Justin Time for Dinner.........The Main Course

At our Meet & Greet, Justin was quick to offer me his wood for The Riverside. He was a young newlywed with another mouth to feed on the way, and free appetizers and decently prized booze not withstanding, he was at the HSS Chamber Meet & Greet to rustle up some new business.

It pained me to ask, but I had to. “If it’s a boy, will he be Justin Jr.?”

“We already know it’s going to be a girl. We’re thinking of naming her Precious. Get it? Precious Tiem?”

Obviously the nut had not fallen very far from the Tiem family tree.

“So what do you charge for a cord of wood, delivered and stacked?”

“Normally I get $175 a cord, but that doesn’t include stacking – I can get $200 a cord if it’s stacked. Now if you bought maybe at least 10 cords, I could deliver it and stack it for $2000. How’s that sound?” The concept of the volume discount had not yet made its way to the thin mountain air between Justin’s ears.

“Wow! That seems kinda steep. I paid maybe $150 bucks in Kansas City, delivered and stacked. Lemme think about that, Justin. That kind of cash is pretty hard for me to come up with in one chunk. What would you charge to dump some 10’-20’ logs in the backyard, and I’ll cut them down and split them myself?”

“Hmmm….I’d have to think about that for a minute. Everybody wants it cut already.”

I could see this new wrinkle to his wood business had thrown him for a bit of a loop. Justin may have been many things, but a savvy marketer wasn’t one of them. I came up with a better idea.

“How about this, Justin? You bring me a load of logs, and I’ll treat you and a guest to dinner in our restaurant, not including drinks. You gotta pay for your drinks.” (An extremely important caveat in Grand County when bartering goods and services– not on any deal would you break even if unlimited free drinks were offered in exchange for anything.)

“And every time you bring me a load of logs, you get a dinner for two.” A worst case cost for a dinner for two without alcohol, with both ordering rib-eyes and dessert, was a $60 tab, with an actual out of pocket cost to me of $20. If they ordered alcohol with dinner, that profit would help offset the $20 expense. I’d be getting loads of uncut wood for $15-$20 bucks a pop; you couldn’t beat that deal!

Justin was quick to accept, as his wife’s birthday was fast upon him, and he’d promised her a birthday feast at The Dairy Dine – The Riverside would be quite a step up on that promise. It really worked out well for both of us, as I needed wood, had limited funds to buy wood but had the nicest restaurant in town. Justin wanted a nice meal, had limited funds to buy a nice meal but had plenty of wood to deliver; kind of a Hot Sulphur Springs version of the Gift of the Magi.

The following Monday morning, I’m up early taking Lucy outside to do her morning business. There were no guests to check out and nobody checking in, and the restaurant was closed on Mondays – so it was as much of a day off as we got at The Riverside. Its 7:30 AM, cool, crisp, and I’m in my Riverside Signature flannel robe, leaning on the wood shed, watching and waiting as Lucy sniffed her way to where she ultimately wanted to be. The morning stillness is broken by the loud rattle of a rickety truck coming down the alley between our neighbor’s apartment building and Joe’s Auto Repair, which bordered the north (back) end of our property.

Enter an old, beat up, coughing, wheezing, barely running Ford Pickup truck – Google research tells me it might have been a 1965 model – rusted out with bald tires and a short bed to boot, a goofily grinning Justin Tiem at the wheel. In the back of that short bed were eight 6’ pine logs, each with a diameter of less than 8” - Tony’s free logs the summer before were 20’ long and 12” – 18” in diameter. Justin didn’t go up into the woods and lop these babies down – I think possibly he found them laying in the streets of Hot Sulphur, or in the woods of Pioneer Park….maybe even on the river bank next to our property. They were like big twigs – the stuff that you’d gather up at a city park if you were going to roast weenies.

“Here’s the first load” Justin said, proudly beaming, “Were do you want me to put the wood?”

“Uh, let’s just toss ‘em right here on the ground. They shouldn’t get in the way of anything.” I don’t think Justin picked up on the sarcasm.

“What time does the restaurant open?” Justin asked.

“We’re closed on Monday, so it’ll have to be tomorrow night if that works for you.”

“No problem, we’ll see you tomorrow. I’m coming hungry!!” Off chugged the oldest, still functioning piece of commercial wood hauling equipment in the lower 48. Possibly there were older ones in some Third World countries…..possibly.

Justin and his pregnant bride showed up promptly at opening time Tuesday night– actually early, waiting in front of the hotel for us to open up. I sat them at the corner table, the best one with the best view of the river. I treated them like royalty – Barack and Michelle would have had no less flourish from me. Of course, as expected, they both ordered appetizers, salads and the Dirty Rib-eye, plus desserts; but Justin decided to be a teetotaler that evening – no revenue-producing booze for which I could charge him, only the endless glass of free iced tea. (Perhaps he was being thoughtful of his wife, with child and probably not drinking, as he wasn’t the least bit shy about pounding down the hooch at the Meet & Greet.)

Justin and his wife had a lovely dinner – they ended up being our only customers that night. I fired up the kitchen, paid a cook and gave out two free meals for 8 logs that I could have cut, split and burned before I’d served Justin’s rib-eye. So far that ‘how could you go wrong with a deal like that?’ deal was tilted in the favor of Mr. Tiem. Within a few short days, that favorable tilt would turn to a 90o landslide of inequity; and true to form, certainly not in my favor.

Two days later I awake to find a load of ten logs, some but 3’ or 4’, and all skinny as fence rails, deposited in the back yard. 12 short hours after I’m thinking he must have deposited them in the yard, who shows up at The Riverside, this time with his mother, but Hot Sulphur’s version of Jack Haley, sans the suit of tin; two more rib-eyes with all the trappings and an endless river of iced tea refills. My good humor was starting to wear a little thin.

The following Tuesday, the third “pile” of logs is delivered by Mr. Tiem – while there were a few more logs, they were still of the same quality with regards to their length and diameter The good humor has now disappeared completely, to be replaced by a state of pure pissed-offedness; more at myself than Justin, for once again, I’d let myself fall prey to the Grand County hustle.

Justin shows up by himself that evening, and I take the opportunity to have a frank, man-to-man discussion with him about our previously agreed-to business arrangement.

“Hey Richard! How’re you doing this evening? Did you see the load I left this morning?”

“I saw a few small logs in the backyard that I hadn’t noticed being there yesterday.” I answered, somewhat icily. “Was that the ‘load’ you’re talking about?”

“Sure was – that’s why I’m here for dinner. I sure could use one of those rib-eyes. I love the way you cook those steaks.”

The attempt at flattery flew right by me, finding no purchase.

“Justin, I gotta be honest with you. Those aren’t exactly what I’d call Dirty Rib-eye logs. I’d even be stretching it to call them Chicken Spedini logs. If we served Hot Dogs here at The Riverside, those logs you brought me today would be Hot Dog logs. Get it?”

He cowered a little. “My equipment isn’t set up to bring big wood….you’ve seen my truck!”

Yes, I’ve seen your truck and I’m surprised that it would haul a case of toilet paper, I thought but didn’t say.

“But Justin, your business card says.…well…I assumed you had a real wood business…hell, you’ve even got a slogan! Are you telling me you can’t actually put the wood where I want it? ”

“I can…I have to split it to 18” lengths, deliver and stack it, one cord at a time. And for $50 a cord and a few more of those Dirty Rib-eyes, I can deliver all the wood you want….. Justin Time!”

“Still want that rib-eye, buddy… extra-well done?”

Eleven extra-well done rib-eye dinners later, and an extra few hundred bucks to boot, I had my wood for the final winter of Living Life Riverside……just in time.

Justin Time for Dinner....Second Course

The batch of wood that first Riverside summer was courtesy of our good friend, Tony the Sober Plumber. Tony and his Dad were the kind of guys that if they weren’t doing something highly physical and potentially dangerous, they may as well have been getting a pedicure. Tony had a friend who gave him access to all of the dead Lodgepole pines he wanted – all he had to do was cut them down and haul them off. That might sound easy to you flatlanders, but it involved driving a truck and trailer up a 15o incline, whacking down 100’ tall dead pine trees – TIMBERRRRR!!! – cutting off the branches, sawing the trunks into 20’ lengths weighing 1000 pounds apiece, and then the two of you man-handling them onto your trailer. After this blistering display of high elevation derring-do and Mountain Man machismo, Tony drove to the back yard of The Riverside and left us 20 of these babies, gratis. He was that kind of a guy.

Whilst we were winding down our stay in Hot Sulphur as it coincided with the demise of the Grand County economy, Tony’s ‘new construction’ plumbing business – along with all other construction related businesses – had gone straight down the toilet. Not one to sit around and feel sorry for himself, Tony bought an old diesel semi- truck and a log-hauling trailer and employed himself hauling dead pine logs out of the mountains. His summertime hobby of felling and gathering those logs for friends and neighbors was mere child’s play compared to his new winter profession. Imagine driving a semi-truck with tire chains, pulling a 40’ log trailer, up the side of a newly hewn, snowy mountain path in the middle of the freezing Colorado night. Logs loaded, he would carefully traverse his way back down the hill – foot all but always jammed on the brake, as the slightest bit of unchecked downward motion could cause the trailer to jackknife, upending both the cab and the trailer and sending it down the steep mountain side in a grisly, cacophonous pas-de-deux. Once safely down the mountain – the target time was always 4:00 AM – the real trek began, as the final destination for the load was a saw mill in Rifle, CO, 170 miles WSW of Grand County.

The quickest route that a normal person would take to Rifle from Hot Sulphur Springs during the winter was to take Highway 40 west to Kremmling, a flat, easy 17 mile track, and then head south on Highway 9 along the floor of the Blue River valley. During the fall, this 40 mile drive is as beautiful as any on Earth, with golden aspens ablaze against the jagged peaks of the Gore Range. In the winter, while still beautiful, you had better not notice the view; you’d best keep your eyes squarely on the often windy, sometimes treacherous two-lane stretch of highway. At the end of the road you will find yourself on I-70 in Dillon, CO, at which point you head west another 115 miles until you hit Rifle, CO.

That is the route I would travel, (it is the route MapQuest would suggest as well), and I would be cautious and generally white knuckled as I gently maneuvered my 2003 4-Wheel drive Chevy Suburban along the curvaceous, snow-packed lanes of Highway 9 during the winter. If you wanted to cut 30-45 minutes off of the drive, and if you had no regard for your life or limb, you would jump on the ‘trough road’ just south of Kremmling, and be deposited about 50 miles further west on I-70 in Eagle. The trough road was a mostly gravel, barely two-lane narrow road that snaked its way along the Colorado River – sometimes adjacent, sometimes 500’ above the river as it hugged the side of some of the Rockies finest granite. This was also the route that the Amtrak’s California Zephyr takes midway on its trek from Chicago to Los Angeles. (If you ever get the chance to jump the Zephyr in Denver and take the 4.5 hour trip to Glenwood Springs, CO, take it, as you’ll believe you’ve died and gone to heaven.) The drive was scary enough to be an attention-getter for tough guys in summer in a small car – to me it was an unimaginable feat in the winter while pulling a trailer loaded with 40,000 pounds of logs in the wee hours of the morning. The only possible upside to this pre-dawn journey, and I’m stretching hard here to find one, would be the lack of traffic.

The only time I took the trough road was in late spring for a brief trip to Glenwood Springs. There was still some slickness and the occasional snow and ice patch; a few points in the journey – narrow curves overlooking deadly drop-offs into the majestic Colorado River - I had to fight hard not to wet my pants from fear. On that return trip, I didn’t even for a second consider taking the road, rather, simply opting for the additional time and mileage of Highway 9.

Tony made this nail-biter twice a day, six days a week – at night, often in blinding blizzards with gale force winds.

He had some close calls and more than a few scares – once when his brakes were smoking-hot and non functional as he flew uncontrollably down a, thankfully, relatively straight stretch of road – and he was fully aware of and not enthralled with the danger he faced every night. More often than not upon his return home around 1-2 PM, dog tired from both the physical labor of maneuvering his belching diesel mammoth and the stress associated with keeping his load intact and himself alive, he would have to do one repair or another to either the truck or the trailer. You’d assume correctly that a guy that would buy a truck and do this sort of thing for a living would have the wherewithal to repair his own rig.

After trying to live a fragment of a normal family life and 4-5 hours of sleep, Tony was back up and in the truck, heading for another load of logs at 12:00 AM. He did this for $800 bucks a load. While that may sound like a lot - $4800 a week – the reality is that he spent $300 per trip on fuel and untold more on repairs; plus he had the truck payment and insurance. At the end of the deal he might clear $200 bucks a day – before taxes. Basically, Tony was risking his life, working his tail off and barely surviving. Sound familiar?

As I’ve stated previously, times are hard and living and surviving even harder in Grand County, CO.

Again, I digress…………back to Mr. Tiem, the provider of both wood and unintended mirth to the fine folks of Hot Sulphur Springs.

Justin Time for Dinner

Early in the summer of 2009, The Riverside hosted the inaugural Hot Sulphur Springs Chamber of Commerce Meet & Greet. In a town of 400 people, obviously there were very few businesses, and perhaps the need even questionable for a Chamber of Commerce – two motels on Highway 40, the hot springs resort, two small diners (The Glory Hole and The Depot), the seasonally-open Dairy Dine, The Barking Dog Pub, a gas station/convenience store, a liquor store/video rental/fishing tackle/Laundromat, a mortuary and The Historic Riverside Hotel, Restaurant & Bar. Hot Sulphur Springs is also the county seat for the county of Grand, ergo; you had the courthouse, drivers’ license bureau, County Treasurer, Appraisers office, Building Department and the crown jewel of the public trust– the Grand County Jail, otherwise known as the DUI Hilton.

None of the aforementioned businesses were represented at the HSS Chamber Meet & Greet, with the obvious exception of yours’ truly. In place of the real brick and mortar town businesses were friends and neighbors who had small businesses on the side – Amway, Avon, Pampered Chef and Aveda sellers, four certified ‘life coaches’ and an income tax service, to name but a few. Mostly, it was a good excuse to get together and eat appetizers that we had prepared and belly up to the usually ‘not open to the locals’ bar at The Riverside; the appetizers were free, but the booze wasn’t.

One interesting thing about the get together that I noticed immediately – I’d never before seen any of these people frequent The Riverside as paying customers. A few I’d recognized from seeing them at the post office – located across the street from the hotel – but otherwise none of them had dined with us in our restaurant; you know, that room overlooking the river where we were trying to earn our living. This speaks to one of my major miscalculations when I was projecting revenue for our business venture; I’d made the incorrect assumption that locals would dine in our restaurant – nada, it didn’t happen.

One of the strangers that I met that evening was a tall, pleasant young man named Justin Tiem (pronounced ‘Time’). That’s right. Twenty-five years ago Mr. & Mrs. Tiem had a baby boy, and decided to make him the poster child for peer abuse, sending him out into the cruel world to be the eternal butt of one bad joke after the next. Really, what were they thinking? Justin was pretty good natured about it, even using the misspelling in the title of his business: his business card read:

JUST-IN TIME WOOD SERVICE, Justin Tiem, Owner. His mission statement, or motto, was “I’ll Put the Wood Wherever You Like!”

There was also a man who lived in our town with parents that named him Dick Johnson. Those long Grand County winters can have a crooked effect on the minds of its citizens.

In the land of eternal winter, the need for a steady source of firewood was profound. This profound need was ratcheted way up at The Riverside, as the two main rooms in the hotel had no source of heat – gas, electric, forced air or otherwise – other than two small fireplaces with non-functional heat-o-laters (blowers to disperse the heat). It wasn’t unusual to get up first thing of a frigid morning and find the inside temperature of the lobby to be hovering in the high 30’s. On killer cold nights I might leave an electric heater blowing, always weighing the notion of frozen pipes vs. the potential fire hazard; but then, I had insurance.

More often than not, the late nighters at the hotel would have expended all of the wood that was brought in throughout the day and night – that would generally be the reason people actually went to bed; no firewood, getting damn cold in here and way too damn cold to go outside and get anymore wood. Oh, and we’re out of beer. Most all of my days started with a trip through the bar, and out the backdoor to the woodshed – in a biting, dry cold that stung any exposed skin or appendage with the fury of a hundred angry wasps. It was the norm for early morning first light temperatures, December through February, on clear mornings to average -20oF.

The wood shed was roughly 10’wide and 14’ long with 7’ of clear headspace – that’s roughly 1000 cubic feet, which will house about 9 cords of wood. We filled that space to the brim both winters we owned The Riverside, with an additional cord or two stacked outside under a tarp. We used the outside wood first as the eventual snowfalls would make anything outside positively unattainable without the aid of a backhoe – I didn’t have one of those. All the wood stacked to the gills of that shed in late October was a little like a big paycheck – sitting full in the bank on day one, it seemed like a lot and looked like it was more than you could spend; come mid February, that wood, like the paycheck, dwindled down to pennies in your account, and you wondered how you were going to get to the next payday (spring and warm weather, in our case) intact.

Here’s one other little thing about that wood. It wasn’t the oak and hickory hardwoods of my Midwestern life experience; the kind that was a dense, heavy, slow-burning wood, generating hotter heat and prolific glowing coals. It was pine – dead pine, from the dead pine trees that dominated the Grand County landscape, courtesy of the dreaded pine beetle. Vast expanses of forests that were for centuries Christmas green from the curtain of a million Evergreens, Blue Spruces and Ponderosa, Pinion and Lodgepole Pines, were now dominated by the deathly ashen brown pallor of these heretofore regal Emerald titans.

There is good and bad associated with dead pine wood. The good is that it’s relatively easy to split, and Chef Danny, one of his buddies and I, chain-sawed into 18” lengths and split every stick of that firewood with a splitting maul – thousands of pieces of firewood, cut, split and stacked. That would have been an impossible feat for this fat old man were we dealing with hardwood and next to impossible for the youngsters. The bad news is that the easy to cut and split dead pine wood burned faster than a gasoline-soaked firecracker fuse. You would stoke a hot fire with three or four stout logs, and within 15 minutes, it would be as if you’d stoked the fire with heavy air – where in the hell did it go? On an average night, with guests in the hotel and hanging around the lobby, you could easily burn 40-50 logs in a 5 hour period. On a night when there weren’t guests in the hotel, in an attempt to conserve our wood resources, we kept the fire low, dressed in our warmest sweaters and froze our asses off. The others at the hotel cursed me on those nights, low and under their frigid, visible breath, as I was the keeper of the wood.

But I digress….back to our friend Justin.

To be continued......