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?