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.