Lucy...........Part II

We picked Lucy up from a rescue shelter in Denver, and all we knew of her lineage was “Border collie mix.” As are most puppies, Lucy was so cute and cuddly that I actually felt good about throwing the easy part of my dog-less life away and signing up for a 14 year hitch in the Canine Corps. Not only was this black & white little fur ball adorable, but she had personality out the pooch wazoo; you could instantly tell that she was sassy beyond repair. She expressed herself to us and a constant stream of admiring hotel guests through the deliberate and continual use of her razor sharp little bicuspids: “Oh, look at this little darling, she is soooo cute, OUCH. Oh, that’s ok, she’s just a little puppy and she’ll outgrow OUCH!”

While everyone around me was smitten with Lucy to the point of having to wear drool catchers, I kept my focus and concentrated on the job of getting this little hellion potty-trained, as the notion of tiling a 12,000 square foot hotel was absolutely out of the question. Within a short matter of time, she got it; I supposed we trained each other. After a few weeks of intensive training, Lucy would essentially walk up to me, look me in the eye, and ‘bark’ with a purpose, saying “I’ve got to go outside and do business. NOW!”

Poor old Lucky never got that “I’ve got to go to the bathroom, now!” concept down; Lucy had it nailed in a matter of weeks. Lucky was sweet, but dumb; Lucy is smart, and efficient, but sweet doesn't enter into the picture. As the formative weeks went by, our Border collie-mix didn’t get tall like a Border collie; rather, Lucy grew long. Her front paws splayed outward as she sat and challenged us at our every demand. Her Border collie ears didn’t droop like a Border collie, but spiked straight skyward like, well, like a Corgi. Long body, splayed paws, spiked ears – without doubt, we had ourselves a ‘Borgi’. Lucy is a combination of smart, quick, independent, outspoken, multi-leveled herding dogs, with bloodlines that date back centuries; part of her wants to organize and round people up into groups, and the other part wants to punish and nip the heels of those who won’t comply.

Lucy, not aware of her mixed heritage, carries herself as a royal beauty; unique and unusual looking to the point of people asking “what a beautiful dog, but what is she?” Her head is way too big for her body, her plumed tail a natural and fitting accoutrement to her regal demeanor. Within a very short period of time, this sassy little bitch had full and total control our hearts; people would ask, “Are you the owner of the hotel?”, and my clever answer was always “yes, me and the bank”. But I couldn’t look them in the eye and give them that answer any longer; Lucy now owns this place - just ask her!

All Border collies need a job. As they were bred and used in the old country, their job was to herd sheep and cattle. Lucy’s job is to guard The Riverside. No one comes in or out, nor do they drive by, without her scrutiny and approval. She sits in the front window of the hotel and acknowledges all passersby’s with a low growl, a quiet ‘woof’ or an emphatic ‘bark!’ If Lucy doesn’t acknowledge you when you pass The Riverside, you don’t exist. If you happen to be a dog, she lets absolutely nothing back as she talks the worst sort of inappropriate foul-mouthed smack at you as you walk by that window; and God help your worthless canine ass if you would attempt to enter her hotel.

As The Riverside is a pet friendly hotel, the rules of guests bringing in pets had to be modified a bit with the addition of Lucy. No dogs in the common areas – bring them in quickly and get them in your room, and damn sure don’t have them off of a leash or out of your control. The attached link will send you to Tripadvisor, (http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g33479-d1153219-r45506009-The_Riverside_Hotel-Hot_Sulphur_Springs_Colorado.html) a site where guests can share their experiences of your hostelry; some of the shared information is actually factual, but not so much with this particular story. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, suffice to say that the authors of this Tripadvisor review fall into the category of “2%-ers.” Enough said.

Lucy has developed another peculiar habit regarding the intrusion of canine guests into her sanctuary. After she calms down and acquiesces to the presence of these intruders into her territory, she quietly lays in wait until the offending visitors have departed The Riverside. She will then surreptitiously slink up the stairs, never to be seen by us, locate the room where the gate crasher stayed, and poop outside the door. When I said earlier that she was potty trained, I meant it; this act has nothing to do with having an ‘accident.’
This is an intentional, malicious, wanton act of revenge, an “I spit on your grave!” sort of thing. She’s done this four or five times, but never has her “Eat S**T and Die!” pronouncement been as profound as it was on December 28th, 2009.

To be continued..........

Lucy

When all is said and done and we look back on our adventure in Colorado, no matter how many difficulties we’ve suffered or victories we’ve celebrated, there has been one shining light that blinds the memory of all of the good or bad: we found Lucy.

Those of you who know me well, know that my love and devotion to this dog is more than just a bit out of character for me. I’ll be honest and admit that I’ve never been one that you would classify as a ‘dog person’. Lucky, our family pooch of the previous 15 years, was thrust upon me after the fact of her acquisition. Julie and the kids were in Nevada, MO visiting her parents, while I remained in Kansas City for a rare, weekend business meeting. The year was 1991; Rachel was 6 years old, Scott 4 years old and Julie and I young enough to add to our family. After the aforementioned business meeting, I called Julie to check in and she opened the phone conversation with an excited:

“Guess What!!?”

“You’re pregnant??” I guessed, holding not only my breath, but my wallet, my heart, and had I a third hand, you can guess what else I would have held and tried to disable.

“No, we found a dog!” she replied.

“I’d rather you were pregnant.” I said. And I meant it, at the time.

Lucky, a misfit mutt found in the Nevada city park, was the best dog a family could have; sweet, docile, loving, good with children, etc. She never did get the potty trained thing down; her favorite bathroom area was our living room, in which I eventually ended up taking up the carpet and putting down tile. My Dad said “what are you gonna do, tile the whole house? She’ll find another place to go!” In fact we did end up tileing and hardwood-flooring the whole downstairs, but ever resourceful, Lucky found carpet upstairs to pee upon.

After spending her last few years as the neighborhood snack whore – she was all but a furry keg with legs – Lucky gave up the ghost on Thanksgiving Day, 2006. She had a stroke the day before Thanksgiving, and was in obvious pain and disarray as Turkey Day unfolded. Scott and I took her to be put down, brave Scott at her side during her last minutes on earth. I couldn’t do it; after filling out the paperwork and paying for things, I went back to the car and bawled. It was a quiet, teary-eyed, father-and-son ride home, back to family and the impending feast.

It might have been the morning after Lucky died, or perhaps the afternoon, when Julie began the slow, steady, deliberate, resolute chant of “we need to get a dog, we need to get a dog, and we need to get a dog.” “Good grief!” I said, “let’s give it some time.” For unlike true ‘dog people’, I had the good sense to examine the realities and know the consequences of getting a dog; there’s way more to it than the wonderful feeling you get when you acquire your cute, fuzzy little bundle of puppy love. Hell, I’ve seen the worst of it, where you eventually have to rip up pee-stained carpet that you paid good money for and bust your ass tileing the living room.

My anti-pooch ass-holiness won out for the better part of two years – no pooch, no problems; then fast-forward to January, 2009, living life Riverside. Before I knew and had a chance to react, Julie pulled a fast one and arranged to have a rescue pooch adopted for us by her sister in Denver. I was busy doing…I don’t know what I was busy doing, when Julie told me, “we’ve got a pooch. We’re picking it up in a few days.” “Oh crap”, I thought, “my days have changed, my nights have changed and my life has changed.”

The morning that we were to leave to pick up the dog, I was visited by our friend, Rick, who manages the hot springs. Rick is a transplanted pig farmer from Iowa, who made his nut and decided he wanted to live in the mountains. He’s an absolute breath of fresh air in these Colorado Rockies, the kind of person who you’d refer to as ‘real people’; a guy’s guy, a straight shooter and happy as if he had good sense. When I told Rick, in a rueful voice, that we were going to Denver to pick up a dog, Rick noticed my obvious distressful/regretful tone and mood and asked “What are you bitching about?? What kind of an asshole doesn’t like a dog??”

My glib, clever, not a dog person-ass didn’t have a quick answer for that one. In fact, Rick shamed me to the core; with his ‘from the hip’ challenge, in the form of a question, he made me question what I was really all about. And I didn't like the answer.



Enter Lucy……………..to be continued.

Living Life Lakeside.......Part II

I was in dire need of a haircut. Damned dire need!

For the past 20 years in Kansas City, I would go every two-three weeks to my barber, Rocky, plop myself into his chair and chat away while he did whatever he did to my hair. I never had to tell him what clipper number to use, or ask that he use scissors, not the razor, or tell him “I don’t think I want a bouffant today, not a mullet either; how about my normal same length on the top as it is on the sides cut.” I never had to say any of that; I sat in the chair, discussed sports, or my job, or whatever, and 15 minutes later, my hair was cut – the way I like it.

(Here’s a tip. If you live in a world where you have a barber who cuts your hair the way you like it, talks sports and roots for the same teams as you, shares your political views, and has a cool barber name like Rocky, don’t get off that horse. Keep riding it.)

When we moved to Colorado, I took for granted the small changes and adjustments that leaving our home of 50+ years behind would bring. The big changes were obvious; they were planned for and the required adjustments were assumed. It was the little things that came with relocation – finding a new church, couldn’t buy the same local bread, beer or BBQ sauce, new doctors, no dry cleaners, no Winsteads….new barber. And it wasn’t the big changes that stressed us; it was the little things that gnawed and ate at our “did we do the right thing by moving?” bone.

Never in Colorado did I get a good haircut. I came close, once, in downtown Denver; close, but no Rocky. It possibly explains why so many Colorado inhabitants – men and women alike – opt for the Allen Ginsburg look.

Off to Mississippi.

I work in an office building with lots of guys, and most of them have hair. So I know that a few questions to the right people will get me hooked up with a Southern version of Rocky – down here, his name will be Clem. He’ll talk sports (although it’ll be limited to SEC football), he’ll probably be on the same political plane as me, and as an added Mississippi bonus, he’ll discuss Faulkner with me. Nah, probably not gonna talk Faulkner with the barber, but at least he’ll cut my hair the way I like it.

After a few queries, I took the advice of a fellow worker who suggested a place in Brandon, “down Highway 80, right next to the Blockbuster.” After a morning meeting at our lab, which is right off of Highway 80, I decided to forgo lunch and head for that clip shop. Driving east on Highway 80 – first time driving here and all new to me – I passed a variety of stuff, but never came to Brandon, and never saw a Blockbuster. In fact, I was in the city of Pearl, MS. I passed a few hair salons, and as Highway 80 got into a residential area, and showed no promise of a complex that would house a Blockbuster, I turned around and headed back towards a shop that I’d seen a few blocks prior.

I pulled up and parked in front of ‘Amy’s Clip & Curl’. There were several women outside smoking cigarettes, and I asked “can I get a haircut here?” They all immediately threw down and stamped out their butts, and hustled me into the shop.

I’m certain you can all identify with the feeling you have of walking into a place, and as soon as you open the door, that little voice in your head, (the responsible little voice that cares about you; not the dominant, drunken, stupid loud voice that tells you to chuck it all and buy a hotel in the mountains), says, no, screams “turn around right now and get the hell out of here as fast as you can!!” That little voice was working overtime, actually, it was beginning to get hoarse, but I ignored it, and in I walked; mostly out of fear, as if I had at that point turned and run, two or three of them would have pursued and captured me – a haircut would have been well down the list of what they would have had in store for me.

The shop consisted of eight chairs, four on each side; each chair was manned, (although they were females, I’m still going to use the term ‘manned’) by women that all looked like Flo. Some of them had a full set of teeth; the one that cut my hair was found wanting in the bicuspid department – she’d only get about every third row of kernels if she were to eat corn on the cob.

She started out by asking, “So, how ya want’cha hair cut, hon?”

I wanted to answer “Properly”, but thought better of it.

“Do ya normally have it cut with electric clippers?”

“No, the man that normally cuts it, (sniff), only uses scissors.”

“Have ya ever had a razor cut?”

“Do you not have any scissors?”

“I just thought ya might wanna try sumpen different.”

‘A good haircut would be something different’, I thought, but said “Thanks, but I’ll just stick with the scissor cut.”

She ended up using scissors, the electric clippers and the straight razor, giving me a layered look that resembled a style of haircut that Paul Klee might have given had he been a barber. I thanked her, paid her, tipped her and asked for her card so I could make an appointment the next time I lose my mind and decide to get my haircut there.

Back at the office, I told one of my cohorts that I’ll probably go to Madison (the tony, northern Jackson suburb) next time I need a haircut.

“Where did you get your haircut?” he asked.

“Pearl” I responded.

“Pearl” he all but announced, “why that’s known as a fine Mississippi community on the move!”

“Really?? Why?” I asked.

“'Lotta mobile homes, that's why.”

To be continued.......................

Are There Ghosts at The Riverside?......Conclusion

OK - I admit it.

I’ve fallen prey to the same flights of fancy that I’ve impugned others for ascribing to; i.e. letting your imagination, as it is molded and then overwhelmed by this grand old building, kidnap and stifle your common sense. It could be that I’m simply, and somewhat irresponsibly, letting myself get caught up in the moment; kind of like letting yourself get hornswaggled into going to a KC & The Sunshine Band concert, having a few too many beers and then mid-concert saying to yourself, “hey, this ain’t half bad.” You know better!!!

My nephew used to live at The Riverside when we first purchased the place, and he was full of stories like this one: “I left my glasses out in the lobby, and went to get them at 3:00 in the morning, and in the room above the lobby, I heard someone stomp their foot, and there was nobody staying up there.” So you’re telling me a ghost seized the opportunity of you being in the lobby at 3:00 AM in the morning to stomp his foot, just once, on the floor? I would think a ghost would be a little more, well, creative in its attempts to terrorize the living; maybe rattle some chains, slam some doors, or at the very least, let off with a long, sustained moan of some sort. But a single foot stomp? Pu-leeeeze!

This collision of what we know, what scientific proof exists and what we want to believe is played-out weekly in one of those ghost shows on whatever cable channel it’s on; for an hour they build the suspense, showing nothing of substance, until the end where they've filmed a little flash of light, or a quick blur, the host saying “there!....look closely…there it is...Oh my God, did you see that?....let’s look at it again…there it is…see that blur!....did you see that little flash?”

Did you hear that foot stomp?

We’ve had several guests that have said “this room has a feel”, or “I’m not comfortable in the west wing, because of the spirits; I need to stay in the east wing”, or “I’m not comfortable in the east wing, because of the spirits; I need to stay in the west wing.” So you’re telling me the whole damn place is haunted? Truth be known, some of these people were probably scarier than any ghost you’d ever encounter; lovely people - please come back and visit us - but scary.

To those of you who might read this and say, “No way am I staying at this place!”, please know that in the 100+ year history of the hotel, no guest or resident has been maimed, hacked-up, garroted, disemboweled or beheaded by a ghost. No one has ever actually even reported seeing a ghost. This revelation might be a bit of a letdown for those of you who’d like to visit The Riverside for the purpose of having an encounter with the paranormal; unfortunately, I can’t guarantee you anything ghostly beyond a re-telling of my potentially ‘caught up in the moment’ experiences. And to those of you who shudder at the thought of spending the night in a haunted hotel, let me profess this: there is no bigger chicken in the world than me - if I can live here, and even stay here by myself, then you have absolutely nothing to fear. Except for maybe Lucy, if you're a Bichon Frise. Really!

I saw an old man standing in the hall. Right!
I saw a shadowy figure walk along the patio perimeter. I’ll swear to it!
A bathmat floated down the hall and ended up folded on a bathroom chair. What else could have happened?!
A phantom reached into the shower stall, when my eyes were closed, and turned the water off. Would you have a better explanation?

Are there ghosts at The Riverside? I honestly don’t know.
Are there ghosts anywhere? You tell me.
One side of me desperately wants there to be ghosts; it tells us that there’s more to our lives than this single radar blip of time that we’re here on this earth. In the event that I can come back, I’m going to save some money so I can scatter it about The Riverside for the brave souls who end up as the stewards of this place when we’re gone. I might slip ‘em a bottle or two of gin as well - for as sure as there are ghosts at The Riverside, they’ll need all the help they can get.

Are There Ghosts at The Riverside?............Part III

At this point, I know a lot of you are still unbelievers, or at the very least, certainly not convinced of the existence of ghosts based upon these few incidences I’ve described. I’m not 100% certain myself, as there are possible explanations for these things, such as, I simply could be mistaken about the absence of the bath mat. I know I took a bathmat off the chair, but it’s possible there could have been another already on the chair; I don’t think so, but it’s certainly possible. And for the water knobs being turned off, someone suggested that you can get a surge of reverse pressure, and it may have sucked the water backwards and made the knobs turn backwards as well. I’d never heard of this, nor have I had this happen before in my 50+ years of showering, so I ran it by Tony, the sober, reliable Plumber; the look he gave me when I asked the question told me the question would have made more sense to him if I’d asked it in ancient colloquial Slovakian. No reverse pressure, or if so, first time in the annals of plumbing history. Anyway, it’s possible there was some sort of never before encountered plumbing thing that made the knobs shut off.

And as far as Lucy’s odd behavior being a reliable source upon which to base your belief in the supernatural, well, come on now! Although she has the title of “Head of Security” at the Riverside, she is a known food and shoe thief, she regularly participates in wanton acts of vandalism and destruction of property, and she has started more street fights than Mike Tyson. If she could actually talk, my guess is she’d be a foul-mouthed, smack-talking liar as well.
Hmmph! Head of Security, my ass! How about Coordinator of Chaos Dissemination?

Twice, my eyes have shown me things at The Riverside that I hope, I pray, were merely tricks of the light, or at the very least, vestiges of the prior evenings’ curative treatment from Dr. Bombay.

One day in late spring, I was upstairs in the west wing, the part of the hotel that overlooks the river and was added to the original construction sometime in the early 1930’s. It contains two of the hotels most popular rooms – ‘Mil’, also known as the John Lennon room, and ‘Tootie’ or #80, the corner two-room suite with the best view of the river and Mt. Bross. It was early afternoon, and I was finishing up cleaning that wing of the hotel; all of the beds were made, the floors vacuumed, sinks cleaned and trash emptied. I was on my final round cleaning the mirrors, and was walking down the western-most hall. As I walked north, from Mil to Tootie, I passed the little feeder hall that joins the two main halls in the western wing. (If you’ve been to The Riverside, you know that this section of the hotel is cobbled together in a maze-like fashion; it ain’t exactly laid out like a Holiday Inn Express.)

Standing in the feeder hall was a man, dressed in a jacket and slacks, with a plain white shirt, buttoned at the collar. His hands were at his sides, and he was looking in my direction. He wasn’t elderly, but he looked old; certainly as if he were from another era.

Now comes the part of the story that will make you say, ‘well, that’s nothing’, but it’s still something to me. I didn’t stand there and face this apparition full on. I was in full stormin’-down-the-hall mode, walking from the southern-most room to the northern-most room at a fairly good clip. I generally walk pretty fast; moseying isn’t something I ever do a lot of, especially when I’m trying to get the hotel cleaned. And I’m admitting here that I saw the vision peripherally, as I flew past the feeder hall. Was it something that was always there that I’ve never paid attention to, and walking quickly past, I mistook it for an old man in a suit? I don’t believe so, as whatever decorations, wall sconces, pictures, etc. might have blurred together in my peripheral to form the full figure of a man, they’ve been hanging there since we bought the hotel and I’ve stormed down that hallway 1000 times and have never seen anything. The truth is, after seeing and sensing the vision, (I also had one of those up-and-down my spine, ghost-induced chills) I took about two more steps and stopped, started back to see what I think I saw, and then lost the nerve to go back; I was afraid I’d see it again. I headed on to the Tootie room, quickly cleaned the mirror, and resolutely, but scared to death, walked right back to the feeder hall to put the cleaner in the linen closet; nobody there this time.

The final apparition was a little more substantive and not viewed from a sideways glance as I was flying down a hall. It was a beautiful summer evening, maybe 10:00 PM, and I was sitting alone on the back patio. As it was a Monday, the restaurant was closed, and no one was staying at the hotel – a rare summer night off. Julie and Lucy had gone to bed, and the rest were in watching TV. Anyway, it was the kind of summer night that makes you want to chuck it all and move to the mountains; oh, that’s right, we did that. I’ve mentioned it numerous times before, but the stars on a clear night in Hot Sulphur are beyond description. You’re 100 miles away from any significant concentration of interfering lights, and you’re at almost 8000 feet. I’ve seen shooting stars that blaze across the entire width of the sky and last for 5 seconds. Also special about that night was a full moon, rising at my back from the east, bathing Mt. Bross in a lustrous, luminescent glow, and making the river look as if it were a rolling jumble of diamonds and fireflies.

I’m sitting in a chair, looking west at the mountain, the river and the spectacular western sky. The western side of the patio has a low limestone wall, a fireplace, and two rather large lilac bushes. There is a 10’ gap, or view, to the north of the northern-most lilac bush, before a 6’ tall privacy fence obscures the view of the river. It is important to note that while I’m sitting in the chair looking at the scenery, I’ve nothing in my hand; i.e. read that as I’m not nursing a martini. In fact, I was pretty much sober as a judge ( though not a Grand County judge); minimal alcohol had been consumed by me that evening, and what had been consumed was quaffed before dinner. I also didn’t have my sound-dock playing; it was quiet, the only sound to be heard was the gentle rush of the sparkling river.

A dark, tall figure walked very slowly along the walk the length of the 10’ span between the lilac bush and the privacy fence. I didn’t hear it coming up the path from the river to the patio, and had it been of this world, I would have. It didn’t walk between the open space to the south of the southern-most lilac bush, and had it been a human walking up the path, it would have. Yet it was as solid and as real as anything you’ve ever seen; and its unworldly silence, as it slowly moved from left to right across my line of sight, was profound.

A man appeared out of nowhere and slowly walked right in front of me; of this, I am dead certain. This wasn’t a peripheral glance; I followed the figure as it walked along the path and disappeared to the back of our privacy fence. I was out of that chair and into the house faster than a shooting star; the only thing faster than my exit from the porch was my pulse.

I’ve made light of ‘out of the ordinary’ things that others have experienced at The Riverside. My standard response is something like “this is a 100+ year-old wooden building with sketchy plumbing and electricity. It moves with the change in temperature, it moans and groans with the winds and it creaks and rattles with the shift of the earth.” I still believe that the climactic movement of this big, all-but-living wooden thing is behind most of the chicanery that people attribute to ghosts. But the wind and the wood don’t explain what I felt and what I saw. What I saw.

To be concluded………

Are There Ghosts at The Riverside?...........Part II

I’ll start with Lucy. There are two rooms in the hotel where Lucy is simply not Lucy. In one of the rooms, she always enters with noticeable trepidation before she eventually follows us into the room. She never jumps up on the bed in this room to lounge, while never hesitating to jump on any other bed in any other room. When in this room, she never barks, she never plays and she never strays more than a foot from whoever she is in the room with; she is literally ‘under foot’ when she is in this room. If you could ever consider a dog to be ‘walking on eggshells’, that would aptly describe Lucy’s demeanor while in this room. I don’t have to tell those of you who know Lucy, know that this is far from her normal mode of operation.

Then there is the other room. She won’t go in it. Ever. She follows us everywhere and she won’t go in this room. She sits patiently outside the door in the hallway while we’re in cleaning or making the bed, but she won’t come in. The most chilling thing that occurred regarding Lucy and this room happened a few months back when I was down at the opposite end of the hall, and Lucy was sitting outside 'the' room, alertly, but passively, looking into the room. She quickly stood up on all fours, emitted a low growl, and then began viscously barking at something in the room. Her stance turned to full attack mode, like she’d seen a Bichon Frise, or some other type of over-bred little bitch, but she didn’t lunge forward to attack. When I called her, she immediately stopped barking, ran down the hall with her ears pinned back, ran by me and down the stairs to the lobby. I went back to the room and of course, no one was there and nothing at all was amiss. However, there is no question in my mind that she.... saw….. something.

A skeptic might say “well she probably saw a bird or a squirrel in the window.” I too thought that might have been the case, but if in fact she saw a bird or squirrel in the window, her little legs would have quickly thrust her over the bed straight at and probably crashing into the window, as there isn’t a squirrel or bird in Hot Sulphur that Lucy’s seen that she hasn’t attempted to impale between her incisors. If birds could pray, the birds in Hot Sulphur surely would pray whenever they light in our backyard, and they would thank God that Lucy doesn’t have wings.

On to my physical encounters…..

The first weekend we owned The Riverside, there was one humdinger of a blizzard, even by Grand County standards. Julie and Rachel, who had (imagine this) been out shopping that afternoon, got caught in the storm while driving back from the outlet mall in Silverthorn. I was at the hotel by myself, and I started getting calls from soon-to-be stranded travelers looking for accommodations. I knew we were going to be busy, so I decided to take a quick shower and get cleaned up for the impending throngs. I was in one of the showers, and just as I began to wash my hair – all lathered up with my eyes closed – the water went dead off. It didn’t slow down and turn to a trickle, as if it were a pressure issue; it flat went off, as sudden and final as a downward light switch. “Oh Crap!” I thought; I stood there and figured that there must've been a massive break in the water main, and envisioned a geyser spouting 20 feet into air in the middle of the street in front of the hotel. What else on earth could make the water just stop, like that! These thoughts rushed through my mind in a matter of seconds, at which point – eyes still closed, hair still soapy – I reached down to the knobs and turned both water knobs right back on! They both had been shut into the full off position; instantly, and at the same time. Upon discovering this, I said something other than “Oh Crap”, and felt an icy chill go down my spine; the kind of icy chill I suppose you feel when you realize you’ve just encountered your first ghost.

I had my hair rinsed and was out of that shower faster than the winner of a Hot Sulphur beer chugging contest. I then quickly dried off, threw on my robe, took the wet towel and bath mat and headed back to my room to get dressed. After getting dressed, I went back into the bathroom, fiddled around a little bit with the knobs (they seemed as normal as any water knobs you’ve ever fiddled with), and tidied up the bathroom to get it ready for the evenings’ guests. (I recount this as though nothing unusual had happened and I was cool as a cucumber; quite to the contrary – I was still shaken and shaking.)

All was in order except for the need of a new, dry bathmat. A short walk to the linen closet and a short walk back with a new bathmat and – there over the back of the previously empty chair back was a new, dry, nicely-folded bathmat. I experienced another one of those spine chills, then tried to calm myself and gather my thoughts. I know I took the bathmat off of the chair, I put it on the floor, I took my haunted shower, got out, dried off, put my robe on, PICKED UP THE WET BATHMAT, and exited the bathroom. After getting dressed, I then went back into the bathroom and fiddled with the knobs, cleaned the sink and mirror, looked over the bathroom and said to myself “you need a new bathmat.” After a brief absence to the linen closet to get that bathmat, lo and behold, upon my return, there on the chair was a new bathmat. I know I didn’t put it there, and no one else was in the hotel; or so I thought.

So we’d been in the hotel but a few days, and already the spirits were making their presence felt. Some internet reading (always a reliable and accurate source), I did on the subject of the paranormal mentioned that ‘activity’ can be ramped up when a new residence takes a place over. At least the ghost seems to have a sense of humor, as well as a good sense of comic timing, as it chose to turn the shower off when I was in my most defenseless state – bare naked, soapy hair and eyes shut tight. And it’s also nice to know we have a ghost who’s willing to help with the housework and cleaning; this will come in handy when we’ve got 10 rooms to turn in a short period of time. It would really be nice if we had a rich ghost – one that would leave $100 bills scattered about. But I know it's doubtful, nay, impossible, that a previous owner/resident of the Riverside, now haunting us, would have any money left to throw around.

To be continued……………………..

Are There Ghosts at The Riverside?........Probably

Or so the infamous ‘FAQ’ sign in the Riverside answers to that oft-asked question. Before I get into the ghosts, I’ll take this opportunity to tell the story of the ‘FAQ’ sign in the lobby. The first time I walked into the Riverside hotel, in June of 1993, the first thing that struck me was a 2’x4’, heavily scripted wooden sign hanging on the north wall of the lobby. (OK, that’s a bit of a lie. The first thing I noticed was the Little Shop of Horrors plant collection that threatened to eat you as you walked into the lobby. Then I noticed this creepy little man sitting in a rocking chair. Then I said to myself, “My, how quaint, how charming. Where is my gun, because I’m going to shoot my friend who recommended this place.”)

Back to the sign.

It grabs your eye as you walk in the door, and it answers most of the questions that people would want to ask about the hotel, the town, the river, the hot springs, etc. My guess is that the unknown owner (someone prior to Abe) who put the sign up had gotten sick and tired of answering the same questions over and over and over and over and over; on a larger plane, I’d also guess that he got sick of talking to and dealing with people in general.
Some of the questions/answers:
When was the Riverside built?………………………….1903
What is the elevation?…………………………………...7763 ft.
How cold does it get in the winter?......-30F, sometimes colder
How far is Boulder?..............Not far enough

And so it goes. The sign is written in a colloquial, folksy sort of way; i.e. the answers are given in the form that a friendly, old-timey, homey hotel owner might give them. I immediately loved the sign, and it was one of the little things that made me love The Riverside. Knowing this, you can imagine how I felt when I walked into the hotel on the day we were to close the sale, after pulling a 12’ loaded U-Haul trailer across I-70 in a snow storm, exhausted, frightened to death at what we were undertaking, and the first thing I noticed was the empty space on the wall where the sign used to be. Abe was sitting in a chair, and I didn’t say “Hello Abe”, I said “Abe, where the hell is the sign???” I was, to put it mildly, pissed. Abe kind of cleared his throat, and nervously said “I, uh, er, I gave it to a friend in California.” An obvious lie, but the best thing he could come up with at the time. It was a portent of other surprises to come, much bigger and much more costly surprises, relating to shady things Abe did and didn’t do in his transfer of ownership of The Riverside. I’ve said it earlier – we bury our dead, we dry our tears and we move on.

Two wonderful things came from this missing sign thing. My sister-in-law found a picture of the sign on an old web site, and re-created the thing, right down to the original font. I cried when she gave it to us as a housewarming gift; a labor of love I’ve not seen equaled. We also found out that in fact the original sign wasn’t given by Abe to a friend in California, (surprise, surprise) but sold to a man in Boulder. If there’s any human being on earth that should have this sign, (other than we, who paid for it) it is the man that now has it, and paid for it as well. I am at peace with this issue.

My sister-in-law took some literary license when she recreated the sign; she updated it, and added a few new FAQ’s. In particular, one of the most newly often-asked questions being “Are there ghosts at The Riverside?” and the answer on the sign being….. “Probably.”

This is a natural question for people to ask as The Riverside has all of the qualifications for a place that might have ghosts, assuming of course that there are such things. It’s old, it can be a little creepy, (especially at night, upstairs, when you’re walking down the halls alone), and it’s had numerous inhabitants over the years; one might take the leap that odds are one of the previous owners might have actually assumed room temperature in the hotel.

After we purchased the hotel, one of the locals told me of a murder that happened in the bar. She was a little scary herself as she told the gruesome tale, saying “he was standing right here, and a man came up behind him, grabbed his hair and pulled his head back and slit his throat”, as she dramatically made the now-banned NFL throat-slashing gesture.

"My, how lovely." I thought.

I asked Grandpa (my neighbor who lives across the street, and was detailed in an earlier blog) what he knew about this, and he grumbled “that wasn’t what happened”. His story is as follows: In the early 70’s when they were building the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70, (located about 45 miles south of Hot Sulphur Springs) every hotel for miles around was full with workers who were involved in the tunnels’ construction. Grandpa said that this made for some wild nights in all of the local towns and bars, as these itinerant roughnecks, with wads of money to spend on the weekends, had nothing to do on a Saturday night but get drunk and raise hell.
Times haven't changed much. The locals pretty much get drunk and raise hell every night in Hot Sulphur Springs.

One of the workers, who was staying at The Riverside, got a little too friendly with the spouse of a local, and according to Grandpa, the local went into the hotel late at night, found and entered the offending parties room, and stabbed the man to death. Grandpa said, “he was dead in there for days, before the smell got bad enough that they finally found him.”

Gee Grandpa, thanks for clearing that up for me!

This may disappoint some of you, but it thrilled me when I found out that both of these tales were taller than Mt. Bross; untrue, bogus, BS, hokum, didn’t happen. In fact, there is no record (that I can find) of anyone ever being murdered, or even dying, in The Riverside. What did happen, and what I’m sure was the seed for these grisly recollections, involved several of these tunnel workers who did get into an altercation in the hotel bar, took it out to the street, and one stabbed the other in front of the hotel.

Ghost stories be gone, and on to reality...

Two years ago, prior to our purchase of The Riverside, I would have steadfastly said “I do not believe in ghosts!” I can’t say that now, at least not with the conviction that I used to have on the matter. I have had four instances of things happening- two apparitions I’ve seen and two physical occurrences I've felt. No matter how hard I try to convince myself that what I saw, or what physically happened, simply wasn’t so, I can come up with no other logical explanation for what occurred.

Throw the arrival of Lucy,the world’s coolest pooch, into the picture and her consistently peculiar behavior in certain parts of the hotel, and I’m really starting to change my tune regarding the existence of other-worldly phenomena.

To be continued…….

Guests from Boulder, aka 'Old Abe people'

As they are also children of God, they shall go un-named in this tome, to protect them – from scorn, from ridicule, from the certain disdain and disparagement normal people would heap upon them if they knew them and suffered their eccentricities and outlandishness’s as we have. Nor will I single out the best or worst of them; some of these multi-named guests (for example, but pseudonymically, Laura Moon-Child Temple Bluebird, and I won’t say if she was on the best or worst list), while deserving of a full chapter in this book, detailing their oddities and assaults on normalcy, will quietly and respectfully flow into the pools and eddies of what makes Boulder…….. Boulder.

Boulder, CO can simply and adequately be defined as “24 square miles surrounded by reality.” As the suspected but undefined magnetic power field of the Bermuda Triangle so surreptitiously draws in unsuspecting airplanes and ships, the force of Boulder seeks out and sucks in, from all over the civilized world, the weird, the green, the soy-obsessed/gluten intolerant, the radically vegan, the granola crunching, the humorless, the intellectually arrogant liberal East-Coast Ivy-League rejects, the Allen Ginsburg look-alike, aging hippies who refuse to accept that they’ve aged and the hippie-thing really wasn’t all it was cracked up to be – (certainly not as it’s carried into old age), and variations and agglomerations of all of the aforementioned. Boulder is a beacon for all that live on the fringe, providing a safe haven where they can be amongst those with similar neurosis, and experience a sense of normalcy that isn’t available to them anywhere else in the civilized world. Twenty-four square-miles surrounded by reality.

Having exposed all of these truths, it is important to note that a large percentage of our guests are from Boulder, and they love The Riverside, (or loved the old Abe-owned Riverside) because it so typifies the fringe of what is acceptable as a hostelry. It’s old, it’s eclectic, it’s funky, it’s, it’s…..IT’S SO BOULDER. Or at least it used to be so Boulder. We constantly have to defend ourselves personally (we’re not ultra-liberal, vegan, 60’s radicals, native Coloradans) as well as the improvements we’ve made to the hotel and restaurant to those who we refer to as “old Abe people”, i.e. loyal customers of Abe’s.

Abe had three types of customers: 1) those that liked and patronized the place because of Abe; 2) those that liked the place and patronized it in spite of Abe, and; 3) those that liked the place but never came back because of Abe. If you put percentages on that clientele, my guess is it’s 10% for the first group, 20% for the second, and the remaining 70% we’re trying to recover and win over. Abe’s catering to and relying upon that loyal 10% was the reason for his winding up broke, broke, and broker. (Editor’s note: One of Abe’s best customers is now one of ours; he is an exception to the rule. He loves what we’ve done with the place, joins us regularly, and is a pleasure to have in our house. However, there is no denying the fact that he is indeed, a character; that trait alone makes him a welcome fixture to The Riverside. I don’t believe he is actually from Boulder proper, but should he want the position, he could be elected Mayor.)


I get one of these calls weekly.

“Are you the new owner?”

“Yes, along with the bank”

“What happened to Abe?”

“He sold us the hotel two years ago and moved to Englewood.”

“Oh, we just loved Abe. We miss him so!”

“Wait a minute. You loved Abe, you miss him so, but you haven’t stayed here for two years, and you didn’t even know that he was gone?”

“Well, mostly we stayed at the hot springs, because the Riverside was a dump. But we loved Abe. He was such a character!! Do you have any rooms available this weekend, and do you still take pets?”

“I have some queen rooms that we allow for pet owners. What type of pets?”

“Oh, we have four pit-bulls. The two females are in heat, and the males are fresh from a fight, but they’re small for their breed. But Abe always let us bring our dogs.”

“Sorry, but single dogs, less than 30 pounds.”

“OK, well how much are the rooms?”

“Queen Rooms are $76 plus tax.”

“WOW. $76 dollars? You’ve raised the rates!!!”

“Yes. We’ve made some improvements – new beds, new sheets, light bulbs that actually work, toilets that flush – and these things cost money, but I think you’ll find the place a little more welcoming. Oh, and other stuff has gotten more expensive since you last stayed here in 1994 for $35. Electricity, water, gas, you know, the stuff that puts this place a step above camping out.”

“Oh my!! Please don’t tell me you got rid of the mismatched, paisley, loud-striped, cartoon-character sheets. They gave the place such a unique feel.”

“Well, unfortunately we did. They were, uh, threadbare, and to quantify them as acceptable bed sheets, we would have had to develop a new process for thread grafting. We found it cheaper to buy nice, new, white high thread count sheets. They’re really comfortable. You should try them at your home.”

“Oh, that’s what we have at our home. But I’ll miss those old sheets. Do you still have the restaurant? Abe’s food was so good!”

“We have a very nice restaurant, and I think the food is as good as or better than what Abe used to serve.”

“We loved the old chalk board menu. Do you still use that?”

“No, we have a paper menu, and in most cases, we have all of the stuff available that’s on the menu.”

“We loved the way Abe used to be out of everything and he’d yell at us and tell us what we were going to eat, whether we liked it or not.”

“I think there are still restaurants in Hell where you can get that experience.”

“We’re gluten-intolerant vegan soy-addicts, and no ice in our water!!!! Can you accommodate our needs?”

“Wait a minute! Abe served trout, steak or Cornish Game hens with Spanish rice. What part of that accommodated your diet??”

And so it goes. Weekly I get these calls from Boulder-ites. They usually end up giving us a try, arriving late in the day in their late-model, bumper-sticker laden (COEXIST, Impeach Bush, Go Green, blah, blah, blah) Subaru’s, ready for a soak, a meal and a bed.
We bend over backwards to try and win them over. In most cases, we do. But this goes back to the fact that The Riverside is exceptional because it is The Riverside. It’s not about us, our personalities or our politics. It’s not about comfortable beds and new sheets. It’s not about whether you’re from Boulder, CO or Shawnee, KS. All you need to ‘get The Riverside’ is a heart, a soul and an appreciation and understanding of what makes life unique and special. Twenty-four square miles, surrounded by reality, is Boulder, Co; and fortunately for us, it’s loaded with people that get it.

Living Life Lakeside

I used to live in a magnificent 12,000 sq.ft. historic building perched right smack dab on the banks of the Colorado River; I could walk out my back door to the edge of my property and either fish or pee into a stretch of Gold Medal trout water that people from all over the country would travel to and pay big bucks for the opportunity to flick San Juan worms and caddis flies into its eddies and pools, hoping to land many rainbows, browns or brookies, but thrilled to land one, and if skunked, happy to have been there trying. My wife and daughter still live there, although they haven’t the proclivity to either fish or pee in the river. My hope is that when they look at the river, they think of me and wish that I were fishing or peeing there still; but I am not, nor will I be anytime soon. Maybe even never again.

I now reside in Flowood, Mississippi, an eastern suburb of Jackson, in an apartment complex called Reflection Point, on a little body of water known as Mirror Lake. In my previous Colorado life, I would revel in and delve into the history of the river we lived on, initially known as the Grand River, carver of the Grand Canyon, until 1922 when it was renamed the Colorado. Needless to say, Mirror Lake doesn’t quite have the pedigree of the Colorado, nor does its run-off contribute to anything other than duck soup. In fact, Mirror Lake is a man-made 40-acre body of water that was built to accomodate and add asthetic value to a large, mirrored office building and the subsequent apartment complex (Reflection Point / Mirror Lake – get it?). I live in the apartments, and I work in the office building.

Ergon’s headquarters are in the Mirror Lake Building, a large, multi-storied building with a mirrored glass exterior. The city of Flowood, located in Rankin County, MS, is your typical bedroom community, comprised of single and multi-family housing, strip malls, a new shopping area with the requisite Lowes, Target, Kohls and all of the supporting cast, and an anonymous, big-time taxpaying corporation quietly hiding in a large mirrored structure on the banks of Mirror Lake. Unless you work for Ergon, you drive by and don’t think about or have any idea who or what resides in the big building on the lake, as the small street-level ‘you’d miss it unless you were looking for it’ sign is the only clue as to whom or what occupies the structure. Ergon is the Greek word for ‘Work’ – while ‘ego’ is part of the word, it’s not part of the Ergon picture.

The Ergon building is rather unspectacular – a six story rectangle joined to a smaller three story section. Like the organization, the building is practical, serviceable and not the least bit ostentatious. It stands out only because at a height of six stories, it is five stories taller than anything else for miles around. I work on the third floor of the six-story building. I’d been there numerous times in my previous life – the life where I knew I was a short-timer, and knew I wouldn’t ever work for a big company, because I knew that I was ultimately going to live life riverside. Then two weeks ago, at the end of my first day at corporate, I punched the down button on the elevator to head home and said to myself, “Holy crap! After 30 years of doing everything humanly possible to avoid working in this sort of situation, I’m now working in a place with an elevator, and I’m excited and thanking God that I’m standing here pressing this button.” Flirting with poverty has a profound way of changing your perspective.

Colorado vs. Mississippi; lots to compare, lots to say. I’ll start with the topography. Colorado has big time mountains, and Mississippi is flat – no point higher than 1000 feet above sea level. (There are five states that have no point exceeding 1000 feet above sea level; I’ve given you one, for $1000, name the others.) They both have lots of pine trees – Colorado has rigid, upright, lodge-pole pines, while Mississippi has a fat-needled, droopy, almost sensuous kind of pine tree. The Colorado pines are always on guard, ready-for-a-big-snowfall and up to whatever nature throws at them; the Mississippi pines are lush, fat, lazy and look as if they’re thinkin’ about fixin’ to do nuthin’. They are both beautiful.

Colorado has Trail Ridge Road, at 12,183 feet elevation, the highest paved roadway in the US. As you wind to the top, the views make you wish you had something beyond a mere camera to record them. When you get to the top, (unless you’re from Boulder) you know that someone way beyond human is responsible for this vista; someone like, maybe, God. But God also did some road work in Mississippi. Little known to outsiders but spectacular in a way that makes serenity a much sought-after religion is the Natchez Trace Parkway. This languid stretch of two-lane, beautifully-paved, commercial-vehicle free road traces a 444-mile stretch from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN. The road, or ‘Trace’, was carved through heavily wooded forest by Native Americans who knows how long ago, and used in subsequent years by all form and fashion of our ancestral travelers. The National Parks Service now maintains the road, and dots it with historical stop-offs and points of interest. I drove the Trace from Jackson to Natchez and back on a recent Sunday. I love to drive, and the days’ misting rain, the heavy pine forests and gentle hills and curves made the trip an unexpected, indescribable narcotic pleasure - not to compare the Trace to Trail Ridge, nor Trail Ridge to the Trace; both are singularly spectacular.

No one has the market on beauty cornered. You don’t have to be looking at mountains and rivers to be happy. The view of a man-made lake from a third floor office can be breathtaking. It’s all a matter of perspective.

To be continued…

(Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Rhode Island and Delaware)

Leaving Life Riverside

That isn’t a typo. Many know the changes that are afoot, but for those who don’t, here’s the story.

In late April, I had discussions with two separate entities that set some things in motion that couldn’t be stopped. The first discussion involved a sit down with my old employer, ERGON ; (http://www.ergon.com/ ) they offered me an employment opportunity that was simply too good to ignore, especially at my age, with my limited capabilities and in this economy. It’s not in the beautiful Rocky Mountains on the banks of the Colorado River – it’s in Jackson, MS. (Note to those in Colorado: Jackson, MS doesn’t suck. Not even close.) How could I consider this, you ask? I mentioned that there were two discussions. Shortly after the Ergon discussion, an individual sat me down, looked me straight in the eye and told me “I want to buy The Riverside.” “Wow”, I thought, “the stars are in alignment, the gods have spoken and the Three Princes of Serendip have just booked rooms at The Riverside!”

When we bought the hotel, there were always discussions about how long we wanted to operate it, provided we were financially able to keep it afloat and the banks and our creditors didn’t make the decision for us. Five years for sure, and maybe as long as ten years; unless someone came along and wanted it more than we did, at which point, we would consider the offer. Well here was this someone, and his unexpected overture just happened to coincide with an out-of- the-blue, over-the-top, once-in-a-lifetime, multi-hyphenated job opportunity.

I accepted the job, and began to work with the buyer on the due-diligence details. The potential buyer did all sorts of things that made me think he was serious – he loudly, openly and publicly told people he was buying it. Without consulting or getting approval from me, he invested in capital equipment for the kitchen and hotel. He continually brought in friends and associates and showed them what he was going to fix, change, improve, add, subtract, divide and multiply.
I thought this guy was serious!! So much so, that I basically checked out of the business, let him take control of it, and began making plans for the next chapter in our life journey. I gave him our offer sheet, and it went unacknowledged for three weeks. I started to wonder what the hell was happening – no counter offer, no discussion, no “are you crazy, I wouldn’t give you half of what you’re asking for this dump!” Nothing. Upon finally being pressed for a response, he simply said “I’m not interested, and I've decided to concentrate on other issues.” Huh?? What about the crowd of friends you had in here two nights ago speaking as if you were the soon-to-be owner?

Here are a few links that might help describe me and my ability to trust and judge other humans, especially regarding this particular human interaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmuck
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dupe
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sucker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_(person)
http://www.oxfordenglishdictionary.org/stupididiotwho

We bury our dead, we dry our tears and we move on. We also hopefully learn from our mistakes – trust needs to be earned, not passed out like candy on Halloween night to any neighborhood spook that shows up at our door.

So the second part of the serendipitous equation went away like a foul smell, but part one remained a reality. The position of VP of Sales for Ergon Armor http://www.ergonarmor.com/ awaits me in Jackson, MS. The Riverside is for sale, and we have five interested parties. I say to those interested parties, know that it is an acquired taste and not for everyone. Know that we are selling more than a house and a building that generates revenue – we are selling a historic Grand County icon, a building that comes with a luscious past that transcends any who would own it and all who now visit. Know that if you are lucky enough to be able to own this place, your life will be sometimes cursed, but mostly blessed. Know that your daily life will be filled with the very best of what humanity has to offer, 98% of the time. But be very wary of strangers bearing gifts. Welcome them with open hearts and open arms, as we did.........but be wary.

To be continued….

The Town Meeting, Part II

In Part I, we talked about the town's plan to raise needed revenue for infrastructural repairs to the town's water system, resting heavily on the backs of the businesses, and to a lesser degree, the residential customers. The monthly water bill for the Riverside was arbitrarily raised from $150/month to $750/month. I say arbitrarily because it is obvious that those on the town council or whoever refigured this new rate have no concept of cash flow as it relates to running a business. That $600/month increase translates to an additional 103 room rentals per year – and that’s just to maintain our current levels of income vs. expenses. Multiply that by the 5, which is the total number of hotels in town who will also have similar rate increases, and that requires an additional 515 room nights spent in Hot Sulphur; this increase needing to occur in a depressed economy, where average bookings were down this year by 20%. So we know this isn’t possible; memo to town council – wishing and hoping don’t make it so! One of the town council members actually said “if the business owners aren’t smart enough to figure out how to come up with the extra revenue, they shouldn’t be business owners.” Smacks a little of Marie Antoinette’s “let them eat cake” attitude, doesn’t it? I say to you, town council person, “if you’re smart enough to be on the town council, you’ll be smart enough to figure out where to come up with all of the lost tax revenue you’ll need to recover from the stupid business owners who’ve gone belly-up!”

So the first round of elevated water bills hit our mail boxes in mid-July, and the much discussed “what-ifs” became reality for all of the business owners, complete with an August 15th due date. (One of the other problems with the increase is that the water bills are quarterly, so you need to come up with three months worth of $750 all at once. That's a big check for water that the town pulls out of the adjacent Colorado River.) This spurred several of the business owners to band together for a meeting – not a town hall meeting, but a meeting of business owners-only to discuss what could be done to stop this municipal cash grab from all of those Hot Sulphur business’s million dollar war chests – yeah, right. I was informed that we were to meet on Wednesday night at 7:00PM at the Barking Dog Pub. Unlike the last town meeting I attended, where the participants had to stoke up on hooch at home before spending the next few hours at the HSS Town Hall, the meeting planners decided to skip that formality and just have the damn meeting in the town bar. Anybody yet see a potential problem with that? Let’s get a bunch of people together who are already fuming mad, then let’em pound down brews before and during the meeting, and then have a heated argument. That should make for a productive evening.

When we enter the Barking Dog for the meeting, there were only a few of the business owners present, and only two that I had previously met. There was one man whom I didn’t recognize holding court down at the end of the bar. He was a tall, slim fellow, made all the taller by his outlandishly conspicuous white cowboy hat – not a 10-gallon hat, but maybe a 7.5 gallon hat. He wore a grey tank top, the armpit areas of which were truncated with dark sweat stains. He was loudly waving his arms about as if he were below deck in a rolling sea swatting at…..…..…wait a minute, it was Ron, the drunken plumber who tried unsuccessfully to unclog our pipes on New Year’s night. What in the hell was he doing here?? What the hell kind of a business does he own?? I didn’t know being the official Hot Sulphur Springs “Town Drunk” qualified someone as a business owner. Can “Town Drunk” be some sort of a new franchise opportunity I’m not aware of? (And let me tell you something; earning the moniker of ‘Town Drunk of HSS’ is no easy feat, as the competition is ferocious!) Ron was at the meeting not because he was a business owner; he was at the meeting because he lives at the bar, and the meeting was at the bar. WHY IN THE HELL DID WE HAVE THE MEETING AT THE BAR?? (Maybe that town council member was right to question the intelligence of the local business owners after all.)

At about 7:30, when all of the owners arrived, we ordered one more round for the discussion and moved from the bar to a large table to begin the meeting. Including Cowboy Hiccup, there were 11 participants at the table, representing three of the five hotels, owners of most of the towns’ apartment units and the owner of the Barking Dog. The meeting started badly, as Ron the plumber was dominating the conversation with inane drunken babble about how he personally ran the water treatment plant for 20 years and how he was the town’s master plumber and everything is this town is screwed up and blah blah blah blah blah. After about five minutes of this, the meeting organizer asked that we limit our responses to two minutes, and then suggested that we appoint a ‘Sergeant at Arms’ in the event that participants got out of order. How many informal meetings have you attended where the first order of business was to appoint a ‘Sergeant at Arms’?

We went around the table, with everyone getting their two minutes to state their issues, offer solutions, ask questions, etc.; except everyone’s two minute allotment turned into five minutes as the Popped Plumber kept interrupting with his nonsensical blather, which would then bring the Sergeant at Arms around the table to shake a finger in his face and threaten to throw him out – several times he actually grabbed Ron in a bear hug and tried to pull him out of his chair. Again I ask, ever seen this sort of thing in one of your neighborhood meetings? But then I don’t suppose you have your meetings in a bar.

One of the apartment owners, a lovable old curmudgeon named Lou, barked so loudly at Ron to shut up that he was actually able to get him to shut up and make the two most sharply perceptive points of the evening; point one being that they should no longer officially refer to the town of HSS as the ‘county seat of Grand County’, rather, it should henceforth be known as the ‘toilet seat of Grand County’. His second point, the highlight of the evening, involved the importance of water conservation in this water starved area, and suggested a citizens awareness campaign with a slogan of “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down!”

It was at this point, after picking ourselves up off the floor, that Julie and I excused ourselves from the proceedings and headed back to The Riverside. The end result of the group meeting was a decision to show a united front as business owners and write a formal letter to the town, demanding to know specifics on forthcoming stimulus money, educating the council as to the catastrophic end this town will come to – on their watch - if they run all of the businesses off, and finally, a strong suggestion that all future town hall meetings be held at the Barking Dog and Ron the Plumber be installed on the town council as it’s voice of reason. He couldn’t do any worse.

The Other 98%....

My last few blog entries have been a bit on the negative side, detailing the some-times ugly attributes of people who enter into our life because of the ‘OPEN’ sign we have on our front door. For this I apologize, as the original intent of this blog wasn’t to make it into a wordier version of Facebook – (“I’m really bored right now. Think I’ll take a quiz to see what 1960’s cartoon character I’d most likely smell like after a run in the woods...”) The intent of the blog was to chronicle the unique aspects of our lives as they played out doing an unusual job in a small town while living in a historic building on a magnificent river. Instead, I’ve fallen prey to bitching about the 2% of life’s bastards who have turned this dream into a sometimes nightmare. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.

As recompense for my recent caustic digressions, I’d like to take this opportunity to laud the other 98% of the human race, who are our reason for giving up safety and security so that we may experience, share and enjoy the glory of their being. We did this because we love people and we derive great satisfaction in interacting with them and making them happy. In fact, Julie has given her life to making children with special needs productive, whole and happy, and some gutless, anonymous son of a bitch referred to her as “two-faced” in another vicious on-line review. Whoops! Sorry, said I wasn’t going to go there anymore; last time.

It was June 29th, 2008, and we had lived full-time at The Riverside for only two 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 isn’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, I’d say he was in his early 80’s, and he looked very much like my father looked shortly before my father died. He was unable to communicate verbally, barely nodding ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to queries from his grandsons. 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 baseball caps sitting askance on their skulls; (bear with me; I’m an old fart.) 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 through the next would have tried to patience of most. In followed the boy's grandmother, who told me that she and her husband spent their wedding night at The Riverside in 1952, and that her husband “didn’t have too much time left, and they wanted to see the place one more time”. She 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. She paused and bowed at the door for a minute, reverentially, and without speaking, 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. I was dumbfounded, speechless, and choked up to the point of not even being able to communicate with this family. In fact, I can’t retell this story to people without tears welling in my eyes and my throat constricting, as I have burned in my memory the eager, helpless, dying face of the man who was trying in that instant, through strained eyes, to suck in and relive one of his life’s greatest memories.

I thought we bought a hotel and restaurant. It was at this point that I finally realized that we bought much more than a business; we are the stewards of this magnificent building and the memories of thousands of unknown people and their stories. How many weddings, receptions and honeymoon nights, how many births and deaths, how many Christmas mornings and Thanksgiving turkeys, how much heartache and how much joy? What an awesome responsibility it is 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. I followed them out the door, watching as the grandsons delivered their charge into the van with the delicate skill and loving care of surgeons; goofy hats still askance on their skulls.

It didn’t take but two days of living at The Riverside for me to understand why we did this; not for the bastards, but for the other 98% of the human race.

To be continued………

"Yuck! Clean it up!"

The words harpooned me, taking not only my breath away, but every semblance of dignity and self worth in our self-perceived successful undertaking of running The Riverside.

“Yuck! Clean it up!”

As we have a limited – and often times non-existent – advertising budget, our life-blood for procurement of new customers to the hotel and restaurant is largely based upon good ‘word of mouth’. We rely on the residual effect of our hard work and exceptional efforts in providing a positive experience for bringing in new customers from the recommendations and kind words of current and regular customers. We’re not unique in this matter – all businesses, especially ‘moms & pops’, thrive on good word of mouth, or die with the opposite. And now with the internet - I was skeptical at first, but I’ll now boldly predict that it is here to stay – good or bad word of mouth is out there for millions to see at the click of one of those linkey things.

“Yuck! Clean it up!”

As of this writing, guests to The Riverside have posted 30 reviews on various sites – Google, Yahoo, CitySearch, Tripadvisor (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Search?q=Riverside+Hotel%2C+Hot+Sulphur+Springs%2C+CO&sub-search.x=7&sub-search.y=12) and B&B.com, and I’m overwhelmed at the kind, encouraging and generous words, many from strangers and guests that I’m sorry to say I can’t remember. Of the 30 reviews, 23 have given us the highest five star rating and 6 have given a four star rating; quick math tells you that one rating and review remains.

“Yuck! Clean it up!”

Reviews #1 through #29 have titles such as “Incredible Find!” “Our best stay to date in Hot Sulphur” “A wonderful lifetime memory” “A rare gem”; and then there’s review #30 - “Yuck! Clean it up!”

Here’s what our friendly reviewer had to say about our hotel:

“What might have been a nice hotel in a convenient spot was ruined by two things: absolutely filthy and smelly 50+ year-old carpeting throughout and grimy, outdated and frankly frightening bathrooms. The folks running the place seem nice enough but, sorry folks, good intentions don't cut it when paying guests expect a clean environment. However much it might have cost to clean up and update this old building, it should have been done before opening up the hotel for business. Whatever the other hardships there may be in converting a ramshackle old clap-trap building into a hotel, there is absolutely NO excuse for not cleaning the bathrooms, miserable though they may be. Beware of this place if you value cleanliness and charm - you won't find either here and this frightful relic just may turn your stomach.”

Oh my God! Who said this about our hotel? The name on the review was ‘Pdoo’, from Chicago. IL, and they stayed in the hotel in May. I didn’t remember anyone saying that the bathrooms were frightening or filthy – most normal people who would be put off enough by dirty bathrooms or carpet to take the time to write such a devastatingly horrible review – no, make such a personal attack - wouldn’t hesitate to make mention of it during their stay. I’ll take this one step further – anyone who would be such a heartless, malicious asshole as to write something so mean spirited, would generally have the balls (read "have the balls" as also having a general lack of social skills) to personally confront you right there on the spot. “Hey buddy, your bathroom is filthy – Yuck! Clean it up!”

I immediately start going through guest registers, looking for someone from Chicago who stayed at the hotel in May. Wait a minute. We were closed in May, opening for two family reunions on May 25th – one family from Denver, the other from New York. Lovely people all of them – totally satisfied with their experience, with nothing even resembling a complaint from any of them. Further investigation into the other four rooms we rented the last week in May have no one from anywhere other than the Front Range – no one from Chicago or even any point east of Denver. So I’m thinking, “Could this person have us confused with another hotel?” “Could this be a competitor, or perhaps a disgruntled ex-employee?”

“Yuck! Clean it up!”

The other part of me wanted to dismiss this as I try to dismiss the previously mentioned bastards in our restaurant; someone whose standards for acceptance aren’t founded in the real world, and are therefore never met by anyone in this world. But I couldn’t put it away, as the more I thought about it, the more I came to the realization that this wasn’t a legitimate review by a Riverside customer, rather, this was written by someone close to us. But for what purpose; to get me to clean the downstairs men’s room more than once a month? Or was the review meant to personally injure us, demean our efforts and “good intentions” and ultimately hurt and devalue the hotel?

Fortunately, the good folks at TripAdvisor take this sort of thing seriously; the legitimacy of their site isn’t worth a hoot if anyone can say anything, anytime without basis or foundation. They also tell me that it can even be classified as libel in a court of law, when proved to be a false and malicious published statement intended to damage someone’s reputation – we won’t have any trouble proving the published part. So they’re going to get to the bottom of it for us, and I’m both anxious and a little scared to find out who the bastard might be.

“Yuck! Clean it up!”

To be continued……..

The Four Seasons of Grand County

I’m assuming that anyone who reads this Blog lives in a typical, human-friendly environment that has four seasons. You live by those seasons, as they control and define your temperaments, your wardrobes, your activities, and certainly your ESPN schedule – they are the clock that controls your life. Atypical environments – Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, Siberia, The Moon, and Columbia, Mo – don’t have four seasons; they might have two, maybe three, and that makes them uninhabitable by mortals who demand the normalcy of an acceptable human existence. (OK, I’m kidding about Columbia, MO having less than four seasons.)
I’ve never lived in Columbia, Mo, and I no longer live in Shawnee, Ks – I now reside in Hot Sulphur Springs, a town so small that unless you had to pee really badly or were in desperate need of a bag of chips and a tank of gas, you wouldn’t remember that you drove through it on your way from here to anywhere. But this is Grand County, Co, and we still have four seasons! They are as follows:
- Pre Winter
- Kick your ass, freeze your butt, bury you with snow, make the power company rich, kick your ass again, Oh God I’m cold!, How many more years before summer?, I can’t even begin to feel my ass anymore Winter
- Post Winter
- Spr-ummer-fall

We’ll start with Pre-winter, which generally begins sometime in late July or early August. I know you’re thinking that in most parts of the US, late July or early August are generally the beginning of the ‘dog days’ of summer. In northeastern Kansas, the dog days meant a continual stream of 90+ degree days with little or no precipitation; the green and lush bluegrass lawn that you worked so hard to attain in the spring has turned into a dormant, dusty brown plot with a few strands of nut grass popping up here and there. You sit on the back deck in the evening in a dry heat, listening to the cicadas do there thing amongst the drying leaves of the moisture-starved hardwoods. It drags on to the point where you’re not only ready for a cold snap, you’re praying for it. Not so in Grand County – Pre-Winter is that little reality check that dumps two feet of snow on August 9th in the higher elevations, shutting down Trail Ridge Road (the pass that joins the western part of Rocky Mountain National Park to the east and Estes Park), if only for a day. Pre-Winter is the season that this July 29th dumped a couple of inches of slushy snow/hail on the tourists in Grand Lake, who the day before were sunbathing on the beach. Pre-Winter is Grand County’s reminder that no matter how nice it is today, a climactic Armageddon is always – and with utmost certainty - right around the corner. Pre-Winter can last as long as two months, sometimes even stretching into October, offering some of the most beautiful weather to be had anywhere in the world. You’ll have days with highs in the upper- 60’s to low 70’s, with the golden aspens set against a sky so brilliantly blue that it leaves you challenged for adjectives. Just don’t ever plan an outdoor wedding during Pre-winter, as that 70-degree, azure day can turn into Santa Land in a matter of hours.

The next and most dominant of the Grand County seasons is real winter, not to be remotely mistaken with anything that the rest of the country refers to as winter. As I mentioned earlier, this is ‘Kick your ass, freeze your butt, blah, blah, blah winter’. Your typical winter in Grand County generally lasts anywhere from 9 to 14 months. Daytime highs of -10F are common for most of December & January. February is usually a lot colder. There was a night when I went outside to smoke a cigar and the nighttime air being sucked through the business end of the cigar froze up the moisture from my breath in the discharge end of the cigar. I wasn’t out too long that evening. It is literally too cold to snow, as the flakes are so frozen and the air so dry that the snow falls like the finest ash you’ve ever encountered; you can effortlessly sweep a 3-4 inch snowfall from your front walk with a kitchen broom. However, it does accumulate, and by the end of February, you’ll typically have anywhere from 4-8 feet of it piled high on your northern exposure areas, i.e., the back of the house and roof-areas that don’t see the low-slung southern-sky sun for a few months. In fairness, it’s not always below zero in February – occasionally you’ll get a little tropical warm-up, say into the low 20’s, which then brings some moisture that translates into a damp-snow blizzard that limits visibility in a car to the inside front of your windshield. Getting caught in one of these – I have several times – is what made St. Christopher get out of the transportation business.

There are a few plus sides to real winter in Grand County. You have some of the best skiing to be had anywhere in the world. You can also ski in the winter, with some terrific powder and wonderful slopes. And then there’s the skiing! Moguls, side-slipping, stemming, traversing, cliff-hucking – woo baby, I can’t get enough of it. Not really. I tried to ski once, and took my skis off halfway down the bunny slope, never again to attempt a double-reverse traversing cliff-huck. So while the winter in Grand County offers some pretty good skiing, if you don’t ski, you’re pretty much you-know-what for something else to do. I guess one final plus of a Grand County winter for me is that the brutally cold climate is not conducive to the growth of the large, poisonous tarantulas typically found in tropical climates. I thank God every day for that fact, as I’m scared to death of big tarantulas. I’m always thinking to myself, “If I lived in an Amazonian rain forest, I’d be all the time dealing with big, hairy spiders. Here in Grand County, with 9 months of snow and sub-freezing temperatures, that isn’t an issue.”

Real winter is followed by post-winter, also known locally as ‘mud season’. Ahhh, Mud Season; how idyllic is that? Here’s a free slogan for the local Chamber – “Come Celebrate Mud Season in Beautiful Hot Sulphur!” Mud season is always welcomed by the locals, as it is the harbinger of better times ahead. The days are slowly getting longer and steadily getting warmer, the temperatures now starting to crack that 32-degree freeze-line with regularity – at least in the late afternoon, on sunny days. Those dry powdery snowfalls of real winter are replaced by heavy, wet, blinding snowstorms – but they melt quickly, especially when the daytime highs are in the low 40s and the torrential rains help to knock the winter snow accumulations into the swollen streams and rivers. And the end result of this glacial cleansing is, well, mud; on the roads, in the yards, the parks, the trails, the parking lots, the carpets and floors, and especially on Lucy’s’ underbelly and paws. Many of the locals, especially those involved in the seasonal hospitality and food and beverage industries, pack up and head out of town to warmer, sunnier, cleaner climes – that would be anywhere other than Grand County, CO.

The final season, though the shortest of the four, is the reason why 19,000 people put up with the other three seasons to reside in this county. Spr-ummer-fall essentially takes the best aspects of spring, summer and fall and rolls them into one languid, lush and beautiful 6-8 week season. At the onset of Spr-ummer-fall, the river thaws and gushes forth, the mountain meadows become lush with grass, sage and wildflowers, and the days end in a bask of alpenglow. This one-two week season is followed by a mountain summer – warm, dry days and cool starlit nights – where the sky is bluer and the stars are brighter than any you’ve ever seen or could imagine. The afternoon heat is often punctuated by a brief blast from Mother Nature, bringing oft needed moisture and relief to the arid valley. Only occasionally do the storms last into the evening, and even less do they bring summer snow. The final weeks of Spr-ummer-fall bring the golden aspens – a sight that makes the orange and red of Midwestern oaks, maples and hickories pale in comparison. If the color gold can ever look ablaze, it is in these aspens as they rest against the backdrop of the foot hills and peaks of the Rockies. One of the most spectacular sights one can ever behold is seen from the top of Ute Pass, a 20+ mile drive from the Riverside, where the spectacle of the Gore Range and the Blue River Valley is laid out before you in a panorama that has to be witnessed – it can’t be described. It is mountains that look like they were drawn by children, with sheer faces and exaggerated jagged peaks; throw in the golden explosion of the aspens, and you’ll find it hard to get back in your car and leave the view behind.

The four seasons of Grand County are truly a dichotomy – nature at its cruelest and most malevolent at one turn, and glorious and magnanimous at the other. It is as exhilarating to witness the brutality of the winter as it is to revel in the gentleness of summer. But forgive me my abruptness in ending this chapter of life in the mountains; I must now put aside my musings, as it is starting to rain tarantulas.

Stoned Soup

I came from an industry – manufacturing – that required all job applicants to pass a drug screening before being hired, and then be subject to random drug testing, (although we never did a random test without susceptible cause, as the omnipresent specter of a whiz-quiz combined with the need for a steady paycheck were generally enough to keep them from the ganja), or mandatory testing in the event of an injury or accident. One of my favorite pre-employment drug test stories (we all have them, don’t we?) involved a young man who called late on a Friday evening just as I was locking up for the weekend, wanting to know if we’d gotten the results from his drug screening, and had he passed the test. I asked him “what do you think?” and he answered, “I’m not sure, that’s why I’m calling to find out."

While I’m generally an advocate of respecting people’s privacy and personal liberties, all it took were a few incidences of valves being inadvertently left open causing nasty, very hard to clean up black stuff to spew out on the floor, forklifts crashing into the bright fluorescent yellow roof support poles located smack-dab in the middle of the fork lift aisle, or the wrong pump pumping the wrong stuff out of the wrong tank into the wrong mixer before I decided to shelve my “what you do on your time is your business” philosophy and start drug testing. Amazing how quickly the expensive, hard to clean and potentially dangerous drug-induced brain-farts virtually disappeared.

I’m not in heavy manufacturing any longer – no big mixing tanks, no pumps, no 150-hp motors or 4” ball valves making 2000-gallon batches of noxious goo. I’m now in light manufacturing – pots, pans, little Kitchen-Aide mixers and a consumer-grade food processor, manufacturing stocks, soups, salads, entrees and crème brule. No need for drug testing here.
Wait just a minute! How ironic that an industry where overstressed people are running around cramped quarters on slippery floors at a breakneck pace with BIG SHARP KNIVES IN THEIR HANDS doesn’t require their employees to be drug and alcohol free. Why is this?? How can this be?? Simple – if you drug tested cooks before you hired them, and then actually expected them to stay sober during business hours, you’d have a pretty limited labor pool to draw from, especially in Grand County, CO. (Having said that, we are blessed at The Riverside to not only have a drug-free, sober-during-business-hours chef, but one that out-cooks all of the other four-star hash hawkers on the mountain.) Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with our previous chef, and it was he who opened my eyes to the proclivity of chefs to indulge in, no, to mostly outright abuse drugs and alcohol. When I told our food supplier that I thought our chef was pretty much stoned all of the time, he said “welcome to the restaurant business.” This explained a lot. Let’s be honest; you probably can’t come up with something like Sautéed Soy-infused Lichens served over a bed of Squid-Ink Pappardelle without a little creative help.

Often times the creative aspect can be skewed a bit when one asks the ganja gods for too much help. For example, our straight chef prepared a beautiful apple custard tart for dessert – light flaky crust, apples artfully arranged on a bed of silken vanilla custard. It was a sight to behold, almost too beautiful to slice and serve. Enter Chef Hookah who, of his own accord and without consulting straight chef, decided the tart needed that little extra something to really make the dish special. That something was beet juice. We had just gotten some beets from our local vegetable purveyor, and Bong Boy felt that the logical thing to do with fresh beets was to dice them, put them in a pot with a little water, and slowly cook them down into a brilliant red, syrupy reduction. This fire engine red reduction was then Jackson Pollock-ed onto a white desert plate, upon which the soft yellow tart would rest – indeed, a feast for the eyes, but not for the palate. The beet juice tasted like – and I mean this literally – dirt. Dirt is not a good taste, and it certainly doesn’t enhance the flavor of apple custard tart. The only dish the flavor of dirt might work well with would be an earthworm flan, which I thought of but didn’t suggest to our Weeded Wonder, for fear that it would end up as one of the evening specials.
We sold all of the tart that evening, and to a diner, they described the taste of the beet reduction as ‘interesting’. Know that when someone uses the term ‘interesting’ to describe something in a restaurant, that’s never, ever meant as an acknowledgement of successful taste bud manipulation.

While many may argue this point, I’ll assert that being stoned to the gills can generally have a negative affect on motor skills, cognitive ability and overall job performance – unless maybe you’re Jerry Garcia. Or you were Jerry Garcia. I should get less of an argument on this point when you consider that the individual has thrown down 10 of my Budweisers along with 6-8 shots of Johnny Walker Red or Hornitos Reposada Tequila during the evening rush, on top of his usual afternoon of reefer madness. Do the terms “thick tongued”, “pie-eyed” or “cow-faced” conjure up any notion of a person you’d want active on your payroll? I ask, would you willingly pay work-comp insurance premiums for this individual while he was hacking up a chicken with a razor sharp Santoku, eyes lolling to the back of his head, drool pooling at the corners of his mouth? I think not – not even would Jerry Garcia write that check.

So Chef Doobie-Doer has moved on, and fortunately, he’s taken his passion for Maui Wowie, tequila shots and Budweiser into someone else’s restaurant. As long as I’m in this business, I know that I’ll have to employ and deal with those whose skills and creativities are fueled by a ‘higher’ calling, and just be thankful that we don’t use forklifts in our kitchen.

Riverside Garlic Salad

This is our signature salad, developed from a recipe handed down to me and my siblings from my father, Alfred J. Paradise. Dad loved to cook, and he passed that passion for good food and entertaining on to all of his children. I also place partial blame on both of my parents for helping to get me into this mess, as they both new how to cook and entertain, and ended up instilling this ‘flaw’ in all of their children. It was rare that a week went by without some sort of get together in the Paradise house involving food and drink with either our large extended family or agglomerations of friends, neighbors or business associates. I grew up around food and fun, and have tried to turn those wonderful childhood memories and experiences into a respectable career here at The Riverside.

Dad was an empirical cook, and rarely did he consult a cookbook or magazine for a recipe. He flew by the seat of his pants, often recreating food from only the gustatory memories of dishes he’d had in restaurants. He took great delight in 'jacking' with people who’d ask for recipes of his original creations. “Oh, there’s no recipe” he’d say, “It’s just a few tablespoons of this or a cup or two of that.” Or he would go to the other extreme, saying things like “boil the potatoes for 17 minutes, then immediately douse them in 52-degree water for six minutes, making sure the water maintains the 52-degree temperature.” He would delight inwardly as his unsuspecting dupes would diligently write down his culinary canard, always to come back at some later point and complain that although they followed the instructions to the letter, they were unable to recreate his recipe.

This is no canard; this recipe should make enough dressing for four large servings of garlic salad. You’ll need a large round-bottom wooden salad bowl, ( http://www.bowlmill.com/cgi-bin/bowlmill/1015U1.html?id=okCdE7oK ) the rougher the texture of the wood, the better, and a hefty wooden spoon.

6 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon coarse kosher salt
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 lemon
½ cup of olive oil
½ cup ice cubes

Press the garlic, or mince extremely fine, and place in the bottom of the salad bowl with the kosher salt and Dijon mustard. With the back of the spoon, make a smooth paste – grind that salt into the garlic. Add the juice of ½ lemon to the paste, and slowly add the olive oil, stirring to a smooth consistency. Add the ice cubes, and stir well, until the ice has started to melt. You don’t have to totally melt the ice at this point – you can pour the mixture into a cup, and use within the hour. The ice does three things – it emulsifies the mixture to help prevent it from separating, helps cut the potency, and obviously cools the dressing. This salad should be served very cold, with cold crisp lettuce, mozzarella and croutons - no store bought croutons; here is our standard Riverside crouton recipe.

5 slices Farm to Market Sourdough Bread http://www.farmtomarketbread.com/
¼ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons garlic salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

In a large sauté pan, heat the olive oil and butter to near smoking. Add the garlic salt and cayenne pepper, and then add the bread, (which you’ve cut into ½” cubes). Keep tossing the croutons until they’re coated with the oil/butter/salt mixture and toasted to a crunch.

Toss the lettuce with the croutons and the shredded mozzarella (use whatever type of lettuce you like - we use a mixture of romaine, fresh spinach when available, and mixed spring greens. This salad is also excellent with good old hand-shredded iceberg lettuce - that's all we had growing up as poor white children in Johnson County, KS).
Add the dressing a little at a time, and keep tossing until all of the mixture is coated. SERVE COLD on chilled plates, and top with fresh cracked pepper.

Bastards in our Restaurant

Oh my, did I just say that!!??

I suppose I did, and I’m not ashamed to say that I have good reason for spewing that epithet, which tonight, comes from the bottom of my soul. I’ve learned a lot these past 18 months of living life Riverside, but first and foremost, I’ve learned that owning, running, working in and paying for a restaurant is not for the faint of heart. I’ve already got my eye on a second career – no, not life coach – restaurant consultant. I can make millions, and save my collective consulters billions. I’ll charge a flat rate of $1000 per hour; granted, that’s a pretty heady fee, but all it’ll take is one hour, and one thousand of your dollars, to personally save you millions by giving you 100+ solid gold reasons why, as a novice in the industry, (as was I) you’d be a screaming idiot to invest your time, money, blood, sweat and tears in a restaurant.

Before I go off half-cocked, I have to say that the opportunity exists for the experienced restaurateur to make a fine living, and if your skin is thick enough, you can also get some major job satisfaction out of seeing most of your customers swoon with desire as they sup your soup and swill your sauvignon, while you ignore the petty complaints from the bastards who have no clue of what’s involved in serving a well-presented, hot plate of good food in a timely manner. I also have to admit that it can be a bit of an ego booster when the dining experience is a positive one in that people tend to treat you like a rock star – maybe a second rate rock star, but a rock star nonetheless - as they all but applaud as you walk by their table . Thanks to our talented chef and dedicated staff, I can say that the urge to applaud our efforts is, in fact, way more often the case than not. I can even break it down further and say that 90% of our diners go out of their way to say things like “best meal I’ve ever had”, “can’t believe there’s a restaurant like this in such an out of the way place”, “ better than any meal I’ve had in Denver”, etc. Of the remaining 10%, 8% are simply satisfied, not willing to gush forth with professions of gustatory euphoria, but neither were they unhappy with their dining experience. It is that final 2% that has earned the distinction of being politely referred to as “bastards”.

I’m not saying for a second that we don’t occasionally screw things up. Orders get mixed up, wait times can be excessive on busy weekend nights, some dishes just don’t click with some people – we’re only human, which automatically makes us less than perfect. When these slip-ups happen, we go out of our way to make it as right as we can. I’ve never charged anyone for food that they felt wasn’t up to par. I’ve ‘comp-ed’ many a dessert or appetizer when the food wasn’t delivered in a timely fashion – timely being defined by the customer, not by us. And pretty much in all of these aforementioned incidents of dining room malfeasance, the customers couldn’t be nicer and more understanding. They seem to get the “we’re dealing with human beings here” thing.

Now I’ll go off half-cocked. I can literally count on one hand the incidents that we’ve had with diners who fall into the “bastards” category. These are people that are either so demanding, so small, so particular, or probably so generally unhappy with life and with themselves that nothing they encounter in this world satisfies them. We didn’t get them their meal fast enough, their water often enough, their bread hot enough or their food tasty enough – no matter that all of the aforementioned were delivered in the same fashion to the 50 other extremely satisfied diners that same evening. My guess is that these 2% bastards get pissed of at the grocery store, the gas station, the post office, the drivers license bureau (wait a minute….I’ve gotten pissed off at the drivers license bureau), and every other place or situation where they have to rely on or interact with human beings who are required to give them service.

So we’ve established the fact that there are those amongst us for whom no level of service is acceptable; they simply can’t be satisfied. I should accept this and move on down the road when I encounter one of these bastards. But unfortunately, my innate desire to please is scorched to the core when I’m unable to make everyone happy. I’ve never been moved to write a diatribe such as this based upon the 98% of the people that I do satisfy – it’s the 2% that I don’t (can’t) that eats at my craw and moves me to blogemote (a new verb!).


Maybe I should rethink the restaurant consultant thing. Instead, I say to you prospective restaurateurs, you can make a good living in the restaurant business, and you can also derive an immense amount of personal satisfaction from your job if you simply dedicate yourself to pleasing your customers and attending to their well being.

Just don’t let the bastards grind you down!