal conditions inherent in this 9000’ elevated, isolated ice box would be greedy to a fault and tough beyond reason. This lethal combination of character traits, these traits inherent in all who would be the fashioners of our Western frontier, would make for a violent, bloody start to the birth of Grand County.
Colorado was admitted to the Union as a state in 1876; shortly thereafter, counties were drawn and county seats were established, the County of Grand and the County Seat of Grand Lake, that growing, bustling mining town in the extreme northeast corner of the county, being established in 1881. This didn’t sit well with many of the residents of Hot Sulphur Springs, a town twenty years senior to Grand Lake, situated in the middle of the county, not in the upper northeastern reaches as was Grand Lake. It’s certain that many contentious exchanges, unrecorded in the history books, went back and forth between the political powers of the two towns before the fateful day of July 4th, 1883, when the lone County Councilman from Hot Sulphur, (one of four Grand County Councilmen, the other three from Grand Lake) accompanied by the Sheriff and deputy of Grand County and three other masked residents of Hot Sulphur rode to Grand Lake with serious mischief on their minds, loaded guns on their hips.
As the July 4th County Council meeting adjourned, with the Hot Sulphur Councilman noticeably absent, the three Grand Lake Council members strode out onto the warm Main Street, and were summarily gunned down in the broad daylight as they exited the County Courthouse. One was able to fire back at the masked assailants, but at the end of the day, all three Grand Lake Council members were dead, along with the County Clerk. The Hot Sulphur Councilman was the unfortunate member of the marauding party who took the bullet from the Grand Lake bunch, dying several days later from an infection. The Sheriff from Hot Sulphur, called to investigate the killing in which he had participated, masked, committed suicide two weeks after the shooting. His deputy, also one of the masked murderers from Hot Sulphur, fled the county after the shootings and was later found dead on the Colorado/Utah border, identified only by the size of his feet, said to be unusually and notably large.
Shortly after this murderous brouhaha, the County Seat was moved to Hot Sulphur, where it has resided, unchallenged, since that violent Fourth of July in 1883.
……------……
Now firmly ensconced as the County Seat of Grand, Hot Sulphur Springs was also roughly the half way point between Chicago, IL and San Francisco for the Union Pacific railroad, and in early 1900 the railroad made the town its major mid-way stopping point for resting the crew and refueling the trains with coal and water; Hot Sulphur was simply referred to as ‘Coal Town’ by the railroad workers and most others who knew of its existence.
The influx of railroad workers and hot springs visitors spurred about the need for food and lodging, and in 1903, The Riverside Hotel & Café was officially opened for business by Mr. Charlie Free. Charles F. Free was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1873, and shortly after birth he immigrated to Canada with his parents. In 1890, at the tender age of 17 years, he left the family in Canada and headed south, finding his way to Denver and then the mountains beyond, working primarily as a cowhand on one of the many ranches that inhabited the lush summer grazing valleys of Middle Park. He then found work for a short while at the grocery store in Hot Sulphur Springs before signing on as a teamster, freighting goods, supplies and the occasional passenger down the Blue River Valley, thru Georgetown, on to Denver and back. That simply had to be grueling work, as driving that route back and forth today in good weather on paved roads in fancy cars can wear one to a nub.
In 1900, Charlie Free gave up the teamstering business, found a bride in Hot Sulphur and settled down for a few years, working on a ranch outside of town. One assumes he worked hard and made little, wondering how he had the wherewithal to buy the old livery stable and build the aforementioned attachment that became The Riverside in 1903 – possibly more to this story, but only one’s speculation will provide the supposed details. Charlie owned the hotel for 10 years before selling it and striking out again as a rancher, which he did until he finally hung up his spurs in 1943, at the age of 53. Apparently Charlie found the frigid outdoors, the stubborn livestock and the aroma of hay and horse manure easier to deal with than cranky hotel guests, picky diners and drunken bar customers; there were many times during my tenure as owner and proprietor of The Riverside when I could understand Charlie’s desire to be on the back of a horse instead of straddling a dishwasher or corralling a bloated, clogged toilet bowl.
In one of life’s continuing string of ‘fact is stranger than fiction’-isms, Charlie’s last known employment was that of a founder and the first president of the Middle Park Bank, located in Granby, CO, later to become Grand County Bank; Charlie Free, builder of the building we bought, founding the bank where we received our loan to buy his Riverside, ergo, Charlie founding the bank that foreclosed upon us and eventually took back his Riverside.
After living a long and successful life in Grand County, CO, Charles Free died in 1955, the year before my wife’s and my birth, and is buried next to his wife in the cemetery on the hill east of town, lying in eternal peaceful repose as he watches over the town of Hot Sulphur Springs, the magnificent Colorado River and his iconic Riverside Hotel.
To Be Continued......
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
The Riverside Dirty Ribeye
Without question, our signature dish at The River Room was our Dirty Ribeye, a 12-ounce cut of choice steak from the rib section of the cow, which we would purchase in 15 pound Cry-O-Vac hunks and hand cut. We’d buy these slabs of beef for about $125 each and sell the resultant 20 steaks for $500, served with a starch, a vegetable and a salad; with that sort of mark-up, you’d think that any idiot would be able to make a living in the restaurant business – obviously except for this idiot.
This manner of preparation, i.e. ‘dirty’, came from Dhoubi, our stoner chef from Kansas City, who got the recipe from our favorite restaurant in Kansas City, Il Trullo, which sadly is no longer in business. Il Trullo shut down shortly after we moved to the mountains, and I swear its demise was due in large part to the loss of our revenue, as I’d dropped bucket loads of money there both with business dinners and personal meals.
One advantage to the Dirty Ribeye was that we could make a steak taste exceptional without using a wood-fired grill – good for us, as the kitchen in The Riverside didn’t have a wood fired grill, only a flat top griddle upon which a steak could be cooked. Another nice feature of the recipe involved the ability to ‘dirty’ the steak - which gave the steak its superior flavor - early in the day and finish it quickly to order during the dinner rush, this becoming a necessity as our cooking staff dwindled to one during the last six months of our operation.
Also included is our recipe for a poor man’s Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale, officially known at The Riverside as Balsamico a Basso Costo delle Montagne, which we drizzled on the steak; it is essential to the dish.
Serves Four, providing you buy four steaks
- 1” Thick, nicely marbled Ribeye steaks – choice for certain, prime if you can find them
- About one dozen Hardwood chunks – mesquite, hickory, apple, cherry, pecan – roughly the size of a kid’s fist
- A cast iron skillet
In a charcol chimney, get the wood to blazing, then dump it in your grill. Let it simmer down for a minute or two, until the flames are mostly gone and you’re left with glowing, red-hot chunks of wood. Throw the meat directly on the glowing embers, no more than 90 seconds per side. That’s it! Take them off and set them aside. They’ll have some ash, some burn marks, maybe even a little grit on the exterior – no worries, as that also is digestable. Most importantly, what they’ll also have is a seared, smoky char infused into the buttery fat which is inherent in the cut. (You can do this step early in the day – cool them covered in the fridge.)
When you’re ready to eat, make sure your cast iron skillet is hot; not white hot like you were blackening redfish, but pretty damn hot. Finish the steaks in the skillet to your likeness, no more than two minutes per side, which shouldn’t result in a temperature any more than medium rare. If you like your steak cooked beyond medium rare, I would suggest you skip the first three steps of this recipe, as I see your journey to Belly Blissville involving a trip to a Golden Corral.
Slice the steaks on the bias into ½” thick strips, fan out on your plate and drizzle generously with the balsamic. We rested the steaks over a small mound of arugula; the smoky meat, the sweet tang of the balsamic and the peppery arugula resulting in an exceptional marriage of flavors, as if it were always meant to be.
Balsamico a Basso Costo delle Montagne
One 16-oz bottle of inexpensive balsamic vinegar
2 – teaspoons corn starch
2 – tablespoons corn syrup
Empty the balsamic into a sauce pan, wisk in the corn starch, and simmer until reduced by half. Stir in the corn syrup, let cool and pour into one of those plastic, pointy-tipped condiment dispensers that chefs use to make drizzles and spiky swizzles on plates. They sell them in the kitchen gadget section at the Walmart for a buck.
This stuff can also be used in salads, over fresh tomatoes when making Caprese, and anywhere else you use a good balsamic – possibly even over Little Debbie Bars or Cheez-Its with excellent results.
Better yet, if you can afford pricy, aged Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale, dispense with the aforementioned culinary skullduggery and enjoy the real thing, imagining while you enjoy this feast… that you are dining Riverside.
This manner of preparation, i.e. ‘dirty’, came from Dhoubi, our stoner chef from Kansas City, who got the recipe from our favorite restaurant in Kansas City, Il Trullo, which sadly is no longer in business. Il Trullo shut down shortly after we moved to the mountains, and I swear its demise was due in large part to the loss of our revenue, as I’d dropped bucket loads of money there both with business dinners and personal meals.
One advantage to the Dirty Ribeye was that we could make a steak taste exceptional without using a wood-fired grill – good for us, as the kitchen in The Riverside didn’t have a wood fired grill, only a flat top griddle upon which a steak could be cooked. Another nice feature of the recipe involved the ability to ‘dirty’ the steak - which gave the steak its superior flavor - early in the day and finish it quickly to order during the dinner rush, this becoming a necessity as our cooking staff dwindled to one during the last six months of our operation.
Also included is our recipe for a poor man’s Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale, officially known at The Riverside as Balsamico a Basso Costo delle Montagne, which we drizzled on the steak; it is essential to the dish.
Serves Four, providing you buy four steaks
- 1” Thick, nicely marbled Ribeye steaks – choice for certain, prime if you can find them
- About one dozen Hardwood chunks – mesquite, hickory, apple, cherry, pecan – roughly the size of a kid’s fist
- A cast iron skillet
In a charcol chimney, get the wood to blazing, then dump it in your grill. Let it simmer down for a minute or two, until the flames are mostly gone and you’re left with glowing, red-hot chunks of wood. Throw the meat directly on the glowing embers, no more than 90 seconds per side. That’s it! Take them off and set them aside. They’ll have some ash, some burn marks, maybe even a little grit on the exterior – no worries, as that also is digestable. Most importantly, what they’ll also have is a seared, smoky char infused into the buttery fat which is inherent in the cut. (You can do this step early in the day – cool them covered in the fridge.)
When you’re ready to eat, make sure your cast iron skillet is hot; not white hot like you were blackening redfish, but pretty damn hot. Finish the steaks in the skillet to your likeness, no more than two minutes per side, which shouldn’t result in a temperature any more than medium rare. If you like your steak cooked beyond medium rare, I would suggest you skip the first three steps of this recipe, as I see your journey to Belly Blissville involving a trip to a Golden Corral.
Slice the steaks on the bias into ½” thick strips, fan out on your plate and drizzle generously with the balsamic. We rested the steaks over a small mound of arugula; the smoky meat, the sweet tang of the balsamic and the peppery arugula resulting in an exceptional marriage of flavors, as if it were always meant to be.
Balsamico a Basso Costo delle Montagne
One 16-oz bottle of inexpensive balsamic vinegar
2 – teaspoons corn starch
2 – tablespoons corn syrup
Empty the balsamic into a sauce pan, wisk in the corn starch, and simmer until reduced by half. Stir in the corn syrup, let cool and pour into one of those plastic, pointy-tipped condiment dispensers that chefs use to make drizzles and spiky swizzles on plates. They sell them in the kitchen gadget section at the Walmart for a buck.
This stuff can also be used in salads, over fresh tomatoes when making Caprese, and anywhere else you use a good balsamic – possibly even over Little Debbie Bars or Cheez-Its with excellent results.
Better yet, if you can afford pricy, aged Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale, dispense with the aforementioned culinary skullduggery and enjoy the real thing, imagining while you enjoy this feast… that you are dining Riverside.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Paradise Pizza Tomatoes
Alfred Joseph Paradise was born 89 years ago today, March 11th, in Hannibal, MO; he died on March 19th, 2004, eight days after his 81st birthday.
Al Paradise was many things, mostly good, as his talents were numerous and his foibles few. An engineer, a mathematician, a mechanical innovator, an artist, a calligrapher, a carpenter, a plumber and a smart ass and wiseacre of epic proportions; most of these were good things at which he made money or which he donated his talents for the benefit of others. But Al’s greatest skill was no more than a hobby, at which he excelled supremely and made not a raw nickel – damn, but the man could cook.
He was the ultimate example of an empirical cook, and a ‘foodie’ long before the term was ever coined. Cookbooks, recipes and measuring cups and spoons were for amateurs; flying by the seat of his pants was pretty much how old AJ rolled in the kitchen. His only formal training in the culinary arts occurred at a flat-top hash house in Ames, Iowa, a 4x8 slab of heated steel where eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, hamburgers, onions and anything else edible that can be fried on a hot griddle. This training had my dad making us hamburgers like no other any suburban Johnson County, KS kid was eating in the 1960’s.
Another skill that he picked up from the griddle in Ames was his unrivaled mastery of hash-browned potatoes. No matter how many times I watched him or how many times he told me his secrets – “boil the potatoes under a full strong boil for eleven and a half minutes” – I could never duplicate the perfectly golden, cracker crisp outside and the fluffy white inside; mine are always overdone on the outside and underdone on the inside.
As I grew in my ability to cook on but a whisker of a gourmet level, I’d have my parents over for dinner and always be on edge as to the quiet, subtle and occasionally constructive criticisms that would sometimes come from the old man. Once I attempted fried polenta with a red sauce as a side dish – “Fried Polenta with porcini ragout” I announced with a flourish. Unimpressed, he offered “I don’t know what you just called it, but it looks like fried corn meal mush to me. I used to make that for you when you were kids…..remember?” Hmmmph.
One of AJP’s most famous concoctions, and one which we would occasionally serve at The Riverside, was unofficially referred to as Paradise Pizza Tomatoes. The downside to serving it as our vegetable side dish in the restaurant was its appearance – spooned onto a plate it looked like one of those casseroles that you wouldn’t even think about trying as you’d peruse the various offerings at a church pot luck dinner. But the adventurous diner was tastefully rewarded with the first bite, as steaming hot out of the oven Paradise Pizza Tomatoes more than make up for in taste what they lack in aesthetics.
Serves 6 – 8 – best prepared in a round 9” baking dish
2 – 28 oz. cans of tomatoes, drained
½ stick unsalted butter
3 – Tbsp olive oil
1 – large yellow onion, small dice
4 – large cloves of garlic, chopped very fine
2 – Tbsp dried basil
2 – Tsp dried thyme
2 – Tsp fennel seeds ground in a mortar and pestle (this is key – don’t omit!)
8 – or so grinds of fresh pepper and a pinch or two of salt
½ - sleeve of saltine crackers (approx 25)
2 – cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- Thoroughly drain the tomatoes, place them in the baking dish and chop roughly. There will be juice in the dish after you chop – don’t drain that.
- Melt the butter in a sauté pan; add the olive oil and heat.
- Add the onions and sauté for about 5 minutes until translucent.
- Add the garlic, basil, thyme, fennel seed, pepper and salt and sauté for a few minutes, and then add this mixture to the tomatoes. Stir in well.
- Take ½ of the saltines and rough crush with your hands and ½ of the shredded mozzarella and add to tomatoes, stirring in well.
- Evenly distribute the other half of the cheese over the top of the mixture, then crush the remaining crackers and distribute them over the layer of cheese.
- Bake uncovered at 350F for about 45 minutes, or until the mixture is bubbly and the cheese and crackers are nicely browned.
Al Paradise was many things, mostly good, as his talents were numerous and his foibles few. An engineer, a mathematician, a mechanical innovator, an artist, a calligrapher, a carpenter, a plumber and a smart ass and wiseacre of epic proportions; most of these were good things at which he made money or which he donated his talents for the benefit of others. But Al’s greatest skill was no more than a hobby, at which he excelled supremely and made not a raw nickel – damn, but the man could cook.
He was the ultimate example of an empirical cook, and a ‘foodie’ long before the term was ever coined. Cookbooks, recipes and measuring cups and spoons were for amateurs; flying by the seat of his pants was pretty much how old AJ rolled in the kitchen. His only formal training in the culinary arts occurred at a flat-top hash house in Ames, Iowa, a 4x8 slab of heated steel where eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, hamburgers, onions and anything else edible that can be fried on a hot griddle. This training had my dad making us hamburgers like no other any suburban Johnson County, KS kid was eating in the 1960’s.
Another skill that he picked up from the griddle in Ames was his unrivaled mastery of hash-browned potatoes. No matter how many times I watched him or how many times he told me his secrets – “boil the potatoes under a full strong boil for eleven and a half minutes” – I could never duplicate the perfectly golden, cracker crisp outside and the fluffy white inside; mine are always overdone on the outside and underdone on the inside.
As I grew in my ability to cook on but a whisker of a gourmet level, I’d have my parents over for dinner and always be on edge as to the quiet, subtle and occasionally constructive criticisms that would sometimes come from the old man. Once I attempted fried polenta with a red sauce as a side dish – “Fried Polenta with porcini ragout” I announced with a flourish. Unimpressed, he offered “I don’t know what you just called it, but it looks like fried corn meal mush to me. I used to make that for you when you were kids…..remember?” Hmmmph.
One of AJP’s most famous concoctions, and one which we would occasionally serve at The Riverside, was unofficially referred to as Paradise Pizza Tomatoes. The downside to serving it as our vegetable side dish in the restaurant was its appearance – spooned onto a plate it looked like one of those casseroles that you wouldn’t even think about trying as you’d peruse the various offerings at a church pot luck dinner. But the adventurous diner was tastefully rewarded with the first bite, as steaming hot out of the oven Paradise Pizza Tomatoes more than make up for in taste what they lack in aesthetics.
Serves 6 – 8 – best prepared in a round 9” baking dish
2 – 28 oz. cans of tomatoes, drained
½ stick unsalted butter
3 – Tbsp olive oil
1 – large yellow onion, small dice
4 – large cloves of garlic, chopped very fine
2 – Tbsp dried basil
2 – Tsp dried thyme
2 – Tsp fennel seeds ground in a mortar and pestle (this is key – don’t omit!)
8 – or so grinds of fresh pepper and a pinch or two of salt
½ - sleeve of saltine crackers (approx 25)
2 – cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- Thoroughly drain the tomatoes, place them in the baking dish and chop roughly. There will be juice in the dish after you chop – don’t drain that.
- Melt the butter in a sauté pan; add the olive oil and heat.
- Add the onions and sauté for about 5 minutes until translucent.
- Add the garlic, basil, thyme, fennel seed, pepper and salt and sauté for a few minutes, and then add this mixture to the tomatoes. Stir in well.
- Take ½ of the saltines and rough crush with your hands and ½ of the shredded mozzarella and add to tomatoes, stirring in well.
- Evenly distribute the other half of the cheese over the top of the mixture, then crush the remaining crackers and distribute them over the layer of cheese.
- Bake uncovered at 350F for about 45 minutes, or until the mixture is bubbly and the cheese and crackers are nicely browned.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Barbara Muehlebach Paradise
With the heaviest of hearts, and tears in my eyes, I write of the passing of my beautiful mother, Barbara Muehlebach Paradise. All of us hold our mothers in the highest of esteem, so it would be pedantic to argue mine vs. yours, but with absoluteness, Barbara was on the highest level of motherhood and wifeliness that one could attain; certainly on every par with you and yours.
Barbara was born in St. Louis, MO in 1920, the second child, and first and only daughter of William and Willa Muehlebach and a loving sister to her four brothers William Jr., Lawrence, Charles and George. Barbara doted on her brothers like her loving mother, and carried that ability to love to her spouse, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and all whom she knew and befriended throughout her 92 years; the list is beyond the scope of the written word.
My Mother did not know hatred, contempt or ill-will. Sarcasm was not only above her, it was beyond her. Barbara had a sense of humor that was neatly countered by her ability to suffer the fools that her husband Alfred and his progeny would lampoon; she the better than all of us, earning her a fast track to eternal glory, whilst the rest of us hope, wait and pray for a pass from the Almighty. Thank God that she’s there to help smooth the way for us.
My mother lived a long life, essentially dying healthy of body; sadly her mind didn’t keep up with the heart and the lungs. It was intensely painful for all of us who loved her to watch the degeneration of that beautiful mind, while her strong body and stout will proffered on, hanging and fighting for the opportunity to remain vital.
Peace my dear Mother. Your fight is over. You won. I can only hope that I inherit but a smattering of your strength, your resoluteness and your righteousness.
I will miss you and your loving touch the rest of my days. I pray that I will be worthy of seeing you again.
Your loving son,
Richard William
Barbara was born in St. Louis, MO in 1920, the second child, and first and only daughter of William and Willa Muehlebach and a loving sister to her four brothers William Jr., Lawrence, Charles and George. Barbara doted on her brothers like her loving mother, and carried that ability to love to her spouse, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and all whom she knew and befriended throughout her 92 years; the list is beyond the scope of the written word.
My Mother did not know hatred, contempt or ill-will. Sarcasm was not only above her, it was beyond her. Barbara had a sense of humor that was neatly countered by her ability to suffer the fools that her husband Alfred and his progeny would lampoon; she the better than all of us, earning her a fast track to eternal glory, whilst the rest of us hope, wait and pray for a pass from the Almighty. Thank God that she’s there to help smooth the way for us.
My mother lived a long life, essentially dying healthy of body; sadly her mind didn’t keep up with the heart and the lungs. It was intensely painful for all of us who loved her to watch the degeneration of that beautiful mind, while her strong body and stout will proffered on, hanging and fighting for the opportunity to remain vital.
Peace my dear Mother. Your fight is over. You won. I can only hope that I inherit but a smattering of your strength, your resoluteness and your righteousness.
I will miss you and your loving touch the rest of my days. I pray that I will be worthy of seeing you again.
Your loving son,
Richard William
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