Although the piercing smile had not yet fully subsided from his face, Abner said “Of course I remember you Mr. Paradise. How could I forget a name like Paradise?”
“Well, my wife and I have always loved your place, and I’ve just sold my business here in Kansas City and we’re at a point in our lives where we’re looking for a lifestyle change, and we’ve always thought about owning The Riverside. Any chance you’re looking to get out of the business and sell the place?”
The smile was now back broadly, so profoundly, that he could barely operate his tongue to get words through his lips. The high elevation afternoon sun was reflecting off of his fully exposed rotting dentia, the reflection from his ragged incisors in the front window of The Riverside all but blinding Abner to the point where he couldn’t concentrate, but he summoned the necessary wherewithal to answer in something like a hissing purr…”Yes…yes… I might be interested in discussing a sale of the property. But it would have to be to the right people…people that would care for the place, people that would love the place, as I have.”
‘Oh My’, I thought, ‘beyond the financial, he has additional qualifications for who he’ll sell to.’ Could we be so honored, could we ultimately be selected and would we be chosen worthy enough to ably carry his water at The Riverside going forward?
I didn’t want to be cast out from consideration before a proper vetting so early in the game, a vetting that might show me and mine not worthy to bear the distinguished mantle of Proprietor of The Historic Riverside Hotel, but I had to come right out and get a price, as I had a maximum number in mind that I was willing to offer, but I feared that the number was maybe half what he was asking. No sense going any further if the place was immediately out of our price range.
“So Abner, I know there is a lot of water to cover between here and there, but so I don’t further waste either of our time, do you have a number in mind that you’d sell the place for?”
Abner said immediately, and emphatically, no doubt his arm was outstretched and his index finger pointing skyward in oratorical emphasis, “I won’t take a penny less than $800,000!”
Now the drunken pumpkin grin appeared upon my face. I’d imagined the place to be worth 2 million, maybe as much as 3 million, and my drop dead point with what I thought we could offer was 1.5 million. Here was a 13,000 square foot structure on 1.5 acres of Colorado River-front property – bona-fide Gold Medal trout water that people traveled from all over the world to angle. I’d read that people spent as much as 3 million dollars for 2500’ feet of undeveloped riverfront property on The Colorado, not but a mile or two upriver from Hot Sulphur.
“Well, that seems to be a price range that we can work in…let me talk with my wife and get back with you.”
I didn’t then know, but know now, that Abner quickly lost the smile at this point and went heavy into a ‘gotta sell this son-of-a-bitch at all costs as I haven’t had a serious prospect with the money to make this happen on the hook for the past 19 years’ survival mode …”I do remember you now…you had a family and you seemed to love this place. Not everyone could take this on, but I remember that you and your wife and kids seemed like you’d be the type of people that would be perfect for this place. Wasn’t one of your kids retarded?”
“No, uh, that was one of our friend’s kids you’re thinking about, and he wasn’t retarded!”
“Sorry. Sorry. I’ve had so many thousands of guests the past few years, it’s a wonder I can remember as many particulars as I can…given my advanced age…and my poor health…(cough…cough). I really would like to sell this place to you, as I’m really starting to wear down.”
“Well Abner, let me talk with my wife, and I’m going to put a list of questions together and I’ll call you in a few days.”
And now, here was not only the first red flag of hundreds that I would fail or refuse to see, but in retrospect, here was the biggest, football-field sized red flag of all times regarding our magnum f-up in the pursuit and eventual purchase of The Historic Riverside Hotel, Bar & Restaurant.
Abner opened up to me, a virtual stranger, over the phone on our first phone call…”I’ve got a couple of other parties interested in the property…I think you should know that.” (‘Damn!” I thought.) Abner continued…”Unfortunately, I’ve got myself into a little issue on my property taxes, and I could use $10,000 to get up to speed with the county. If you could send me the money, we could put it towards a down payment, or at the least, I’d pay you back at a generous interest rate when I sell the place to someone else if you’re not interested in purchasing the property. And if you were to send me the money pretty quickly, it would sure put you in a favorable position when I’m deciding who to sell the place to.”
At this point any normal human being and most abnormal human beings...probably even most cats and dogs… would have not only turned away from this deal, they would have snapped their necks turning away and running as fast as their fat little shanks would carry them, all the while laughing with glee, screaming to and thanking the Good Lord above about having almost gotten into a deal that would’ve involved sending big money on the come to a shifty, broke, tax-evading hotelier in a State that was not only accepting of him, but also the city of Boulder and it’s inhabitants.
Reality and simple common sense would then have its natural chance to kick in, and you’d reply to this outlandish request with a “What??? Do you think I’m out of my mind? I’m going to just up and send you $10,000? Are you insane???” You would then hang up the phone, probably chuckle to yourself, and then get on with your life.
I probably don’t have to tell you that the $10,000 check was in the mail, heading west to Abner Renta, but a few short days later…..
To Be Continued
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Abner Renta...........aka Not Martha Stewart
About 20 miles NNE of Hot Sulphur Springs lies the village of Grand Lake, Colorado, home to Colorado’s deepest and largest natural lake and the headwaters of the Colorado River; Grand Lake is also the western entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. In the county of Grand, with all of the spectacular vistas, fishing, hunting and recreational opportunities, Grand Lake, Co can lay claim to the first established vacation spot in the Colorado Rockies, dating back to the late 1800’s. The setting of this cerulean jewel surrounded by sloping pine forests and the ensuing spires of The Indian Peaks is rivaled by few places in terms of its natural beauty. Sadly, at the bottom of this visually bountiful natural bowl lies the actual town of Grand Lake, replete with a faux rustic Old West street of bars, restaurants, art galleries, souvenir shops, a bowling alley and some less-than-quaint motels and lodging establishments. Oh well, we all gotta make a buck.
The Historic Grand Lake Lodge, which opened in 1920, some 17 years after the opening of The Riverside, was the crown jewel of Grand Lake – a magnificent lodge, guest quarters and cabins – the standard bearer for food, beverage and lodging on the western slope of the Continental Divide; this until a fire burned the better part of the place to the ground in the summer of 1973. The owners took a painstaking 8 years to rebuild, careful to extract historic furnishings and native memorabilia from the charred rubble before finally re-opening in the summer of 1981.
Why is this little NNE travelogue germane to the story of Abner Renta and The Riverside?
Approximately 50 yards north of the resurrected Grand Lake Lodge, just at the edge of the majestic pine forests that surround this iconic structure, sat a pile of pre-1940’s kitchen equipment that barely survived the fire, and only because the fire didn’t get hot enough to melt the 2-ton cast-iron gas stove, oven and attached griddle that had been the heart and soul of The Grand Lake Lodge kitchen for the past 30 years. They’d been talking about replacing that big, old, outdated locomotive of a stove 10 years prior to the fire; it was now dead and forever out of that kitchen, figuratively if not literally buried at the edge of the woods - for the kitchen crew a silver lining in the dark cloud that was the destructive blaze of 1973. Truth be known, they’d hoped that it would sit there forever and become a permanent part of the flora and fauna, as the effort required of hauling it off would have been monumental.
Enter Abner Renta, Gollum on his eternal quest for a magic ring’s worth of cheap furnishings and equipment for his newly acquired mountain hostelry.
Abner bought the stove for $25, had his bus-depot servant and probably 15 others help load it onto a U-Haul trailer and install it in the newly remodeled kitchen at The Riverside in 1986, prior to the grand reopening. No big deal that not all of the burners worked, the flat top was half melted, it was rife with rust or that the scald and char from the 1973 fire was literally welded to the exterior of this gargantuan hot-box; what was key was that it was cheap, and it worked…..barely, but worked vs. not working at all, in a very black and white sort of way.
Stove assembled in place, to a yellow paisley linoleum sheet floor, probably installed in The Riverside kitchen sometime in the 1930’s, Abner and his servant adhered speckled, beige asbestos linoleum tiles – I’m certain upon completion, they stood back and proudly gazed upon the bright new floor, which now looked something like a glistening diamond in a goats’ ass.
The perimeter of the kitchen was then outfitted with built-in plywood and pine shelves, cabinets, pantries, drawers and worktops, painted with a heavy coat of high-gloss white paint; it was here that utensils and dry goods were stored, and food was ultimately prepared. These cabinets and shelving were very well constructed by Abner’s illegal; so well constructed that they would end up being a screaming bitch to remove 22 years later in our effort to get the kitchen up to code: (take a peek in any commercial kitchen - you won’t see anything constructed of wood, as wood tends to have a soft spot for harboring bacteria.)
The dining room tables and chairs as well as all of the furnishings in the guest rooms were a hodge-podge assortment of yard sale, estate sale and thrift shop items; an eclectic mix, but functional and inexpensive. Bedding, sheets and towels were also collected at various sales or second-hand stores – no boring, bleached white sheets for The Riverside beds; if the linen wasn’t loud enough to keep you awake at night, you wouldn’t be sleeping on it in Abner’s place. Many guests found the wacky sheets and funky furnishings charming, as it gave the place a ‘homey’ feel; we got rid of them the first week we owned the hotel.
The dishware, glasses and cutlery were also vintage garage sale – nothing was a set, no two pieces alike; it could be all but dizzying to look down at the swirls, stripes and floral patterns on the plates before stabbing your fork at some of Abner’s finest fare. Also, for certain an advantage to using loud, colorful stoneware was its ability to hide the adhered flecks of yesterdays’ food that might have been missed by the no-dishwasher sink dunking method of tableware hygiene that Abner chose to employ, as the Grand Lake Lodge did not have a rusted, charred, barely working dishwasher for sale.
And then there were the beds. Abner didn't need to go searching after bargains on mattresses, pillows and bed frames - they came with the hotel at the time of purchase...and had been there since the dawn of time. While driving home from The Riverside after our first extended winter visit, I realized for the first time in my life that I actually had a back, because it hurt so freaking bad after sleeping on that bed for four nights! Most of the beds consisted of a 6" thick 1940's era mattress laying on a frame of naked rusty bedsprings. Go back and watch some old war movies from the 1950's, and you'll see beds like this in scenes from German POW camps. We had Abner's beds at the curb within two months, replaced by new queen mattresses.
The final accoutrement to The Riverside was no bargain basement thrift shop fire damaged piece of junk, rather, it was arguably one of the most spectacular pieces of furnishing in all of Grand County – the magnificent, historical Brunswick Bar. Manufactured in 1895 in Dubuque, IA and eventually brought to The Riverside from it’s original home in Leadville, CO in 1920, the bar was a burnished oak and cherry wood masterpiece of ornately carved borders and corniced columns that beckoned the thirsty traveler to gaze in awed admiration, often forgetting that an icy beer sat sweating before him, waiting patiently to be consumed. When Abner arrived at The Riverside, the bar was stored out back of the hotel in one of the storage sheds amid piles of clutter that had accumulated over the past 80 years. Enlisting the help of a few locals with the promise of a round of free drinks after the bars assemblage, Abner had the booze-fueled locals lift, haul and reassemble the bar in what had previously been a small storeroom off of the kitchen. After a 20 year hiatus, the glorious Brunswick Bar was back in business at The Riverside.
And so began Abner’s tenure as proprietor of the newly refurbished Riverside Hotel, Bar and Restaurant; he had the roof replaced, the walls wallpapered, the rooms furnished, the bar stocked and the kitchen cooking in time for the start of the summer tourist season of 1986.
21 years later, he was pulling out every stop imaginable to convince a naive couple from Kansas, with just enough money to get their asses in serious trouble, that Hot Sulphur Springs was a garden spot that would rival Mecca, that there is nothing more satisfying than seeing the smiles of satisfied customers as they pass through your door having been unknowingly insulted and unwittingly filched to their gills, and that in spite of the seemingly high asking price, The Riverside was an idyllic yet affordable dream-come-true that these flatland hospitality rubes could make happen with the stroke of a pen.
To be continued………
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Abner Renta............aka Not Bob Villa
So who in the hell is this Gollum-esque miscreant, this Abner Renta, who found his way to a ramshackle old hotel in a desolate outpost in the frozen, unpopulated heart of Colorado, in the county of Grand, for what seemed to be the ultimate purpose of taking easy money from innocent, unsuspecting people whilst making them feel lower than a Gollum-esque miscreant?
Raised a Puerto-Rican Jew in the West Side slums of Brooklyn in the late 1940’s, Abner moved way further west to study at the University of Colorado in Boulder. (How on earth would Abner have chosen Boulder? one might ask; but I have mentioned before in detail in this blog of Boulder, CO being a magnetic force in the center of the universe for attracting the...uh.. odd.) Social Work was his degree, (very ironic…a degree you would normally pursue if you wanted to be in the business of helping the less fortunate), and he plied it for a while working for the Colorado Department of Unemployment. Possibly the notion of working with and trying to fleece people that had nothing to fleece moved him into the hospitality industry, where logic would follow that if you were staying at a nice hotel, you had to have some money to spend/lose/fleece. It was there that Abner found his home.
Abner worked at a hotel near the Denver Airport for the better part of 10 years, honing his multiple Riverside-worthy skills of hotel and restaurant management, biting sarcasm, short-sheeting, cost-cutting, bill padding, good eye contact while bald-face lying, code skirting, pouring rot-gut booze in empty top shelf bottles, dead-beating vendors and tax evasion….to name but a few.
Abner pounded out of Denver in the late 1980’s with a suitcase full of cash and an illegal that he picked up at the Denver Greyhound depot, bound for the mountains in search of a place where he could practice his newly-acquired art of hospitality on the paying public – far from the eyes of scrutiny.
He stumbled upon a sleepy little burg in Grand County, one block south of Highway 40 and found a building nestled against the banks of the majestic Colorado River, a football field away from the base of Mt. Bross, (a languid, lazy excuse for a mountain, but imposing nonetheless as it lorded over the town and valley like a fat uncle to whom either money or fealty is owed), and a stone’s throw away from a natural hot springs pool that had been frequented by the Ute Indians and other nonnative denizens as far back as the 1st century….possibly further.
What Abner found was a magnificent but neglected historic structure; a white, clapboard many-windowed building that jutted it’s façade in broad defiance of the southern exposure that pounded it with 300 days per year of an 8000 foot elevation dose of UV rays. The 3/4” thick pine slats that comprised the cladding of The Riverside had seen and needed a century’s worth of primer and paint to survive this environment; when Abner found it, the illegal-in-tow did a little scraping then added a heavy coat of 1980’s cheap white latex – that did for the place until we purchased it in 2007, badly in need of a new coat of paint.
The Riverside had been unoccupied for the better part of ten years when Abner purchased it in 1986. The roof was shot, and water damage had all but obliterated the place. Water, the stuff that we are all comprised mostly of, live for, die for, fight for and order with or without gas at fancy restaurants, when left to its own devices is brutal on buildings and building materials in general, and roofs in particular. This naturally destructive proclivity is magnified in a roller coaster-extreme climate like Hot Sulphur Springs. The building faces south to accept the warming rays of the sun for natural heat, while the roof slopes back away to the north so that the accumulated then melting snow drips and drains to the back of the building, away from the thronging public. That northern exposure snow, seeing no sun from October thru May, builds up on that roof all winter – 3’-4’ feet is common. The weight of that snow consistently squats on the roof, forcing and flexing the substrate with cooling and warming, all the while opening cracks and crevices that the melting snow seeks out. Unabated, this force, this unyielding flex and flow, and then the ensuing melting snow and dripping water, can buckle the structure of a building and obliterate its walls and floors in a few short years.
When Abner found The Riverside, it was on the perilous end of being decimated by the innocent but destructive forces of cold, hot, sun, snow, ice and water. Needless to say, Abner got a pretty good deal on the place.
One of the first things that Abner did, or rather had his indentured illegal do, was put a new roof on The Riverside. The existing roof was a flat layered hot asphalt and felt construction, known in the trade as a ‘built-up roof’ – the technology dates back to the late 1800’s, and is still a solid option for a flat roof today, much unchanged in both materials and application techniques. As opposed to tearing off the old and applying a new – standard protocol for a roof of this age and deteriorated condition – Abner went right over the old roof with interlocking metal roofing panels, roughly 3’ wide and 20’ in length. When I say ‘went over’, I mean that the help screwed this roof down to the old substrate with thousands of 3/8” x 1.5” screws – that would also equate to thousands of holes being put in the roof, leading to thousands of additional opportunities for future leaks. Not the best roofing practice, but quick and cheap!
When the metal roofing panels were delivered to Abner, laid in bundles on the roof by a crane, Abner went up and cut the bundles open for the purpose of counting the panels; By God, he’d paid for 120 panels and understandably, he was going to count and make certain that they shipped him the 120 panels that he paid for. All present and accounted for, Abner and the help turned in early for what would the following day be a grueling day of roofing. Abner didn’t account for the possibility of an evening windstorm, which in fact did occur, lifting all 120 panels (not simultaneously) and depositing them throughout the town of Hot Sulphur. It is a miracle that no one was dismembered or beheaded, as these panels are sharp-edged sheet metal, capable of literally cutting someone in half given the lethal combination of proper angle and sufficient force, both of which would be available as these things flew threw the air like big, rectangular Frisbees. It would not have been a good first impression on the town from the new hotel proprietor had one of the residents, due to Abner’s miscalculation, been sliced clean in half whilst taking an evening stroll.
After spending the better part of the next two days collecting the panels and toting them back up on the roof, without the aid of a crane, the help began attaching what in most cases were bent, misshapen and often out of square panels; square being important for the purpose of adjoining panel to panel in a tight, waterproof fit. This little whoopsie would be the cause of continual leaks and the resultant water damage from Abner’s first day of new building and roof ownership until the day he handed the keys over to me, and then beyond.
To Be Continued……..
Raised a Puerto-Rican Jew in the West Side slums of Brooklyn in the late 1940’s, Abner moved way further west to study at the University of Colorado in Boulder. (How on earth would Abner have chosen Boulder? one might ask; but I have mentioned before in detail in this blog of Boulder, CO being a magnetic force in the center of the universe for attracting the...uh.. odd.) Social Work was his degree, (very ironic…a degree you would normally pursue if you wanted to be in the business of helping the less fortunate), and he plied it for a while working for the Colorado Department of Unemployment. Possibly the notion of working with and trying to fleece people that had nothing to fleece moved him into the hospitality industry, where logic would follow that if you were staying at a nice hotel, you had to have some money to spend/lose/fleece. It was there that Abner found his home.
Abner worked at a hotel near the Denver Airport for the better part of 10 years, honing his multiple Riverside-worthy skills of hotel and restaurant management, biting sarcasm, short-sheeting, cost-cutting, bill padding, good eye contact while bald-face lying, code skirting, pouring rot-gut booze in empty top shelf bottles, dead-beating vendors and tax evasion….to name but a few.
Abner pounded out of Denver in the late 1980’s with a suitcase full of cash and an illegal that he picked up at the Denver Greyhound depot, bound for the mountains in search of a place where he could practice his newly-acquired art of hospitality on the paying public – far from the eyes of scrutiny.
He stumbled upon a sleepy little burg in Grand County, one block south of Highway 40 and found a building nestled against the banks of the majestic Colorado River, a football field away from the base of Mt. Bross, (a languid, lazy excuse for a mountain, but imposing nonetheless as it lorded over the town and valley like a fat uncle to whom either money or fealty is owed), and a stone’s throw away from a natural hot springs pool that had been frequented by the Ute Indians and other nonnative denizens as far back as the 1st century….possibly further.
What Abner found was a magnificent but neglected historic structure; a white, clapboard many-windowed building that jutted it’s façade in broad defiance of the southern exposure that pounded it with 300 days per year of an 8000 foot elevation dose of UV rays. The 3/4” thick pine slats that comprised the cladding of The Riverside had seen and needed a century’s worth of primer and paint to survive this environment; when Abner found it, the illegal-in-tow did a little scraping then added a heavy coat of 1980’s cheap white latex – that did for the place until we purchased it in 2007, badly in need of a new coat of paint.
The Riverside had been unoccupied for the better part of ten years when Abner purchased it in 1986. The roof was shot, and water damage had all but obliterated the place. Water, the stuff that we are all comprised mostly of, live for, die for, fight for and order with or without gas at fancy restaurants, when left to its own devices is brutal on buildings and building materials in general, and roofs in particular. This naturally destructive proclivity is magnified in a roller coaster-extreme climate like Hot Sulphur Springs. The building faces south to accept the warming rays of the sun for natural heat, while the roof slopes back away to the north so that the accumulated then melting snow drips and drains to the back of the building, away from the thronging public. That northern exposure snow, seeing no sun from October thru May, builds up on that roof all winter – 3’-4’ feet is common. The weight of that snow consistently squats on the roof, forcing and flexing the substrate with cooling and warming, all the while opening cracks and crevices that the melting snow seeks out. Unabated, this force, this unyielding flex and flow, and then the ensuing melting snow and dripping water, can buckle the structure of a building and obliterate its walls and floors in a few short years.
When Abner found The Riverside, it was on the perilous end of being decimated by the innocent but destructive forces of cold, hot, sun, snow, ice and water. Needless to say, Abner got a pretty good deal on the place.
One of the first things that Abner did, or rather had his indentured illegal do, was put a new roof on The Riverside. The existing roof was a flat layered hot asphalt and felt construction, known in the trade as a ‘built-up roof’ – the technology dates back to the late 1800’s, and is still a solid option for a flat roof today, much unchanged in both materials and application techniques. As opposed to tearing off the old and applying a new – standard protocol for a roof of this age and deteriorated condition – Abner went right over the old roof with interlocking metal roofing panels, roughly 3’ wide and 20’ in length. When I say ‘went over’, I mean that the help screwed this roof down to the old substrate with thousands of 3/8” x 1.5” screws – that would also equate to thousands of holes being put in the roof, leading to thousands of additional opportunities for future leaks. Not the best roofing practice, but quick and cheap!
When the metal roofing panels were delivered to Abner, laid in bundles on the roof by a crane, Abner went up and cut the bundles open for the purpose of counting the panels; By God, he’d paid for 120 panels and understandably, he was going to count and make certain that they shipped him the 120 panels that he paid for. All present and accounted for, Abner and the help turned in early for what would the following day be a grueling day of roofing. Abner didn’t account for the possibility of an evening windstorm, which in fact did occur, lifting all 120 panels (not simultaneously) and depositing them throughout the town of Hot Sulphur. It is a miracle that no one was dismembered or beheaded, as these panels are sharp-edged sheet metal, capable of literally cutting someone in half given the lethal combination of proper angle and sufficient force, both of which would be available as these things flew threw the air like big, rectangular Frisbees. It would not have been a good first impression on the town from the new hotel proprietor had one of the residents, due to Abner’s miscalculation, been sliced clean in half whilst taking an evening stroll.
After spending the better part of the next two days collecting the panels and toting them back up on the roof, without the aid of a crane, the help began attaching what in most cases were bent, misshapen and often out of square panels; square being important for the purpose of adjoining panel to panel in a tight, waterproof fit. This little whoopsie would be the cause of continual leaks and the resultant water damage from Abner’s first day of new building and roof ownership until the day he handed the keys over to me, and then beyond.
To Be Continued……..
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Mr. Abner Renta...."Unwelcome to My Hotel!"
We would visit The Riverside eight times in total before our seriously fatal pursuit of purchasing the place; the initial summer visit and one other, and six straight visits between Christmas and New Years. Our Colorado/Riverside holiday ritual involved blowing out of KC on Christmas afternoon, driving to Hays, KS, spending the night, and then heading straight the next morning to 7800 feet of Hot Sulphur Springs altitude and 139 pounds of Abner Renta attitude. There we would meet family and more often than not friends from KC who we’d drag to this little jewel in the mountains; The Riverside, an ideal place over the holidays for quality time with family and friends, in the town that progress forgot and the land that Jim Cantore feared.
One irony of our Riverside pre-purchase winter visits to Hot Sulphur and the mountains was that never, ever, did we experience the brutal weather and driving conditions that are commonplace in that neck of the woods. We ignorant flatlanders would head up I-70 out of Denver every December 26th, the sky blue and the frost glistening, and marvel at the beauty of the snow-laden pines and icy peaks on clear roads all the way to our destination. Not once, coming or going, were we treated to the normalcy of a winter blizzard, the kind where we bit our lips to bleeding and wore out our right arms sign-of-the-crossing whilst driving over Berthoud Pass; that is, not until we bought the place and there was no going back: and then, of course, we experienced them with Ex-Lax regularity.
From that first visit in the summer of 1993 to the final visit in the winter of 2000 where we left The Riverside saying “never in hell will we come back here”, Abner steadily transmogrified from a lovable old character’s character to an utterly untenable asshole’s asshole. I contend that many long-time customers continued to visit Abner and The Riverside in his later years only to savor the experience of seeing this miserable ill-humored insulting old fool in his penultimate assholiness glory, much as you watch a NASCAR event for hope of seeing a wreck, or a hockey game a brawl.
Here are some examples of the snappy repartee that I’ve tried to expunge from my memory that would inspire paying guests to consider any other available place on earth than Abner’s Riverside, including most prisons, to eat and sleep while on vacation.
- To friends of ours who visited during one winter trip with their 5-year old…“Your son is very ill-behaved. I'm assuming that he's mentally retarded?”
- To an overweight female guest in the restaurant, loudly enough for all to hear…”If you don’t see anything on the menu that suits you, the Dairy Dine is down the street. Their hamburgers are very good and very fattening, but I don’t suppose that will deter you from eating one.”
- To an innocent walking in off of the street…”What sort of a sty were you raised in where you find it acceptable to enter this room without wiping your feet?” (The prospective customer proffered his middle finger in response and quickly left the premises without describing to Abner the sort of sty in which he was raised.)
- Aloud to no one in particular as a female guest, clad in ski pants, walked through the lobby…”The nice thing about insulated ski pants is that people aren’t sure if they’re looking at your fat ass or insulated ski pants – but then I suppose that all of our asses look fat in ski pants! Bwahaahaahaa!”
These are a few of what I remember; there were plentitudes more that I thankfully succeeded in forgetting.
One of Abner’s trademarks was his dramatic falsetto creepy Tiny Tim freak show of a laugh; it is way beyond verbal description, and whenever you heard it, you’d cock your head like the RCA Jack Russell in aural wonderment. Those of you who visited The Riverside and knew Abner would then and could now attempt to mimic the laugh – it was like Elvis’s “Thank you…thank you very much…”; you heard it and you had to try and ape it yourself.
As the visits to The Riverside mounted up, the laughs lessened and the slyly caustic comments turned to brutal personal assaults. I don’t remember a seminal event on that last visit that made us stomp our foot and say that we were never coming back, rather, it was just a general feeling of ill will that Abner consistently exuded towards us, his paying customers. You knew he needed our money, but you also knew that the last thing on earth he wanted was our company.
I never complained to Abner, never said anything like “Dammit, we’ve come here for six straight years now, brought you a ton of business, spent a ton of money, but you’ve turned into a real shithead and we’re NEVER COMING BACK!” I never did because I knew that he couldn’t care less. At best, berating him and telling him the truth would have gotten me nothing more than one of his “BWAHAAHAAHAAs”.
Six years passed, in which only one of those years we returned to the mountains for our post-Christmas family visit - and not to The Riverside; the rest were spent in Kansas City, blissfully enjoying our home and family, replete with our own private toilets. Not one of us missed our Christmases past at The Riverside.
Then one day, in late February of 2007, as a result of a series of events that were in a domino line that began clickclackclickclackclickclackclicking their way towards the finish line, at which point wrought one of the most infamous phone calls in the universal history of pure dumb-ass foolishness….
“Abner, I don’t know if you remember me, but my name is Richard Paradise, and I’m wondering if you’re interested in selling The Riverside?”
The rotted-teeth grin that Abner displayed upon hearing that question beamed across 700 miles of fiber optics; a smile so profound that possibly the corners of his mouth deftly sliced into each of his earlobes……
To Be Continued…………
One irony of our Riverside pre-purchase winter visits to Hot Sulphur and the mountains was that never, ever, did we experience the brutal weather and driving conditions that are commonplace in that neck of the woods. We ignorant flatlanders would head up I-70 out of Denver every December 26th, the sky blue and the frost glistening, and marvel at the beauty of the snow-laden pines and icy peaks on clear roads all the way to our destination. Not once, coming or going, were we treated to the normalcy of a winter blizzard, the kind where we bit our lips to bleeding and wore out our right arms sign-of-the-crossing whilst driving over Berthoud Pass; that is, not until we bought the place and there was no going back: and then, of course, we experienced them with Ex-Lax regularity.
From that first visit in the summer of 1993 to the final visit in the winter of 2000 where we left The Riverside saying “never in hell will we come back here”, Abner steadily transmogrified from a lovable old character’s character to an utterly untenable asshole’s asshole. I contend that many long-time customers continued to visit Abner and The Riverside in his later years only to savor the experience of seeing this miserable ill-humored insulting old fool in his penultimate assholiness glory, much as you watch a NASCAR event for hope of seeing a wreck, or a hockey game a brawl.
Here are some examples of the snappy repartee that I’ve tried to expunge from my memory that would inspire paying guests to consider any other available place on earth than Abner’s Riverside, including most prisons, to eat and sleep while on vacation.
- To friends of ours who visited during one winter trip with their 5-year old…“Your son is very ill-behaved. I'm assuming that he's mentally retarded?”
- To an overweight female guest in the restaurant, loudly enough for all to hear…”If you don’t see anything on the menu that suits you, the Dairy Dine is down the street. Their hamburgers are very good and very fattening, but I don’t suppose that will deter you from eating one.”
- To an innocent walking in off of the street…”What sort of a sty were you raised in where you find it acceptable to enter this room without wiping your feet?” (The prospective customer proffered his middle finger in response and quickly left the premises without describing to Abner the sort of sty in which he was raised.)
- Aloud to no one in particular as a female guest, clad in ski pants, walked through the lobby…”The nice thing about insulated ski pants is that people aren’t sure if they’re looking at your fat ass or insulated ski pants – but then I suppose that all of our asses look fat in ski pants! Bwahaahaahaa!”
These are a few of what I remember; there were plentitudes more that I thankfully succeeded in forgetting.
One of Abner’s trademarks was his dramatic falsetto creepy Tiny Tim freak show of a laugh; it is way beyond verbal description, and whenever you heard it, you’d cock your head like the RCA Jack Russell in aural wonderment. Those of you who visited The Riverside and knew Abner would then and could now attempt to mimic the laugh – it was like Elvis’s “Thank you…thank you very much…”; you heard it and you had to try and ape it yourself.
As the visits to The Riverside mounted up, the laughs lessened and the slyly caustic comments turned to brutal personal assaults. I don’t remember a seminal event on that last visit that made us stomp our foot and say that we were never coming back, rather, it was just a general feeling of ill will that Abner consistently exuded towards us, his paying customers. You knew he needed our money, but you also knew that the last thing on earth he wanted was our company.
I never complained to Abner, never said anything like “Dammit, we’ve come here for six straight years now, brought you a ton of business, spent a ton of money, but you’ve turned into a real shithead and we’re NEVER COMING BACK!” I never did because I knew that he couldn’t care less. At best, berating him and telling him the truth would have gotten me nothing more than one of his “BWAHAAHAAHAAs”.
Six years passed, in which only one of those years we returned to the mountains for our post-Christmas family visit - and not to The Riverside; the rest were spent in Kansas City, blissfully enjoying our home and family, replete with our own private toilets. Not one of us missed our Christmases past at The Riverside.
Then one day, in late February of 2007, as a result of a series of events that were in a domino line that began clickclackclickclackclickclackclicking their way towards the finish line, at which point wrought one of the most infamous phone calls in the universal history of pure dumb-ass foolishness….
“Abner, I don’t know if you remember me, but my name is Richard Paradise, and I’m wondering if you’re interested in selling The Riverside?”
The rotted-teeth grin that Abner displayed upon hearing that question beamed across 700 miles of fiber optics; a smile so profound that possibly the corners of his mouth deftly sliced into each of his earlobes……
To Be Continued…………
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