Friday the 13th...The Final Chapter / Part VII

Note: I'll apologize in advance for the F-bomb contained in the following entry. But really, there is no other applicable word.

The auction was held as scheduled and after numerous unanswered emails and phone calls, two weeks later I finally made contact with the auctioneer, who reported that the sale of the kitchen equipment (which we didn’t own) and the beds and remaining few personal items that we did own, netted us around $5000. He then asked where I would like the proceeds mailed, and said he’d get me a check. That was three months ago, and as of this writing, I’ve not received a penny.

Many of you might find it hard to believe that someone would, essentially, steal (auction) your belongings in broad daylight as you stand by and watch and then thumb their nose at you when reproached. It used to be hard for me to fathom the notion that people can be so blatantly dishonest, but my Colorado experience has shown me that no matter how solid, legal and on the up-and-up people and professions may appear, the reality is that thieves, cheats, liars and crooks can mask themselves with legitimate facades and walk and operate openly among us, and more often than not, with total impunity. Certainly I’m not inferring that this sort of behavior is peculiar to Colorado; it just happened to be in Colorado that I put myself in such a position of vulnerability as to be exposed to the predators that are licensed to prey and kill, and then next, be fodder to the vultures who feast upon the remains. Needless to say, this newly found knowledge and experience has hardened me a tad, as it is no longer elementary to my nature to give people the benefit of the doubt; ‘tis indeed a shame.

Friday, August 13th, 2010, 10:00 AM MST came and went without a whisper. It was the day after my 54th birthday, and a normal day at the office for me in Jackson, MS. I didn’t mark the minute, or even recognize until an hour later when it dawned on me that the foreclosure had occurred; no tremor in the force such as Obi-Wan Kenobi felt when Alderaan blew up. It just came and went; I didn’t feel sad, happy, relieved, depressed, jubilant or defeated, broker or richer. I think the fact that I’d been physically removed from The Riverside and Grand County for so long helped to ease the suffering, and it shook me to imagine the suffering I would have endured had I no place else to go, having had to stand my ground in Colorado and bear witness to the process to which I’d just been subjected. It was also important for our general health and well being that we so resolutely decided back in March to walk away from the venture, to quickly shed the pain of the struggle, the failure and the loss, and begin life anew in another locale. As someone on Madison Avenue so succinctly put it, “know when to say when”; I strongly suggest to one and all, when the opportunity/need arises, take heed in those words.

It’s easy to be philosophical and wax poetic about the laws of physics after you’ve been run over by a truck and survived. I can look back now and see with clarity the red flags that prior were obfuscated by my desire to live, what I thought at the time was, my dream job in my dream locale. The truth of the matter is that the night we signed the papers to purchase the hotel, December 27th, 2007, I had such an immediate, overwhelming feeling of dread and remorse that I literally became physically ill. My first night sleeping in the hotel and the new life that we’d just mortgaged our souls to obtain, I awoke at 3 or 4 in the morning with a high fever, bone-rattling chills and a bout of overwhelming nausea. Perhaps a nasty dose of altitude sickness for this unsuspecting heretofore flatlander? I think not, rather, a severe physical reaction to the notion that I’d just done something fatally stupid and irresponsible.

For a fact, the body’s natural defenses to illness can quickly break down when exposed to a severe stress, becoming impotent to the onslaught of a phantom virus seeking harbor in a fertile port which lacks the will or resistance to send it packing. If stress was luck, I had a boatload of it that night, enough so that there wasn’t a lottery that was safe from me the night of December 27th had I a free dollar left to play, and to wit, that transient virus found solid purchase upon my stressed-ridden body.

I made it through that miserable night, but midway through the next morning, I walked out of the hotel into a frigid day, a bright sun in an emerald sky and headed west down Grand Street, to stagger across the bridge over the Colorado River and walk through waist-deep snow on to the isolated western riverbank until I was out of sight and sound of the hotel and any human who might be wandering by, and I vomited from the very depths of my person, profoundly, loudly and violently.

As I trudged back to the hotel through the waist-deep snow and bitter cold that I realized was not just a winter vacation accoutrement but now a part of my day to day existence, the gut-wrenching nausea was gone, but the feeling of dread persisted. As forcefully as I had expunged the bug that had so quickly invaded me and rendered me a staggering, vomiting slug, I knew that the real source of my heartburn was yet eternal within me, both physically and mentally. Once back at the hotel, a hard look at the man in the mirror and a subsequent discussion with same found that we were both in agreement; buddy, you fucked up bad: HUGE – BIG TIME.

This was within 24 hours of our ownership of The Riverside Hotel. Talk about your classic case of buyer’s remorse.

To be concluded.......

Friday the 13th......The Final Chapter/Part VI

No sooner had the auction been advertised throughout Grand County and on the auctioneers website, than the emails from the bank & the SBA’s attorneys started flying – not directly to me of course, but to my designated $300/hr legal counsel. The auction was advertised as a ‘Foreclosure Sale’, giving the public the opportunity to snatch up countless bargains on priceless antiques; antiques that were advertised as having had inhabited The Riverside since the turn of the century. There were pictures of 30+ pieces of dressers, armoires, tables, chairs, ornate clocks, beautiful wooden bed frames, and so on; both of the attorneys claimed that all of these pieces were part of the property, germane to the operation of the business and needed to remain at The Riverside. There was also the SBA’s assertion that due to provisions in our loan, they had a security interest the items; they were in fact encumbered. And as for that Brunswick Bar, it took less than 24 hours after hearing from Billy Banker “it’s theirs if they can haul it out of there” for someone at Grand County Bank to wise him up on the value of the bar, at which point he, uh, reneged on his generous offer. I imagine the real scenario involved one of the cowboy bankers on the bank’s Board having found just the spot for that old bar in his $1,000,000 log home on the 14th fairway of Pole Creek Golf Course.

However, there was one small issue that these lawyers failed to consider before raising the hackles on their clients back to the point where they were asked to write expensive emails to my lawyer. Not one of the items advertised in the auction preview was at The Riverside – they belonged to the auctioneer, who intended to cart them from Denver to Hot Sulphur for sale, using The Riverside as nothing more than a vessel to give what weren’t probably genuine antiques in the first place a needed air of authenticity. Trust me; other than the Brunswick Bar, Abe left nothing of value at The Riverside after selling us the hotel and certainly not a valuable ‘antique anything’ that he could have otherwise carted off.

Back and forth, the emails went between the SBA, the bank and my attorney regarding this auction that was to be held for items that didn’t belong to any of the participants. The SBA attorney was including terms such as “in violation of the law” and “punishable by fines, imprisonment or both”; I just wanted to sell the beds we bought for the hotel, not rip the tags off of them. What we were talking about selling in the auction that did belong to us – remember, most all of value that we had left behind had already been pilfered – were principally the 14 primo queen beds that we’d purchased for the hotel, and are still technically paying for on our Master Card. I sat back, helplessly, as I watched one email after the other fly back and forth between my attorney and the attorneys for Grand County Bank and the SBA, all the while envisioning the dollar signs mounting into an ever burgeoning pile.

Finally, at about 10:00 PM that evening after the umpteenth email, I could stand the legal raping and pillaging no longer. I sent all three attorneys the following email; I won’t deny that alcohol might have helped fuel this rant.

Gentlemen: Re the auction of assets.

We're talking about selling some beds, beds that I'm still paying for on my Master Card, that were purchased after the 2007, bifurcated, 504, blah, blah, blah screw job loan that I signed without the aid of counsel. The auction company that we hired (after being given the OK by the bank to auction the furnishings) is bringing onto the site numerous items that are their property to sell, and using the old hotel as nothing but a backdrop for the sale of these antiques. Pay Attention - the items being auctioned are not the property of your client, the bank, or either of my LLC's, and are not subject to your lein, or were ever previously at The Riverside; they are being trucked up from Denver to be sold at the site.
Mr Jones (a fictitious name for the SBA lawyer), you say your client is now willing to discuss the ramifications of the bifurcated 504 loan application with me - too late. A representative of your client, Suzy SBA, did not answer 20+ calls, nor respond to any of the 20+ voicemails I left for her, placed between December 1st, 2009, and February 1st, 2010, to discuss her promised 6-month payment deferment due to my hardship. After Grand County Bank (GCB) declared the loan in default in early February, and I did finally get to speak with your client, Ms. Suzy, she rather sheepishly informed me that she was instructed by both Billy & Betty Banker @ GCB, not to return my calls and discuss my situation. I'm guessing the SBA deferral would have interfered with the banks plans to foreclose on the loan and get their guaranteed SBA paycheck.

My wife and I have left our $XXX worth of life’s savings in Colorado at The Riverside. We were trying to sell a few thousand dollars worth of personal effects to defray credit card debts - now it will be used to pay for expensive emails sent by lawyers. I don't know the definition of a bifurcated loan, but I do know the definition of carrion – that’s all that I have left for the bankers and the lawyers.

Mr. Jones, you threaten to come after my assets if we sell our personal items out of The Riverside; good luck with that, as I have no assets for you or anyone to come after. I'm broke! I live in a shitty little rental house in Mississippi, living paycheck to paycheck, and as of this writing, I have $242 in my bank account to get me to my next end-of-the-month payday. Had your client and GCB been as open, honest and diligent about the X's & O's of loaning money as they are about collecting it, neither of us would be in our current situation.

You can have the money from the sale of the beds. May you all sleep well.

That stopped the emails.

To be continued....

Friday the 13th...The Final Chapter / Part V

The deeper we went into the summer of our fiscal discontent, the more it became apparent that I was going to have to go back to work full time, way sooner than I had imagined; I was going to need every penny I could muster to help keep the sinking ship afloat. The plan involved me moving back to Kansas City, living in our unsold house and working at my old KC office. When our KC house sold, I’d move to an apartment in Jackson, and Julie would join me when the hotel sold. This solution to our problem, which involved living apart, was beyond distasteful to us, but there was really no other available alternative. We felt in our hearts that someone would come along and buy the place within the next two years, and with my job, Julie getting a job and the help of the bank in refinancing the loan (Not!), we’d be able to hang on long enough to sell.

After the Labor Day holiday weekend – the final thud to the summer from a revenue perspective – I packed some clothes, a few personal effects, a picture of Lucy and my fishing rods, and headed back to the old homestead in KC. As luck would have it (or perhaps by dropping our asking price by 30%), we had two offers on the house after two days on the market, and quickly selected what seemed the better of the two. This didn’t come without some wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, as even though the house was now priced considerably below its appraised value, it was, after all, still a buyers market. To ultimately close the deal, we had to put in four new windows, a new furnace, cut down a tree, paint some trim, fix part of the roof and throw in the brand new washer and dryer we’d just purchased. No hard feelings though, I wish the buyers well; and may they have all of their toilets simultaneously clog while prepping for their joint colostomy procedure!

The rest of the story has been told, including most importantly the bank and the SBA’s nefarious dealings, and we can fast forward to closing down the hotel, Julie moving to join me in Mississippi and me trying to get out of our ownership position with grace, notwithstanding already having had our financial asses handed to us.

On June 15th, 2010, I received a letter sent regular mail from the Grand County Treasurer. It stated, that “on August 13th, 2010, at 10:00 AM MST, on the steps of the Grand County Courthouse, the dwelling and real estate that is comprised of Plat # 23, 509 Grand Street, Longitude 32, Latitude 44, yadda yadda yadda....will be sold at public auction.”

So this is what our dream had come to; it was as cold and impersonal as Grand County itself.

There was no adjoining letter from the bank, nothing from the SBA – not a phone call or email to explain, describe, question or quantify the process to which were to be subjected. I had a lot of questions, but the only person who might be able to answer them would charge me $300/hour, and to this point, I’d have had more substantive results from my dealings with the legal profession regarding The Riverside by pissing away the money that I’d already given the lawyer on lottery tickets.

I didn’t hear anything from anyone for the next few weeks, until I received a call from a friend who was watching the hotel. He was contacted by that kind banker who called me with the bad foreclosure news, asking for a tour of the hotel. I guess he wanted another look at the property that they were going to purchase and own, if only for a few weeks before the SBA purchased it from them. When we left the hotel, we left it in stellar shape – show ready condition for a sale. The only thing we took were our personal furnishings, leaving all of the furniture we acquired from Abe, as well as the bar and restaurant furniture, all of the beds and bedroom furniture, all of the kitchen equipment (which we didn’t own), our two leather sofas and my favorite rocking chair.

We hadn’t been gone a week when it was reported to us that most of the remaining furniture – certainly all of the good stuff - ended up finding its way to various residences throughout Hot Sulphur Springs. Next went most of the pictures and decorator nick-nacks; those same pictures and nick-nacks that I literally risked my life transporting one night whilst pulling a 12’x 9’ U Haul trailer over Berthoud Pass in the middle of a big ass, total white-out blizzard.

So, as the banker was touring the place, my friend apologetically explained that we had left the place in better shape than it now appeared, and we had left quit a bit of furniture that was no longer on the property, the banker said “I couldn’t care less about the furniture, I’m only interested in the real estate.” Upon hearing this, I asked my friend to clarify a few things with his contact at the bank, mainly, could we auction off what of value we’d left behind that hadn’t been absconded with by the locals, including the original Brunswick Bar? While the thought of that bar not being at The Riverside pained me – it’s been there for 100 years – the thought of maybe getting a good chunk of money for it and helping to salve a few of our financial wounds at least had to be perfunctorily examined. The answer I received back from the bank was “we’re not interested in the contents, including the bar. If they can haul it out, they can have it.”

We only had two weeks before the foreclosure, so I quickly went about trying to find an auctioneer in the Denver area who would be interested in helping us unload what was left of The Riverside, sans the real estate; and oh did I find one. My hot streak of bad decisions being buffeted by worse luck was still solidly intact. It wasn’t long before it occurred to me that the auctioneer I hired, while not coming in very high on the Google list of ‘Denver-area auctioneers’, would have been first on the list had I Googled ‘disreputable, thieving, crooked Denver-area auctioneers’.

After a brief description of the property and the limited items we had to offer, not only was the auctioneer interested in holding the auction, he was most interested in the Brunswick Bar, as he said the current demand for these is “through the roof”. He was so interested that he drove to Hot Sulphur Springs the next morning, toured the hotel, stopped at the bank to discuss the auction and had me a contract to sign by that next afternoon. Can you say it again with me, le big-time, grand drapeau rouge?