The town of Boulder, CO sits nestled in the foothills against the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. It is home to approximately 125,000 inhabitants, as well as the University of Colorado. Boulder is a beautiful city – it’s setting against the majestic Rockies, as well as its general design, layout and penchant for cleanliness, make for a wonderful educational and living environment. Perhaps because it is a college town, as well as a bastion of liberalism (as are most college towns - not that there’s anything wrong with that) it is also a petri dish for growing the odd, the arcane and the way, way, way “out-there” amongst the human species. Now, those of our good customers who have visited The Riverside and live in Boulder, I’m certainly not referring to any of you as belonging to this group; in fact, you are all normal to a fault. Sometimes I wish you’d shake it up a bit!
OK, I’ll be honest. There is maybe one of you who might’ve stepped outside the boundaries of normalcy just a bit during your Riverside visit.
It was late in August, and we were winding down our first summer season at The Riverside. It was a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon, and we were getting ready for dinner in the restaurant. The hotel had more than half of its rooms booked, so we were hoping that would translate to a busy evening in The River Room – we needed all we could get as we headed into the slower fall season. An attractive couple in their mid-40’s came into the lobby inquiring about a room for the night; upon showing them one of our full rooms with a river view, they gladly took the room, registered and paid in cash. All seemed normal.
The night’s dinner business was brisk, and it included our newly registered guests – they were from Boulder. I’ll call her Jane, but she had four names, which included a normal first name, then three surnames that covered the animal, vegetable and mineral spectrum. I’ll call him Jack, and he had but a first and last name, however, his last name was, I believe, a Native American derivative; he looked about as Native American as Andy Warhol, but he didn’t look like Andy Warhol. During dinner, Jane gathered up several of Julies knick-knacks – a plate her mother brought her from Italy, some colored votive candles and a small statue – and put them on their dinner table for adornment. Hmmmmm. Not that this was terribly unusual, but it made us take a little more notice of these people. After dinner, Jane took the knick-knacks and put them back on their original table, slightly re-arranged from how Julie had them, and then produced from her purse some rather unripe oranges, and added them to the mix – sort of a still life sans the canvas and frame. She beckoned some of the remaining dinner patrons to view her display. They all joined me in a quiet Hmmmmmmmm. (A note to future guests. Don’t ever, ever mess with any of Julie’s stuff. There are very few shit lists to be included on worse than the “You Messed with Julie’s Stuff” shit list. Wait a minute……I just remembered that the “You Minimized Julie’s Birthday” shit list is pretty bad too.)
After their meal and Jane’s attempt at performance art, she came into the kitchen while I was doing dishes. Just walked right into the kitchen – we don’t have a “welcome” sign on the kitchen door – and came up to me for a chat. When I say came up to me, I mean she took the art of being a “close talker” to a whole new level; a very uncomfortable level. She talked about all of the energy she was feeling in the building, and how blessed she felt that she and Jack had stumbled on to this marvelous place. She was very nice, very complementary and very well meaning – in spite of all this, she made me very nervous.
Monday morning started with the normal parade of departing weekend guests, followed by bed stripping and room cleaning. Not yet among the departing guests were our friends from Boulder, who had yet to surface. I was outside on the front walk, sweeping, yelling at Grandpa, whatever, when Boulder Jane greets me with a bright good morning smile, and asks, “Can you marry Jack and me?” I think I said something like, “Huh?” She and Jack decided last evening that they wanted to get married, today, and spend their honeymoon night in the John Lennon room. Jack pulled out $100, handed it to me and said “this should cover our room for tonight and our dinner last night”. It actually covered about 80% of the room and dinner, but Jack didn’t stay around to hear about that. I informed Miss Jane that I could not marry her, but as luck would have it, the Grand County courthouse was right up the street, and my guess was that would be a good place to start inquiring about marriage today, and probably divorce later in the week. Off the happy couple went, followed shortly by Julie and I leaving the Riverside for an always exciting trip into Granby and The City Market.
Back from the store an hour later, we pull up to The Riverside, and what greets us but Jack and Jane, sunning in front of the hotel. All of their belongings from their car were set out on the front walk, as if they were having some sort of yard sale; Jacks shirts hanging from our shutters, Jane’s skirts and tops draped over the open car doors and on our table and umbrella. Hmmmmmmmm.
Jane happily informs us that in fact they were to be married that afternoon at the courthouse, and were going to spend their honeymoon night in our hotel!! The next question was “Did I have enough liquor for Jane & Jacks honeymoon night?” Jane didn’t ask that question – I asked it of myself. The rest of the day involved the two of them behaving oddly throughout the hotel. Jane burned sage to get rid of evil spirits. Jack made sage tea for some of our other guests – luckily no one who drank it sued us. They both were sunning themselves – not naked, but close – on our back porch, coming in and out of the hotel in various states of undress. Jack had that natural BO that people who disdain chemicals and corporations have – the kind that’s real, as if it spews out of his pores from the core of his soul. He reminded me a little of the characters in Kerouac’s On The Road, a throwback to the beat hipster days where everything was cool – he seemed like he was sensing everything around him for the first time, in a feral sort of way. Hipster Jack told me that we were cool, unlike the hotel operators in Winter Park, who’d booted them out the night before. “They were so uptight”, he said; perhaps “uptight” is a Boulder-ism for “concerned about their other guests and their property”.
Jane was as nice as she could be, but she had no boundaries and absolutely no sense of propriety. I made sure I locked the bathroom door in our living quarters if I had business to do, because she would have tracked me down, barged in and had a conversation with me as I sat on the throne, if the mood so struck her. I always tell our guests to make themselves at home – and I mean that they do – but to take it to the literal context that Jane & Jack did has me thinking of saying to future guests, “make yourself at home, assuming your home isn’t currently the zoo.”
The restaurant wasn’t open that night, so we didn’t have to endure any more of Jane and Jack’s antics in the dining room. I don’t know where they ate – maybe down at the river where they caught fish with their hands and cooked them over a sage-stoked fire. During this respite from their loony presence, I welcomed a French family of four, two adults and two small children, who spoke not a word of English. The mother had a French/English dictionary, and pointed to English phrases – “we would like a room”, “we are very tired”, etc. We have only one room with two beds, and it adjoins the John Lennon room, but is separated by a door. “I’ll put you in ‘Phyllis’, our room with two full beds”, I tell them. They wanted a room with two beds – they we’re absolute about this; as absolute as someone can be who can’t verbalize but can only point at phrases in a book. Not even having to read further, you know what a cataclysmic boner this was, putting these poor, tired Frenchies in the room next to our sage smoking honeymooners. I can now picture the mother frantically paging through her French/English dictionary in the middle of the night, looking for the English equivalent of “When can I expect you to quit howling like a dog?”, or “Yes, we too wish God would help us!!”
I was up and out in the lobby very early the next morning, maybe 6:30 AM, and I saw a note on our check-in desk from our French guests that said, “We are eating breakfast, we will be back to pay”. Very shortly, they were in our lobby, looking as if not only they hadn’t slept, but they were up all night experiencing hell and anguish known only to the souls of the eternally damned; I’m certain that they experienced no less. The women pointed to a phrase in the book that said “our neighbors were noisy, we did not sleep” – I swear this phrase was in the book, as if this is something that foreigners commonly experience when traveling in the US. I apologized profusely, saying “sorry, sorry, sorry”, using my best French accent. I also didn’t charge them for their room. My biggest regret was that I didn’t speak French, as I would have loved to have heard their description of the carnal carnage that was occurring throughout the previous night in the adjacent room. I’m also grateful, and still a little surprised, that the family, including the two children, didn’t try to strangle me.
Jane and Jack finally checked out after a joint shower in one of our bathrooms. If you’ve seen the showers in our bathrooms, you’re now scratching your head in wonder as to how anyone could, or would want to, share a joint shower. You might also be wondering how I knew they took a joint shower? Trust me, everyone within three blocks of the hotel knew they took a joint shower.
I actually stood outside and watched them drive off, waving not so much a “goodbye” wave, but a “shoo-fly” wave, as I wanted to make damn sure that they were indeed gone from our hotel, our town and our lives. But they aren’t totally gone from our lives – their memory lives on in our psyche with every mention of Boulder or every whiff of someone else’s BO, and in reality through the permanent essential sage oil stain that they left on the pillow sham in the Lennon room. Seriously – Oxy-Clean, Spray n’Wash, hypnosis therapy and plenty of Dr. Bombay, we’ve tried it all; there’s nothing that will remove the memory, or the stain, of Hipster Jack & Boulder Jane.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Our First Anniversary, and the ensuing days of hell that ushered in 2009
Our first New Years Eve at The Riverside, three days after taking ownership of the hotel, while noteworthy for a variety of reasons, will be quickly dismissed when compared to New Years Eve 2009, and the days that immediately followed.
New Years Eve 2009 was a booming night, unlike any we’d ever had. A dinner/spa/room special filled the hotel, and we turned as many diners away from the restaurant as we were able to accommodate. Heretofore unheard of bar and booze business along with a full house made for a riotous event; again, as is customary at The Riverside, it included a hodge-podge of people and personalities that would be more diverse than a Boulder phone book.
New Years Day dawned bright and beautiful, the morning sun and the brilliant blue of the Middle Park sky brought the repentant revelers down for a 10:00 AM breakfast and a hardy head start on the New Year. A day of good-byes at the checkout, room clean up, and the occasional glimpse at the football games, were followed by a slow dinner crowd, which afforded us the opportunity to sit down to dinner with our visiting friends from Kansas City on their last night at The Riverside. Darin the mortician/part-time waiter demanded that we sit, relax and enjoy the experience and cuisine of The River Room Restaurant, and was also gracious enough to act as our host and waiter. The wine and the accompanying good times flowed, and the hectic holiday week was indeed ending on a sweet note.
I can’t remember who came and told me that the Grand County police were in the lobby waiting to serve a warrant for Darin’s arrest, but the timing couldn’t have been worse, as Darin was in the process of serving our hot entrees. Couldn’t I have had an opportunity to quaff the fine wine and savor the rib eye before having to deal with our friend being handcuffed by civil servants that made Barney Fife look like the paragon of law enforcement (civil servants that also hopefully don’t waste their time reading blog sites that don’t always accurately describe people). It ‘twas not to be, as our hot entrees sat before us, delivered by Darin as his last act as a free man, looking mournfully at us while he said, “I must go”. The scene in the Garden of Gethsemane must have looked and felt much like this. Except they’d already eaten!!!
Three hours and $3000 on my American Express card later, coupled with a session with a slick, neon-orange business card bail bondsman that made me feel, well, icky, and Darin was sprung from the Grand County Hilton. Grand County is slightly notorious for its ability to generate revenue from unlicensed, defective car-driving neo-criminals that drink, drive, and wind up spending quality time at the county lock-up. Thus the saying; “Grand County – Come on vacation, leave on probation”.
Throw this little situation into the mix. As I was filling out and signing all of the bond stuff, it said that I gave them $3000 right now, but was signing a surety bond for $20,000. If Darin was actually guilty of all of these nefarious charges, and decided to bolt to Cancun, we’d be out some serious money. Wait just a minute! This guy showed up at our hotel/restaurant first as a good customer, then as a friend who wanted to help us by waiting tables and making desserts. It gave him something to do and someone to hang with when nobody in Grand County was busy giving up the ghost. We really don’t know him at all. Don’t know his background, his foreground, his above or below ground. We don’t have a clue about this guy and I just signed a $20,000 surety bond to get him out of jail, for charges we don’t know about. Could’ve been murder, terrorism, kidnapping, hotel/restaurant embezzlement charges - we had no real idea why those cuffs were slapped on him. And I’ve stepped into this deal for 20 grand – 20 grand that I damn sure don’t have. It’s my legs they’ll break, if in fact the Darin-off-to-Cancun scenario turns into reality.
Here’s the deal. Darin was arrested on larceny and “theft of services” charges. It has to do with what the County prosecutors feel were a misuse of pre-need funds that Darin inherited when he purchased the funeral home. The local paper has already essentially convicted Darin, as they’ve published the County’s side of the story (which was nothing more than a factual stating of the charges), and the local readership is left with the assumption – as they’ve not heard the other side of the story – that Darin is a crook. We know the man, and are hard pressed to believe that he is a crook – hard pressed enough to risk $20,000 that we don’t have. We believe he is honest to a fault – almost to the point of being a pain in the ass, as his penchant for playing life by the rules usually makes us feel a little guilty while we try and slide by this or skate by that. We’ve also heard Darin’s side of the story, and feel pretty good about not only risking the surety bond on Darin, but also confident that we’ll be invited to one hell of a blowout when he is eventually vindicated.
As the old saying goes, “Everyone gets their day in court”; nowhere is that more certain than in Grand County.
To be continued……
New Years Eve 2009 was a booming night, unlike any we’d ever had. A dinner/spa/room special filled the hotel, and we turned as many diners away from the restaurant as we were able to accommodate. Heretofore unheard of bar and booze business along with a full house made for a riotous event; again, as is customary at The Riverside, it included a hodge-podge of people and personalities that would be more diverse than a Boulder phone book.
New Years Day dawned bright and beautiful, the morning sun and the brilliant blue of the Middle Park sky brought the repentant revelers down for a 10:00 AM breakfast and a hardy head start on the New Year. A day of good-byes at the checkout, room clean up, and the occasional glimpse at the football games, were followed by a slow dinner crowd, which afforded us the opportunity to sit down to dinner with our visiting friends from Kansas City on their last night at The Riverside. Darin the mortician/part-time waiter demanded that we sit, relax and enjoy the experience and cuisine of The River Room Restaurant, and was also gracious enough to act as our host and waiter. The wine and the accompanying good times flowed, and the hectic holiday week was indeed ending on a sweet note.
I can’t remember who came and told me that the Grand County police were in the lobby waiting to serve a warrant for Darin’s arrest, but the timing couldn’t have been worse, as Darin was in the process of serving our hot entrees. Couldn’t I have had an opportunity to quaff the fine wine and savor the rib eye before having to deal with our friend being handcuffed by civil servants that made Barney Fife look like the paragon of law enforcement (civil servants that also hopefully don’t waste their time reading blog sites that don’t always accurately describe people). It ‘twas not to be, as our hot entrees sat before us, delivered by Darin as his last act as a free man, looking mournfully at us while he said, “I must go”. The scene in the Garden of Gethsemane must have looked and felt much like this. Except they’d already eaten!!!
Three hours and $3000 on my American Express card later, coupled with a session with a slick, neon-orange business card bail bondsman that made me feel, well, icky, and Darin was sprung from the Grand County Hilton. Grand County is slightly notorious for its ability to generate revenue from unlicensed, defective car-driving neo-criminals that drink, drive, and wind up spending quality time at the county lock-up. Thus the saying; “Grand County – Come on vacation, leave on probation”.
Throw this little situation into the mix. As I was filling out and signing all of the bond stuff, it said that I gave them $3000 right now, but was signing a surety bond for $20,000. If Darin was actually guilty of all of these nefarious charges, and decided to bolt to Cancun, we’d be out some serious money. Wait just a minute! This guy showed up at our hotel/restaurant first as a good customer, then as a friend who wanted to help us by waiting tables and making desserts. It gave him something to do and someone to hang with when nobody in Grand County was busy giving up the ghost. We really don’t know him at all. Don’t know his background, his foreground, his above or below ground. We don’t have a clue about this guy and I just signed a $20,000 surety bond to get him out of jail, for charges we don’t know about. Could’ve been murder, terrorism, kidnapping, hotel/restaurant embezzlement charges - we had no real idea why those cuffs were slapped on him. And I’ve stepped into this deal for 20 grand – 20 grand that I damn sure don’t have. It’s my legs they’ll break, if in fact the Darin-off-to-Cancun scenario turns into reality.
Here’s the deal. Darin was arrested on larceny and “theft of services” charges. It has to do with what the County prosecutors feel were a misuse of pre-need funds that Darin inherited when he purchased the funeral home. The local paper has already essentially convicted Darin, as they’ve published the County’s side of the story (which was nothing more than a factual stating of the charges), and the local readership is left with the assumption – as they’ve not heard the other side of the story – that Darin is a crook. We know the man, and are hard pressed to believe that he is a crook – hard pressed enough to risk $20,000 that we don’t have. We believe he is honest to a fault – almost to the point of being a pain in the ass, as his penchant for playing life by the rules usually makes us feel a little guilty while we try and slide by this or skate by that. We’ve also heard Darin’s side of the story, and feel pretty good about not only risking the surety bond on Darin, but also confident that we’ll be invited to one hell of a blowout when he is eventually vindicated.
As the old saying goes, “Everyone gets their day in court”; nowhere is that more certain than in Grand County.
To be continued……
Monday, April 13, 2009
The 6'6" Drunk that tried to rape me and throw me off the bridge
It was late after a busy Friday restaurant night at the Riverside. Julie was in bed, and Darin, Rachel and I were in the bar closing things down, when in walks a very large man – I’d say at least 6’6” – with shoulder length wispy gray hair, wearing a ball cap, a filthy Arctic Cat jacket, and reeking of cigarettes and not particularly good hygiene. He wasn’t overly inebriated, but you could guess that we weren’t his first watering hole stop of the evening. He was friendly, a little loud, and said his name was Brian and this was the bar where 20 years earlier he had met his second wife. Darin looked at him with that serious mortician look that Darin uses and says “we’re closed”; not exactly what tall, friendly, loud, slightly intoxicated Brian wanted to hear. In fact, this information quickly transformed him into unfriendly, much taller and louder, and very threatening and intimidating Brian. I immediately became concerned for our safety, as none of us were physically able to deal with this individual, but it wasn’t yet to the point where we could justify calling 911. So my brilliant solution was to placate him; calm him down, give him a drink and befriend this big, furry, lovable Arctic Cat. This was, I was to soon learn, far from a brilliant solution. (The best solution would have been to never get in the bar business in a small town in the first place, but way too late for that.) Brian’s requests started off simply enough – Jack Daniels and Coke, with the normal Grand County request of “light on the ice, heavy on the Jack and a little Coke for color”. Like that isn’t a recipe for disaster!
Brian held court, getting louder and more physically fluid by the minute; his arms starting to flail wildly as he makes his inane points and observations – it’s not as if any of us wanted to engage him in conversation. He was after daughter Rachel, until he found out it was my daughter, and somehow summoned enough functional brain cells to think there might be a problem with his hitting on her, at which point he took up pursuit of young neighbor Cassie, who had come in for a late night visit. He then became overly fascinated with my lingering chest cold – I’d had a Grand County-sized dose of phlegm and mucous hanging around in my lungs for three weeks, making for that machine-gun staccato sound when I tried to clear my airways. Dr. Brian was quite certain that a shot of Southern Comfort would clear that stuff out of my bronchia once and for all, or perhaps numerous shots if one didn’t work. I don’t do shots – ever! But then I’m finding myself doing a lot of things in the hospitality business that I haven’t or wouldn’t do previously. To show me that it’s not as big a deal as I seem to make it out to be, Brian graciously offers to join me in this curative treatment – and he’s paying!!! After two shots of Southern Comfort – exactly two more than my normal limit – I decide that this sure-fire home remedy cure-all is in fact not what the doctor ordered. “The phlegm’s still here, but we’re out of Southern Comfort”, I tell Brian; he rears back and comes straight at my chest – the important part where the sternum, heart and lungs are – with a fist that looks, as it’s coming at me, like the fat end of a large veal shank, shouting “this’ll knock that shit outta-ya”. Thank God that Brian is an experienced enough drunk to be able to maintain a modicum of motor skills after consuming excessive amounts of spirits, and his flying osso bucco fist comes to a screeching halt just as it’s about to find pay dirt in the center of my congested chest. “That would’ve worked if I’d have actually hit you” Brian tells me; “yes” I think to myself, “phlegm probably does dissipate from the lungs as you lie dead in your coffin.”
We are now starting to edge towards that 911 call zone, as a drunk, intimidating Brian is bad, but a drunk, intimidating violent Brian is the absolute last thing I want to deal with. I’ll need someone with a uniform and a sidearm to get through to this mountain of a mountain man. A few shots later, Darin and I start to suggest to Brian that his night at the Jayhawk Bar might be coming to an end. In this regard, Brian is no different than any other drunk at closing time; they never take it as news they’re looking forward to receiving. Closing-time drunks get ugly, argumentative, profane, and quite frankly, not persuasive to the point where you would ever want to placate them by giving them more booze – the only thing they’re persuasive about is making the case for why God came up with closing time.
Naturally, Brian is pissed and more than a little argumentative when he finds that his fount of Jack Daniels shots has dried up – his lack of gentility only increases when Darin gives him his tab, which is just north of $100. (Health care ain’t cheap!) By this time Brian is drunk enough that he is losing his ability to think clearly, which means that he is more receptive to my calm nature and soothing voice – I’ve seen enough of my fair share of 1940 monster movies to know that a serene demeanor will tame the most savage of beasts. I tell Brian that I’ll walk him across the bridge and see that he gets safely to his camper. His camper??? What else does it tell you about Brian to know that he is camping out in January in Pioneer Park, on the banks of the frozen Colorado River, on a night when the temperature will easily hit minus -15F. It tells you that he’s tough, he’s probably a little crazy, and that he’s definitely stupid. That is a really dangerous combination of attributes to combine with $100 worth of alcohol, and here I am about to walk across the bridge with this dynamite keg. All of my sane and sober associates tried to get me not to do this – but my goal went way beyond concern for Brian; we had a hotel full of peacefully slumbering guests, not to mention a few rooms containing people that I loved and cared for, principally my wife and daughter.
I thought I’d gotten Brian calm enough where he’d go quietly, and this would be the end of the story; and it started out that way, as we quietly left the hotel and he reeled his way towards the river. I got him to look at the stars – brilliant beyond what most of you city dwellers have experienced, especially on this crystal clear, sub-zero winter night, 90 miles west of the nearest star-robbing metropolis. The details of the next few minutes are now, as they were that night, still blurry to me. It had nothing to do with the Southern Comfort, as I was pretty much stone cold sober; I think it was the total surrealism of the situation – me on a bridge in Colorado, 700 miles from what had been my home for 50+ years, late on a bitterly frigid night with a gargantuan, drunken human time-bomb, his starting to discuss life in prison and how he’d been raped by bigger, tougher guys than him. Yes, you read that correctly. Out of nowhere, (we’d been talking about the stars), he starts talking about his life in prison, and how he’d been raped, and how he’d killed a man in prison. I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore. Then he sits down on the bridge railing, and teeters back and forth a little bit; I’m thinking there’s a pretty good chance he’ll fall backwards and break his neck on the frozen river that slumbers 20 long feet below the surface of the bridge, bringing a tidy and painless end, (for me at least), to the night and the problem at hand. Nope, even really drunk, he maintains enough coordination to not make what would surely have been his final drunken sway. Again, out of nowhere, as I can’t remember any specific trigger words on my part, he erupts at me, swinging his big paw towards me in a roundhouse sweep, saying something like “ well, I’m gonna show you what it’s all about”, but he missed connections and fell flat on his face on the icy road. Finally, after a night of near hits and misses, that innate ability to manage his drunken motor control thing eighty-sixed itself. He fell flat, in slow motion, and I began running, in what certainly at the time to me felt like slow motion, as fast as shanks’ pony would carry me back to The Riverside.
When I told the assembled crowd, (which now included an awakened and very upset 'disbelieving-at-my-stupidity-what-was-I-thinking?' Julie) who’d been watching from the safety of the restaurant windows, what had happened, they immediately called 911. We were told it would be 45 minutes before anyone could get there – after all, it was Friday in Grand County, and a Friday in Grand County to those with DUI duty is busy like Christmas Eve to Santa Claus. Maybe busier. When they do arrive, I’m told that I’ll have to press charges of assault before they’ll go bother with our friend Brian. (Needless to say, he didn’t get up and run after me. To my knowledge, he still lay face down on the bridge road.)
Another funny, after the fact, side note to Brian’s swing, miss and face dive was one of my local friends, Tony, the only reliable plumber in Grand County, being dumbfounded that I didn’t take the opportunity to kick the living hell out of Brian as he lay face down and helpless in the middle of the road. I haven’t lived long enough in Grand County to have that be a cognitive natural reaction to a fallen drunk. Tony has.
I don’t want to press charges, mainly because I don’t want to prolong this incident any longer than necessary, as my post-meeting Brian goals for the evening were satisfied – Brian was out of the hotel, and I was still a virgin from male ex-con rape. The police took a statement, chastising me a little at having served an inebriated patron in the first place. Easy for them to make that call – they’re swaggering around town with Glocks on their hips! Let me stand behind the bar with an Uzi, and I’ll see to it that no one gets booze who I don’t want to get booze.
Even though I decided against pressing charges, the officers decided to mosey down to Pioneer Park and see just exactly what our friend was up to; he was, in fact, not any longer face down in the road, but back at his homey little Big Chief pop-up camper, just kickin' it in January in the middle of a frozen tundra. We all watched the officers’ progress from the safety of the River Room; it was too dark and too far away to see any details of what was transpiring beyond the lights of the parked police cruiser, which included the omnipresent police car spotlight on the subject vehicle. After about 20 minutes, the lights went off, and the police car drove by the hotel and away towards who knew where. We all went to bed in different states – me, glad that the event was over without me having to go for a late night swim, and pretty sure that Brian was in such a drunken slumber that I damn sure didn’t have to worry about him anymore that evening, and remotely confident that he probably would have no recollection of what he’d done and who he’d threatened the night before. Julie went to bed, for the second time that evening, very upset with me at the fact that I’d so stupidly put myself in harms way.
We later found out that Brian’s night didn’t end in a drunken slumber followed by a Grand County-sized hangover. No, our friend wasn’t only in the mood to tangle with this puny-assed bartender/hotel owner, he was after any swinging Dick who came his way, including two of Grand County’s finest. He had gotten more than a little belligerent with the two officers, and after an ID check with the local authorities, they found that our friend had several outstanding warrants from the Great State of Wyoming – outstanding assault charges and numerous parole violations. Brian was wanted, and not for unpaid tolls!
Needless to say, I learned a few new lessons that evening. One, when you’re closing down the bar, the first step is to LOCK THE DOOR!! Second, when you’re escorting someone from the bar, let them go out the door first, then quickly shut it behind them – don’t ever, ever take a walk with them. But back to sur-reality; we live in a public building with a bar that people feel they have the right to enter because it has an “Open” sign on the door – fair enough, it’s the life we chose. Most often it’s Seth and Sonya from Boulder who wants to see what lies behind the doors of this charming old façade. Once it was 6’6” Mr. Arctic Cat, January-camping Brian; drunk, horny and wanted in Wyoming on assault charges.
Brian held court, getting louder and more physically fluid by the minute; his arms starting to flail wildly as he makes his inane points and observations – it’s not as if any of us wanted to engage him in conversation. He was after daughter Rachel, until he found out it was my daughter, and somehow summoned enough functional brain cells to think there might be a problem with his hitting on her, at which point he took up pursuit of young neighbor Cassie, who had come in for a late night visit. He then became overly fascinated with my lingering chest cold – I’d had a Grand County-sized dose of phlegm and mucous hanging around in my lungs for three weeks, making for that machine-gun staccato sound when I tried to clear my airways. Dr. Brian was quite certain that a shot of Southern Comfort would clear that stuff out of my bronchia once and for all, or perhaps numerous shots if one didn’t work. I don’t do shots – ever! But then I’m finding myself doing a lot of things in the hospitality business that I haven’t or wouldn’t do previously. To show me that it’s not as big a deal as I seem to make it out to be, Brian graciously offers to join me in this curative treatment – and he’s paying!!! After two shots of Southern Comfort – exactly two more than my normal limit – I decide that this sure-fire home remedy cure-all is in fact not what the doctor ordered. “The phlegm’s still here, but we’re out of Southern Comfort”, I tell Brian; he rears back and comes straight at my chest – the important part where the sternum, heart and lungs are – with a fist that looks, as it’s coming at me, like the fat end of a large veal shank, shouting “this’ll knock that shit outta-ya”. Thank God that Brian is an experienced enough drunk to be able to maintain a modicum of motor skills after consuming excessive amounts of spirits, and his flying osso bucco fist comes to a screeching halt just as it’s about to find pay dirt in the center of my congested chest. “That would’ve worked if I’d have actually hit you” Brian tells me; “yes” I think to myself, “phlegm probably does dissipate from the lungs as you lie dead in your coffin.”
We are now starting to edge towards that 911 call zone, as a drunk, intimidating Brian is bad, but a drunk, intimidating violent Brian is the absolute last thing I want to deal with. I’ll need someone with a uniform and a sidearm to get through to this mountain of a mountain man. A few shots later, Darin and I start to suggest to Brian that his night at the Jayhawk Bar might be coming to an end. In this regard, Brian is no different than any other drunk at closing time; they never take it as news they’re looking forward to receiving. Closing-time drunks get ugly, argumentative, profane, and quite frankly, not persuasive to the point where you would ever want to placate them by giving them more booze – the only thing they’re persuasive about is making the case for why God came up with closing time.
Naturally, Brian is pissed and more than a little argumentative when he finds that his fount of Jack Daniels shots has dried up – his lack of gentility only increases when Darin gives him his tab, which is just north of $100. (Health care ain’t cheap!) By this time Brian is drunk enough that he is losing his ability to think clearly, which means that he is more receptive to my calm nature and soothing voice – I’ve seen enough of my fair share of 1940 monster movies to know that a serene demeanor will tame the most savage of beasts. I tell Brian that I’ll walk him across the bridge and see that he gets safely to his camper. His camper??? What else does it tell you about Brian to know that he is camping out in January in Pioneer Park, on the banks of the frozen Colorado River, on a night when the temperature will easily hit minus -15F. It tells you that he’s tough, he’s probably a little crazy, and that he’s definitely stupid. That is a really dangerous combination of attributes to combine with $100 worth of alcohol, and here I am about to walk across the bridge with this dynamite keg. All of my sane and sober associates tried to get me not to do this – but my goal went way beyond concern for Brian; we had a hotel full of peacefully slumbering guests, not to mention a few rooms containing people that I loved and cared for, principally my wife and daughter.
I thought I’d gotten Brian calm enough where he’d go quietly, and this would be the end of the story; and it started out that way, as we quietly left the hotel and he reeled his way towards the river. I got him to look at the stars – brilliant beyond what most of you city dwellers have experienced, especially on this crystal clear, sub-zero winter night, 90 miles west of the nearest star-robbing metropolis. The details of the next few minutes are now, as they were that night, still blurry to me. It had nothing to do with the Southern Comfort, as I was pretty much stone cold sober; I think it was the total surrealism of the situation – me on a bridge in Colorado, 700 miles from what had been my home for 50+ years, late on a bitterly frigid night with a gargantuan, drunken human time-bomb, his starting to discuss life in prison and how he’d been raped by bigger, tougher guys than him. Yes, you read that correctly. Out of nowhere, (we’d been talking about the stars), he starts talking about his life in prison, and how he’d been raped, and how he’d killed a man in prison. I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore. Then he sits down on the bridge railing, and teeters back and forth a little bit; I’m thinking there’s a pretty good chance he’ll fall backwards and break his neck on the frozen river that slumbers 20 long feet below the surface of the bridge, bringing a tidy and painless end, (for me at least), to the night and the problem at hand. Nope, even really drunk, he maintains enough coordination to not make what would surely have been his final drunken sway. Again, out of nowhere, as I can’t remember any specific trigger words on my part, he erupts at me, swinging his big paw towards me in a roundhouse sweep, saying something like “ well, I’m gonna show you what it’s all about”, but he missed connections and fell flat on his face on the icy road. Finally, after a night of near hits and misses, that innate ability to manage his drunken motor control thing eighty-sixed itself. He fell flat, in slow motion, and I began running, in what certainly at the time to me felt like slow motion, as fast as shanks’ pony would carry me back to The Riverside.
When I told the assembled crowd, (which now included an awakened and very upset 'disbelieving-at-my-stupidity-what-was-I-thinking?' Julie) who’d been watching from the safety of the restaurant windows, what had happened, they immediately called 911. We were told it would be 45 minutes before anyone could get there – after all, it was Friday in Grand County, and a Friday in Grand County to those with DUI duty is busy like Christmas Eve to Santa Claus. Maybe busier. When they do arrive, I’m told that I’ll have to press charges of assault before they’ll go bother with our friend Brian. (Needless to say, he didn’t get up and run after me. To my knowledge, he still lay face down on the bridge road.)
Another funny, after the fact, side note to Brian’s swing, miss and face dive was one of my local friends, Tony, the only reliable plumber in Grand County, being dumbfounded that I didn’t take the opportunity to kick the living hell out of Brian as he lay face down and helpless in the middle of the road. I haven’t lived long enough in Grand County to have that be a cognitive natural reaction to a fallen drunk. Tony has.
I don’t want to press charges, mainly because I don’t want to prolong this incident any longer than necessary, as my post-meeting Brian goals for the evening were satisfied – Brian was out of the hotel, and I was still a virgin from male ex-con rape. The police took a statement, chastising me a little at having served an inebriated patron in the first place. Easy for them to make that call – they’re swaggering around town with Glocks on their hips! Let me stand behind the bar with an Uzi, and I’ll see to it that no one gets booze who I don’t want to get booze.
Even though I decided against pressing charges, the officers decided to mosey down to Pioneer Park and see just exactly what our friend was up to; he was, in fact, not any longer face down in the road, but back at his homey little Big Chief pop-up camper, just kickin' it in January in the middle of a frozen tundra. We all watched the officers’ progress from the safety of the River Room; it was too dark and too far away to see any details of what was transpiring beyond the lights of the parked police cruiser, which included the omnipresent police car spotlight on the subject vehicle. After about 20 minutes, the lights went off, and the police car drove by the hotel and away towards who knew where. We all went to bed in different states – me, glad that the event was over without me having to go for a late night swim, and pretty sure that Brian was in such a drunken slumber that I damn sure didn’t have to worry about him anymore that evening, and remotely confident that he probably would have no recollection of what he’d done and who he’d threatened the night before. Julie went to bed, for the second time that evening, very upset with me at the fact that I’d so stupidly put myself in harms way.
We later found out that Brian’s night didn’t end in a drunken slumber followed by a Grand County-sized hangover. No, our friend wasn’t only in the mood to tangle with this puny-assed bartender/hotel owner, he was after any swinging Dick who came his way, including two of Grand County’s finest. He had gotten more than a little belligerent with the two officers, and after an ID check with the local authorities, they found that our friend had several outstanding warrants from the Great State of Wyoming – outstanding assault charges and numerous parole violations. Brian was wanted, and not for unpaid tolls!
Needless to say, I learned a few new lessons that evening. One, when you’re closing down the bar, the first step is to LOCK THE DOOR!! Second, when you’re escorting someone from the bar, let them go out the door first, then quickly shut it behind them – don’t ever, ever take a walk with them. But back to sur-reality; we live in a public building with a bar that people feel they have the right to enter because it has an “Open” sign on the door – fair enough, it’s the life we chose. Most often it’s Seth and Sonya from Boulder who wants to see what lies behind the doors of this charming old façade. Once it was 6’6” Mr. Arctic Cat, January-camping Brian; drunk, horny and wanted in Wyoming on assault charges.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The Town Meeting, Part I
The small town of Hot Sulphur Springs was founded in 1864 by William Byers, who was a mover and shaker in the new state of Colorado in general, and the newly- found town of Denver in particular. Byers was also the founder and owner of The Rocky Mountain News, which began publishing in 1859, and coincidentally, shut down shortly after our move to Hot Sulphur. Byers’ sole interest in the area and his purpose for founding and developing the town was to exploit the natural hot springs at the foot of Mt. Bross that pump forth 250,000 daily gallons of mineral-laden sulphurous waters. There are numerous such effluences in the chain of the Rocky Mountains, and the inhabitants of this beautiful state have a bug for them that I’ve yet to catch; however, they are my lifeblood and they are still, as in Byers time, the only reason people from the Front Range hitch it up and head for Hot Sulphur Springs.
While soaking in the hot springs is what put the town on the map, it isn’t now the main industry in Hot Sulphur; rather, Hot Sulphur Springs is the county seat of Grand County, the largest county in Colorado in terms of area, and one of the smallest in terms of population. There is quite a story, (involving the brutal murders of several Grand Countians), behind Hot Sulphur Springs being selected as the county seat over more populated towns in the county, such as Grand Lake, but it will be told later. There was also a time in the early 1900’s when Hot Sulphur Springs was a winter playground, boasting the first ski jump in the state on a hill that overlooks the Riverside. The annual “Winter Carnival” in Hot Sulphur would draw upwards of 20,000 people to this tiny town – hard for me now to fathom. But as more glamorous and beautiful ski areas and resorts were developed, Hot Sulphur’s reign as Colorado’s winter games capitol was short-lived. But suffice to say, between the county government, county courthouse, county jail and 23 soaking pools, Hot Sulphur Springs supports (barely, in most cases) 350 residents, one gas station, two diners, one restaurant, two bars, five hotels, two auto repair shops and a candy store that ships rock candy all over the world.
What those 350 residents and the handful of businesses don’t do is support Hot Sulphur Springs; the town is virtually broke. Being broke is bad – trust me, I know – but being broke when you need to come up with $2,000,000 for an upgrade to the town water system, just to stay compliant with state health codes, is really, really bad. No ifs, ands or buts, the town has to show that they can eventually come up with this money, or we literally will have no potable water - an important feature in any town on the go, and a real plus for someone trying to make a go of it as an hotelier and restaurateur. On the bright side, it does make for great theater when the third Thursday of the month rolls around, which is when we have our monthly town meeting, replete with the mayor, the six-member town council and, the real stars of the show, a crowd of 40-50 angry Hot Sulphur-ites. A few of them are sober.
The town councils proposed solution was to raise everyone’s water bill by as much as 50% for residential users, and as much as 500% for commercial users, the latter category under which we unfortunately fall. 500%!!!! The water bill at The Riverside will go from its current $150/month to $750/month. The increase and your ultimate water bill aren’t based on actual consumption, rather, they’re based upon some mumbo-jumbo formula that was cooked up by some of the town board members after having a few pops at The Barking Dog Pub, wherein you count your toilets, multiply that by the number of showers, subtract the number of sinks and multiply that by 1864 (the year the town was founded), then add your water-using appliances and divide that by the square root of 23 (the number of hot spring pools in town); or something like that. Any way you figure it, I’m getting screwed.
Try explaining this increase, especially in these tough times, to a room full of inebriated citizens at 9:00 PM; inebriated citizens whose pre-meeting first buzz of the evening was starting to wear off, and they were getting cranky in anticipation of their after-the-meeting second buzz of the evening. I knew we were in for some fun when the first opportunity for questions from the Mayor brought a quick, but shaky, hand up from Fred (not his real name…..…ok, it is his real name, but I won’t use his last name), who slurred “What I wanna know ish whoosh reshponshible for getting ush in thish messh?” (Fred’s pre-meeting first buzz of the evening had yet to wear off.) This was followed by an outraged citizen who said that due to the slow economy – she’s in real estate – there was no way she could come up with the additional $30/month that was the net result of the 50% increase to homeowners – “$15 a month maybe”, she said, “but no way $30”. I agreed with her, at least not if she was going to continue to be able to afford multiple $10 Grey Goose martinis at the Riverside bar, as was her habit. Another of the towns more colorful characters gave a rousing speech, ending with a word of warning, that “even now we shouldn’t be drinking the water coming out of the treatment plant, as the chlorine levels have probably done more permanent damage to the towns citizens than all of the shrapnel I got in my head when I was in Desert Storm.” He finished his speech with, what I’ll politely refer to as, a crazy laugh; but he was serious. You can’t make this stuff up.
To be continued……
While soaking in the hot springs is what put the town on the map, it isn’t now the main industry in Hot Sulphur; rather, Hot Sulphur Springs is the county seat of Grand County, the largest county in Colorado in terms of area, and one of the smallest in terms of population. There is quite a story, (involving the brutal murders of several Grand Countians), behind Hot Sulphur Springs being selected as the county seat over more populated towns in the county, such as Grand Lake, but it will be told later. There was also a time in the early 1900’s when Hot Sulphur Springs was a winter playground, boasting the first ski jump in the state on a hill that overlooks the Riverside. The annual “Winter Carnival” in Hot Sulphur would draw upwards of 20,000 people to this tiny town – hard for me now to fathom. But as more glamorous and beautiful ski areas and resorts were developed, Hot Sulphur’s reign as Colorado’s winter games capitol was short-lived. But suffice to say, between the county government, county courthouse, county jail and 23 soaking pools, Hot Sulphur Springs supports (barely, in most cases) 350 residents, one gas station, two diners, one restaurant, two bars, five hotels, two auto repair shops and a candy store that ships rock candy all over the world.
What those 350 residents and the handful of businesses don’t do is support Hot Sulphur Springs; the town is virtually broke. Being broke is bad – trust me, I know – but being broke when you need to come up with $2,000,000 for an upgrade to the town water system, just to stay compliant with state health codes, is really, really bad. No ifs, ands or buts, the town has to show that they can eventually come up with this money, or we literally will have no potable water - an important feature in any town on the go, and a real plus for someone trying to make a go of it as an hotelier and restaurateur. On the bright side, it does make for great theater when the third Thursday of the month rolls around, which is when we have our monthly town meeting, replete with the mayor, the six-member town council and, the real stars of the show, a crowd of 40-50 angry Hot Sulphur-ites. A few of them are sober.
The town councils proposed solution was to raise everyone’s water bill by as much as 50% for residential users, and as much as 500% for commercial users, the latter category under which we unfortunately fall. 500%!!!! The water bill at The Riverside will go from its current $150/month to $750/month. The increase and your ultimate water bill aren’t based on actual consumption, rather, they’re based upon some mumbo-jumbo formula that was cooked up by some of the town board members after having a few pops at The Barking Dog Pub, wherein you count your toilets, multiply that by the number of showers, subtract the number of sinks and multiply that by 1864 (the year the town was founded), then add your water-using appliances and divide that by the square root of 23 (the number of hot spring pools in town); or something like that. Any way you figure it, I’m getting screwed.
Try explaining this increase, especially in these tough times, to a room full of inebriated citizens at 9:00 PM; inebriated citizens whose pre-meeting first buzz of the evening was starting to wear off, and they were getting cranky in anticipation of their after-the-meeting second buzz of the evening. I knew we were in for some fun when the first opportunity for questions from the Mayor brought a quick, but shaky, hand up from Fred (not his real name…..…ok, it is his real name, but I won’t use his last name), who slurred “What I wanna know ish whoosh reshponshible for getting ush in thish messh?” (Fred’s pre-meeting first buzz of the evening had yet to wear off.) This was followed by an outraged citizen who said that due to the slow economy – she’s in real estate – there was no way she could come up with the additional $30/month that was the net result of the 50% increase to homeowners – “$15 a month maybe”, she said, “but no way $30”. I agreed with her, at least not if she was going to continue to be able to afford multiple $10 Grey Goose martinis at the Riverside bar, as was her habit. Another of the towns more colorful characters gave a rousing speech, ending with a word of warning, that “even now we shouldn’t be drinking the water coming out of the treatment plant, as the chlorine levels have probably done more permanent damage to the towns citizens than all of the shrapnel I got in my head when I was in Desert Storm.” He finished his speech with, what I’ll politely refer to as, a crazy laugh; but he was serious. You can’t make this stuff up.
To be continued……
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Wally Reynolds
Fred Wallace “Wally” Reynolds was our first official dinner customer at The Riverside. I say official, in that the restaurant had been opened two previous nights as we catered to an influx of snow-stranded travelers who were waylaid at the hotel. Our first official opening night in the restaurant was New Years Eve, 2008, and we didn’t know that when Wally walked through the door at 6:00, a Grand County icon was in our presence. Wally strode in with his daughter, son-in-law and oxygen tank in tow; I could immediately tell by his purposeful gait that he knew where he was going and what he was after. He’d been to The Riverside before.
Julie and I stood in the lobby and nervously greeted our first dinner guest. Wally asked “What’d you do with Abe? Shoot Him?” “No, we bought him out”, was our proud reply. “You should’ve shot him” was Wally’s reply. I laughed at the thought at the time, but I now concur.
His first dinner with us was a portent of dinners to come – difficult, mildly tense and causing us to ask ourselves at what point do we throw the notion of “the customer is always right” under the bus. Wally ordered a Beefeater Gibson; I liken this to Nolan Ryan throwing a first-time big league batter his spiciest curve-ball. Let’s see what these new proprietors are made of. Did we have Beefeaters? Did we know what makes a Gibson a Gibson? Not only did Abe not stock Beefeaters Gin in his bar, he usually didn’t even keep rot-gut gin around, and he damn sure didn’t have cocktail onions for Gibsons. In fact, Abe’s bar was stocked with a limited amount of the most God-awful, low-end hooch that you could imagine. A patron once ordered a scotch from Abe, and asked “what kind of scotch do you have?” and Abe replied “the kind that I’m going to bring you!” In other words, Abe knew that if the scotch drinker had actually heard and known of this low-rent swill, he would’ve passed on the before dinner cocktail and Abe would miss out on six bucks.
Anyway, Wally got some gin, not Beefeaters, and no cocktail onions; he then suggested that if we wanted his continued patronage, we had better get some Beefeaters and cocktail onions in the place. We did, and I bent over backwards to make sure that Wally had the best Gibson in Grand County when he dined at The Riverside. Julie made sure that Wally had company whenever he dined with us; she waited on him, traded barbs with him, sat and drank wine with him and thoroughly enjoyed his company, all the while mining Wally’s knowledge of local people and places to fill in the missing historical blanks of the town and the hotel. He became something of a regular over the last year; not only was he our first customer, he was our best customer.
Grand County, CO, because of its altitude, its isolation or the often brutal living conditions, is home to more than its fair share of “characters”; and Wally Reynolds stood out amongst them. Wally was as tough as they came, and not only was he one to not walk away from a fight; he was responsible for starting most of them. In his early years, he drove freight down to Denver and back for McLean Transportation, whose garage was located next to The Riverside. There were some rough places in Denver in the 1950’s (as there probably still are today), and Barney McLean, one of the trucking company owners sons and a US skiing legend, commented that he wouldn’t deliver or pick-up freight in these areas unless he was accompanied by Wally; as nobody who knew Wally messed with him, and anyone who messed with Wally once never did it again.
Wally had a notorious hatred of hippies. As there was a disproportionately large influx of them into Grand County in the 60’s, (does the phrase “Rocky Mountain high” ring a bell?) Wally had ample fodder on which to vent his ill will. This is a true story. Wally walked into a bar in Kremmling, and saw a gentleman with a waist-long pony tail sitting at the bar with his back to Wally. Wally walked backed outside to his pick-up truck, grabbed his hunting knife, and came back into the bar. Without saying a word, Wally walked up to the man, grabbed the pony tail and cut it off, holding it up for all to see as proud as an Indian (aka Native American) on Last Stand Hill. Needless to say, the newly shorn bar patron wasn’t as thrilled with the haircut as Wally, and stormed out of the bar. Wally sat down on the vacant bar stool and calmly ordered a drink, laughing a little at what he’d accomplished. The hot-tempered, short haired hippie came back into the bar with a hatchet, and before anyone could react to the possibility of what might happen next, he cleaved Wally right in the center of his back with a blow that would have killed most men. It didn’t kill Wally, but I believe it did slow him down enough to allow the hatchet-wielding hippie a hasty exit from both the bar and Grand County.
There’s another story, less violent/more comic, about Wally walking into another bar in Kremmling during an early winter storm and asked loudly "who's the son of a bitch with the peace sign on his car?". The guilty hippie proudly and loudly fessed up, and the two headed outside for what turned into a boxing ballet on ice – both of them chasing and swinging at each other, neither to strike a solid blow as they kept slipping, sliding and falling on the icy pavement, much to the delight of the bar patrons who’d assembled at the window to watch.
On January 16th, 2009, Wally came to The Riverside with friends to have dinner; Julie and I were in Denver, on our way back from a visit to our home in KC. Our daughter Rachel was minding the hotel in our absence, and called, in hysterics, to say that Wally was having a heart attack in his car in front of the hotel. Darin, the town mortician who helps out in the restaurant for something to do when the death business is slow, was quick to come to Wally’s aid, but even quick was too late. Wally died parked in front of The Riverside.
When we attended Wally’s memorial service in Kremmling a few days later, we learned of another side of Wally. There was a lot more to Wally than the larger-than-life, Gibson-drinking, hippie-hating, hell raising cowboy that I’ve described. One after another, family and long-time friends and neighbors described a man with a heart as big and strong as his roundhouse. Life can be hard in Grand County, and it’s often tough to go it alone – Wally made sure that those he knew didn’t have to, as he was always there when they needed him; without hesitation, without a complaint. The list of those he helped included his country - Wally was a proud and decorated veteran of the Korean War.
We’ll miss the old guy, but we are reminded of him daily, as Julie put together a little tribute on the wall above his old table, made up of pictures that Wally’s daughter gave us, and a copy of the article that Julie wrote about Wally in the Sky-Hi Daily News. In the event there are such things as ghosts, and if we would have Wally’s ghost now knocking about the Riverside, I would suggest to any males who might be a little long in the locks that they get a haircut before coming to visit us in Hot Sulphur Springs.
Julie and I stood in the lobby and nervously greeted our first dinner guest. Wally asked “What’d you do with Abe? Shoot Him?” “No, we bought him out”, was our proud reply. “You should’ve shot him” was Wally’s reply. I laughed at the thought at the time, but I now concur.
His first dinner with us was a portent of dinners to come – difficult, mildly tense and causing us to ask ourselves at what point do we throw the notion of “the customer is always right” under the bus. Wally ordered a Beefeater Gibson; I liken this to Nolan Ryan throwing a first-time big league batter his spiciest curve-ball. Let’s see what these new proprietors are made of. Did we have Beefeaters? Did we know what makes a Gibson a Gibson? Not only did Abe not stock Beefeaters Gin in his bar, he usually didn’t even keep rot-gut gin around, and he damn sure didn’t have cocktail onions for Gibsons. In fact, Abe’s bar was stocked with a limited amount of the most God-awful, low-end hooch that you could imagine. A patron once ordered a scotch from Abe, and asked “what kind of scotch do you have?” and Abe replied “the kind that I’m going to bring you!” In other words, Abe knew that if the scotch drinker had actually heard and known of this low-rent swill, he would’ve passed on the before dinner cocktail and Abe would miss out on six bucks.
Anyway, Wally got some gin, not Beefeaters, and no cocktail onions; he then suggested that if we wanted his continued patronage, we had better get some Beefeaters and cocktail onions in the place. We did, and I bent over backwards to make sure that Wally had the best Gibson in Grand County when he dined at The Riverside. Julie made sure that Wally had company whenever he dined with us; she waited on him, traded barbs with him, sat and drank wine with him and thoroughly enjoyed his company, all the while mining Wally’s knowledge of local people and places to fill in the missing historical blanks of the town and the hotel. He became something of a regular over the last year; not only was he our first customer, he was our best customer.
Grand County, CO, because of its altitude, its isolation or the often brutal living conditions, is home to more than its fair share of “characters”; and Wally Reynolds stood out amongst them. Wally was as tough as they came, and not only was he one to not walk away from a fight; he was responsible for starting most of them. In his early years, he drove freight down to Denver and back for McLean Transportation, whose garage was located next to The Riverside. There were some rough places in Denver in the 1950’s (as there probably still are today), and Barney McLean, one of the trucking company owners sons and a US skiing legend, commented that he wouldn’t deliver or pick-up freight in these areas unless he was accompanied by Wally; as nobody who knew Wally messed with him, and anyone who messed with Wally once never did it again.
Wally had a notorious hatred of hippies. As there was a disproportionately large influx of them into Grand County in the 60’s, (does the phrase “Rocky Mountain high” ring a bell?) Wally had ample fodder on which to vent his ill will. This is a true story. Wally walked into a bar in Kremmling, and saw a gentleman with a waist-long pony tail sitting at the bar with his back to Wally. Wally walked backed outside to his pick-up truck, grabbed his hunting knife, and came back into the bar. Without saying a word, Wally walked up to the man, grabbed the pony tail and cut it off, holding it up for all to see as proud as an Indian (aka Native American) on Last Stand Hill. Needless to say, the newly shorn bar patron wasn’t as thrilled with the haircut as Wally, and stormed out of the bar. Wally sat down on the vacant bar stool and calmly ordered a drink, laughing a little at what he’d accomplished. The hot-tempered, short haired hippie came back into the bar with a hatchet, and before anyone could react to the possibility of what might happen next, he cleaved Wally right in the center of his back with a blow that would have killed most men. It didn’t kill Wally, but I believe it did slow him down enough to allow the hatchet-wielding hippie a hasty exit from both the bar and Grand County.
There’s another story, less violent/more comic, about Wally walking into another bar in Kremmling during an early winter storm and asked loudly "who's the son of a bitch with the peace sign on his car?". The guilty hippie proudly and loudly fessed up, and the two headed outside for what turned into a boxing ballet on ice – both of them chasing and swinging at each other, neither to strike a solid blow as they kept slipping, sliding and falling on the icy pavement, much to the delight of the bar patrons who’d assembled at the window to watch.
On January 16th, 2009, Wally came to The Riverside with friends to have dinner; Julie and I were in Denver, on our way back from a visit to our home in KC. Our daughter Rachel was minding the hotel in our absence, and called, in hysterics, to say that Wally was having a heart attack in his car in front of the hotel. Darin, the town mortician who helps out in the restaurant for something to do when the death business is slow, was quick to come to Wally’s aid, but even quick was too late. Wally died parked in front of The Riverside.
When we attended Wally’s memorial service in Kremmling a few days later, we learned of another side of Wally. There was a lot more to Wally than the larger-than-life, Gibson-drinking, hippie-hating, hell raising cowboy that I’ve described. One after another, family and long-time friends and neighbors described a man with a heart as big and strong as his roundhouse. Life can be hard in Grand County, and it’s often tough to go it alone – Wally made sure that those he knew didn’t have to, as he was always there when they needed him; without hesitation, without a complaint. The list of those he helped included his country - Wally was a proud and decorated veteran of the Korean War.
We’ll miss the old guy, but we are reminded of him daily, as Julie put together a little tribute on the wall above his old table, made up of pictures that Wally’s daughter gave us, and a copy of the article that Julie wrote about Wally in the Sky-Hi Daily News. In the event there are such things as ghosts, and if we would have Wally’s ghost now knocking about the Riverside, I would suggest to any males who might be a little long in the locks that they get a haircut before coming to visit us in Hot Sulphur Springs.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Grandpa
The view from the porch of The Riverside looks south upon a hill that was sight to the first ski jump in Colorado, built in 1920 by a transplanted Norwegian named Carl Howelson. (Howelson went on to build his next, and more famous, ski jump in Steamboat Springs in 1921, where The US Olympic Ski Jump Team trains on a hill that bears his name.) The lodge pole pines are all dead now from the pine beetle infestation (Bush!), but it still is worth a long and enjoyable sunset gaze when compared to the relatively flat, suburban (yet not unbeautiful) view of oaks, hickories and two-story plat homes that we left behind in Shawnee, KS. But most prominent from the front porch of The Riverside is our across-the-street neighbor’s house, aka Grandpa’s. Grandpa lives in a 1960’s ranch house on a half acre lot, the prominent feature being two magnificent 100+-year old Spruce Trees that overshadow and literally hide the house from the west, especially during the winter. However they do not, from our unfettered southern vantage point, hide the yard, which contains a disabled 1986 Chevy K5 Blazer, couches and chairs that not too long ago displayed “Free” signs that this time didn’t get a bite from the locals, several old buckboard wagon wheels, tires (not new), trash cans, yard furniture, an old chest of drawers, and the general demeanor of a trash heap. As bad as some may think it looks now, it is much less cluttered than before we bought the hotel from Abe. Grandpa and Abe hated each other – this probably stemming from Abe’s constant haranguing about all the junk in the yard. I’m certain this only pushed Grandpa to call family, friends and neighbors in a quest to help him assemble the largest collection of useless and visually offensive odds and ends in Grand County. The town has no restrictions against using your property as a dump site, so what the heck? Especially if it went towards as noble a cause as pissing off Abe.
Some hotel guests have suggested that we go to the town council about the blight and demand that Grandpa clean it up. Some have even suggested that we buy Grandpa out, raze the house and clean the place up. What do we put there? A lemon-aide stand? An amusement park? A High-end mountain furniture / Native American art store? Quite frankly, Grandpa’s house, yard and associated visual effluvium typify this town more than anything else that would come to reside in its stead. Grandpa’s yard daily reminds us, and all of our visitors who get why they enjoy coming here in the first place, that we’ve truly left the grind behind. Much as you’d like to, you can’t get rid of your unwanted stuff in Boulder or Cherry Creek by putting it in your front yard with an attached “Free” sign, hoping that someone will value this thing more than you, pull up with a truck and have it out of your life for the price of a cardboard sign and a Magic Marker.
Grandpa, whose given name is Larry - but NOBODY, not even his wife, calls him Larry- moved to HSS in 1970 after retiring from the US Army. He is the embodiment of the stereotypical, old Colorado miner – small, wiry, stooped-over and long-bearded; a pack mule and a pick axe would complete the picture to perfection.
(When you meet Grandpa, Gabby Hayes not only comes to mind, Grandpa would be sued for identity theft were Gabby still around.) Grandpa was a demolitions expert in the Army, and used that skill to work for the nearby Henderson Mine company, blowing holes in the Rocky Mountains in search of molybdenum; the gold and silver that brought fortune seekers to this brutal environment in the 1860’s is long gone, and the mountains now yield a much less glamorous metal. Grandpa also had a brief career in the restaurant business, managing a group of small diners and hash houses around Grand County. This experience gives him the right to question and criticize the food that we put out of The Riverside kitchen. He brings us samples of concoctions that he’s cooked up – 3-Ingredient Chicken, Fried Bacon Poppers, Grandpa’s Famous Beans, etc – some appealing and edible, some not so much. When the ingredients are discernable, I’ll sample his fare; when they’re not, (as in 3-Ingredient Chicken), I’ll politely take his offering and tell him I’ll try it later. Truth be known, Grandpa probably looks at some of our more eclectic degustations (Pan-Seared Swai with Arugula Pesto and Balsamic Reduction) and politely pulls the same “I’ll try it later” stunt with me as I with him.
In the summer, Grandpa sits outside of his house, facing north and The Riverside, and sips scotch and beer for most of the day. (In the winter, which started in mid-October this year, Grandpa literally hibernates. He doesn’t come out of the house for anything, ever. I haven't seen him since October. Not once. I'm not kidding.) When we’re out front working, (sweeping, tending flowers, cleaning windows), he’s always thoughtful enough to take the time to yell profane chides alluding to the fact that he’s sitting in the shade sipping scotch and we’re working our asses off. My occasional sit downs with Grandpa always involve a recitation from him on the sorry state of the world in general, the utter worthlessness of most of the residents of Hot Sulphur Springs in particular, and the joys of being able to sit on your ass and sip scotch all day. We all know and have seen lots of people who’ve worked hard all their lives and are now enjoying their “golden years” to varying degrees, but I’ve never known one to rub the deliciousness of total retirement in your face like Grandpa does. I admire him for that, as so many of those other retirees are still trying to figure things out, still trying to succeed at something or put one more dollar away – out of either greed or need. Bluntly put, Grandpa doesn’t give a shit. He has two modes of existence – sitting outside sipping scotch in the summer, and sitting inside sipping scotch in the winter – and his level of contentedness is rarely approached by others, and certainly not yet by me. My guess regarding the real motivating factor behind Grandpa’s demeanor is that if you had spent your career down in a hole playing with seriously dangerous explosives, and were able to walk away with a pension and all of your digits intact, you’d leave well enough alone, sit on your ass and sip scotch all day; and you'd do it in Hot Sulphur Springs.
Some hotel guests have suggested that we go to the town council about the blight and demand that Grandpa clean it up. Some have even suggested that we buy Grandpa out, raze the house and clean the place up. What do we put there? A lemon-aide stand? An amusement park? A High-end mountain furniture / Native American art store? Quite frankly, Grandpa’s house, yard and associated visual effluvium typify this town more than anything else that would come to reside in its stead. Grandpa’s yard daily reminds us, and all of our visitors who get why they enjoy coming here in the first place, that we’ve truly left the grind behind. Much as you’d like to, you can’t get rid of your unwanted stuff in Boulder or Cherry Creek by putting it in your front yard with an attached “Free” sign, hoping that someone will value this thing more than you, pull up with a truck and have it out of your life for the price of a cardboard sign and a Magic Marker.
Grandpa, whose given name is Larry - but NOBODY, not even his wife, calls him Larry- moved to HSS in 1970 after retiring from the US Army. He is the embodiment of the stereotypical, old Colorado miner – small, wiry, stooped-over and long-bearded; a pack mule and a pick axe would complete the picture to perfection.
(When you meet Grandpa, Gabby Hayes not only comes to mind, Grandpa would be sued for identity theft were Gabby still around.) Grandpa was a demolitions expert in the Army, and used that skill to work for the nearby Henderson Mine company, blowing holes in the Rocky Mountains in search of molybdenum; the gold and silver that brought fortune seekers to this brutal environment in the 1860’s is long gone, and the mountains now yield a much less glamorous metal. Grandpa also had a brief career in the restaurant business, managing a group of small diners and hash houses around Grand County. This experience gives him the right to question and criticize the food that we put out of The Riverside kitchen. He brings us samples of concoctions that he’s cooked up – 3-Ingredient Chicken, Fried Bacon Poppers, Grandpa’s Famous Beans, etc – some appealing and edible, some not so much. When the ingredients are discernable, I’ll sample his fare; when they’re not, (as in 3-Ingredient Chicken), I’ll politely take his offering and tell him I’ll try it later. Truth be known, Grandpa probably looks at some of our more eclectic degustations (Pan-Seared Swai with Arugula Pesto and Balsamic Reduction) and politely pulls the same “I’ll try it later” stunt with me as I with him.
In the summer, Grandpa sits outside of his house, facing north and The Riverside, and sips scotch and beer for most of the day. (In the winter, which started in mid-October this year, Grandpa literally hibernates. He doesn’t come out of the house for anything, ever. I haven't seen him since October. Not once. I'm not kidding.) When we’re out front working, (sweeping, tending flowers, cleaning windows), he’s always thoughtful enough to take the time to yell profane chides alluding to the fact that he’s sitting in the shade sipping scotch and we’re working our asses off. My occasional sit downs with Grandpa always involve a recitation from him on the sorry state of the world in general, the utter worthlessness of most of the residents of Hot Sulphur Springs in particular, and the joys of being able to sit on your ass and sip scotch all day. We all know and have seen lots of people who’ve worked hard all their lives and are now enjoying their “golden years” to varying degrees, but I’ve never known one to rub the deliciousness of total retirement in your face like Grandpa does. I admire him for that, as so many of those other retirees are still trying to figure things out, still trying to succeed at something or put one more dollar away – out of either greed or need. Bluntly put, Grandpa doesn’t give a shit. He has two modes of existence – sitting outside sipping scotch in the summer, and sitting inside sipping scotch in the winter – and his level of contentedness is rarely approached by others, and certainly not yet by me. My guess regarding the real motivating factor behind Grandpa’s demeanor is that if you had spent your career down in a hole playing with seriously dangerous explosives, and were able to walk away with a pension and all of your digits intact, you’d leave well enough alone, sit on your ass and sip scotch all day; and you'd do it in Hot Sulphur Springs.
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