Our bar featured a famous print of “Custer’s Last Stand”, gifted to us by a cousin; this print was supplied to bars throughout the west in the late 1800’s by Anheuser Busch to commemorate the Battle of The Little Bighorn – a slick marketing piece, with violence and mayhem about, our blond-haired hero standing tall amongst the savages and upon a Budweiser logo, seemingly oblivious to his impending doom. While most of our generation knows of this battle, and the annihilative defeat of this American icon/boob, they are unaware of the historical significance of the battle at its time. It was, in 1876, viewed by the press and public as horrifically assaultive on their peace-loving contemporary way of life as the 911 attacks. The news of the defeat and slaughter of this immensely popular figure of the day and 267 of his comrades staggered the American public to its knees.
Brevet General Custer has stood stoic and valiant in that print for 135 years, but I’m certain that his asshole puckered at The Chief’s pronouncement on that August evening. Mine certainly did.
Fast forward to 6:30 AM as I crawl, with a drugged reluctance, out of bed and make myself ready to face another day of living life Riverside. As it is still summer, my first chore doesn’t involve starting a fire – the only heat I need to administer is to a coffee pot. That task accomplished, I head to the bar out of curiosity of the preceding evenings events, which fortunately, I slept through soundly.
I don’t believe I’ve detailed the bar at The Riverside before, and will take this opportunity to do so. It was a smallish 20’x20’ room, dominated by an ornately carved, oaken/cherry wood masterpiece of an authentic Brunswick Bar; it was in my estimation, the star of The Riverside. The Brunswick Company, famous for pool tables and bowling balls, made ready-to-order back bars and bar counters to compliment the sale of their pool tables from 1895-1905 in Burlington, IA. You could order them in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue. Word had it that this particular Brunswick Bar was originally in a bar in Leadville, CO, and moved to The Riverside in the early 1920’s at the behest of Mr. Omar Qualls, the third owner of the hotel. The back bar consisted of four 6’tall, 12” diameter oak pillars holding up an ornately carved head piece, encasing a 6’x8’ mirror, dulled from the ages, but holding the faces and stories of a century. The bar was solid oak, weighing God only knows how much, with the original brass foot rail fronting the base. It was spectacular – Lord knows, I’ve been in a few bars, and I’ve seen few bars to compare; and for a while, I owned it.
The rest of the bar contained six small 3’x2’tables with two chairs each, a busted, out-of-tune piano in the corner (certain to be the one that John Lennon composed ‘IMAGINE” upon during his 1972 stay), a moderately functional juke box and a wild boars head, slain in Georgia, hanging on the North wall.
The walls had dark stained 1x4 cedar slats running vertically every two feet, with the most God-awful green & orange striped wall paper between; we were quick to have our painter, Crazy Mike, mud-stucco over the wallpaper and paint it a soothing celery green. The ceiling was a heinously dark brown cork board – in our dream world, we would eventually replace that with a pressed tin ceiling, typical of the type of ceiling in a turn of the century bar. That dream, along with a plentitude of others, never materialized.
At 7:00 AM, coffee brewing and doors unlocked, I walked into the bar. My first site was an estimated 50 empty bottles of beer, upright, judiciously distributed on three of the six tables, and an obviously empty bottle of Jagermeister lying on its side atop the bar. Wow! The businessman in me made a quick calculation that we grossed $150 on beer after I went to bed, but at what ultimate cost? I was surveying the scene quietly, imagining what in the hell I’d thankfully missed out on, when over my shoulder, causing me to jump full out of my boxers, The Chief appeared, asking, “Hey! What the hell does it take for a guy to get a Bloody Mary around here?”
“All you gotta do is ask. I make a pretty good Bloody Mary.” This is what I said, but what I was thinking was ‘are you kidding me? You’re standing amongst 50 dead soldiers that you helped obliterate but a few hours ago, and you’re now wanting more alcohol at 7:00 AM in the morning??’
“And I’ll take a beer chaser with that Bloody Mary!” said The Chief.
I’m making the Bloody Mary for the expectant customer, and decided that I’d make small talk as a way to stop me from screaming at him about his Dhoubian alcoholic excesses.
“So, out of the sack at 7:00 and thirsty for a Bloody Mary, eh?”
“Hell no! I was up at 5:00, and I’ve been fishing out there for the past two hours. Caught me a few nice ones too!”
“Wow. Up at 5:00? What time did you guys finally close it down here last night?”
“The wife and me headed upstairs at 2:30 when your daughter told us she’d get in trouble for keeping the bar open any longer. We’d a made you a bunch more money if she’d have let us keep at it.”
‘Oh my…’ I thought – for the love of a buck. Abe had duly warned me.
I proffered the Bloody Mary, with the beer chaser, and left him in the bar to start my morning rituals – checking people out, stripping beds, washing sheets, checking people out, making more coffee, stripping more beds, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseam.
About 9:00, The Chief’s wife came down, bags in tow, ready to check out. They’d paid cash as they went, for the room at check in, for the hot springs tickets, for dinner and drinks, and after a quick check with a ‘sleeping like the dead’ Rachel, they’d paid cash as they went for the debauchery in the bar. I even had a warm $10 bill in my pocket for the mornings Bloody Mary and beer chaser. They were good to go.
“We had such a wonderful time. We just love this hotel! The food was great, and your daughter is lovely. We can’t wait to come back!”
OK, so I felt a little crappy thinking the bad things that I thought about these folks. They were truly sweet people, absolute salt-of-the-earth. And they’d spent a big chunk of change, CASH MONEY, at a time when we were desperate for CASH MONEY. I gave a heartfelt wave goodbye as they puttered off in their loaded down late-model Subaru wagon.
Still kind of half waving goodbye, I saunter back into the lobby of The Riverside, and who is standing at our checkout desk but the Denver golf widow who stayed in Betty – the serenely appointed room next to Mary, where The Chief and his spouse shared a quiet, relaxing getaway.
“How was everything, and how did you sleep?”
“Well, we were sleeping very well until about 2:30. The people in the room next to us were, uh, really loud. Well, I’m sure you had to hear them too.” She looked more than just a little pained as she relayed this information. “And it didn’t let up for two hours. It was like we were being tortured!” I’m thinking that an on-line review that described your hotel stay as “like we were being tortured” wouldn’t exactly be good for future bookings.
I apologized profusely, but our guest couldn’t have been nicer about it; after all, it wasn’t me that had been up there war-whoopie-ing with the spouse in the wee morning hours. I didn’t have to say “Come back and see us again” because I knew that the only way this lady would visit us again would be in her nightmares.
I plodded upstairs to assess the damage in the Second Honeymoon Suite – it was a sight that would have put the second generation of any Hilton or Marriott out of the hotel business and into pig farming for the purpose of seeking a cleaner, more wholesome occupation. I cleaned 500+ guest rooms during my two year stint at The Riverside – only once did I feel the need to don rubber gloves and a mask.
Strewn about the room - on the bed post, on the window sill, on the sink and on the dresser - like so many scalps proudly earned in battle, hung the spent condoms of this warrior’s nights’ conquest. The bed sheets, quilts, pillows, towels and signature Riverside flannel robes were thrown about the room as if the occupants had been having a contest to see how badly they could scatter the bedding and such from its original places. One dozen empty Budweiser bottles decorated every level space in the room upon which you could stand a beer bottle, and an empty fifth of Smirnoff vodka had almost found its way into the trash can. On a positive note, I’m certain that the ghost that previously had inhabited this room was now screaming towards, and excited about the alternative prospects of, living out the rest of its days in Hell and eternal damnation. Had the ghost room for another passenger on it’s Southbound train, I would have considered tagging along as opposed to having to execute the clean-up task which lay before me.
On with the gloves, and out with the bleach. The CASH MONEY that came with this deal was dearly earned, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
