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......

The Chief..............Part II

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.

The Chief............Part I

CAUTION – ADULT CONTENT: THIS TRUE STORY (save for the legally safe inclusion of false names and heritages) IS FRAUGHT WITH OVERT SEXUAL REFERENCES, FULL FRONTAL AND BACKAL NUDITY, EXCESSIVE USE AND ABUSE OF DRUGS AND ALCOHOL, RAW POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS AND THE MANIPULATION OF SEXUAL DEVICES WITH RUBBER GLOVES.

BE FORWARNED!!!

THE SQUEAMISH AND PRUDENT SHOULD ABSTAIN AND FORWARD TO THE NEXT CHAPTER, WHICH DETAILS CLEAN, FAMILY-CENTERED EVENTS ABOUT KITTENS AND PUPPIES; (ALTHOUGH WE DO END UP GRILLING THE KITTENS, OVER MESQUITE!)

It was mid summer, 2009, and the first few notes of our swan song were wafting through the air; nah, those notes were barking, bleating, honking through the air. I knew that I was out at the end of the month, heading for a paying job in Mississippi – leaving the dregs of our dream to be dealt with by my wife and daughter. Needless to say, my heart wasn’t in it anymore, but my mind knew that we needed every nickel we could squeeze from whatever source of revenue that literally stumbled our way.

Enter Chief Drink and Do the Deed All Night and his spouse; both natives of some country - maybe America, maybe France – political correctness prohibits me from being specific. The Chief was a hulking mass of a man – not as big as that Will Sampson guy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but pretty damn big nonetheless; you’d notice him when he entered a room. They were wonderful people; warm, friendly and open about their joy of being able to spend a romantic weekend in Hot Sulphur Springs at The Riverside and enjoy the fine fare of The River Room Restaurant before basking in the luxury of the adjacent hot springs. Seasoned high-end travelers would consider that trifecta a proper prelude to a life in hell, but no matter.

They checked in at 4:00 PM and I showed them to their room, Mary, the haunted room at the end of the hall; the room that our dog Lucy wouldn’t enter, not even if there was a juicy smoking rib-eye sitting in the middle of the bed. I put them in this room not for any other reason that it was the last available room – for some unknown reason, we were all but booked this weekend, possibly the only weekend that summer we were fully booked.

I mention this now because it’s ultimately germane to the story. The room adjacent to Mary was Betty; pastel greens with all of our pictures from France – photos we took at Montmartre, Versailles and travel posters purchased at both locales. ‘Betty’ was a very serene room, very calming, but for some reason, it seemed to be the last room we put people in; was I a guest, it would have been one of my first choices. In the Betty room that evening was a couple from Denver – I’ll be judgmental here and call them high-enders; were there a Ritz Carlton in Hot Sulphur, they would have forsaken our homey little hostel and opted for the luxury. But one nice thing about these folks was the fact that while they knew the amenities that they normally sought in a hotel were screamingly absent at The Riverside, the charm of our place served as an adequate substitute. The husband had an early tee-time at Dead Pines Golf Links with some buddies; they’d do the spa, eat dinner, sleep, and the husband would bolt early with his sticks and the wife would sleep in and leave at her leisure. This was our idea of perfect clientele.

In the next room, Mary, was our idea of the clientele we’d pursue if we were broke.

Chief Drink and Do the Deed All Night and his spouse headed to the hot springs shortly after checking in. Not much was thought about them, as the restaurant was packed that night with a full hotel and a crowded town. Near closing time at The River Room, the Chief and his wife sauntered into the restaurant looking for dinner – hair wet and reeking of sulphur from the springs. Showing up in our restaurant in this fashion wasn’t unusual nor unacceptable – like it or not, the raison d’être of our town, our hotel and our restaurant were those dog-ass smelly hot springs and the denizens who’d pay good money to park their bottoms in the sulphurous stink of their healing waters. I went there once, in 1997, and prayed for a heart attack so I’d be taken out in an ambulance so I didn’t have to walk out on my own power through the fetid dressing room.

‘Nuff said… it’s a Colorado thing.

(Small wonder why the locals have less than fond feelings for me.)

The Chief and his wife had the Prime Rib special, a couple of beers and each a glass of wine, then scuttled out at 9:00 PM for one last go at the hot springs, which closed at 10:00 PM. We closed The River Room at 9:00, cleaned up and started to wind down for the night. The hotel was full, but full of a genteel tourist crowd; most had toddled off to bed by 10:00. I was shutting the bar down when The Chief and his wife came in from their last soak in the heated dung water.

“You’re not closing the bar down, are ya?” asked The Chief.

“Well…… maybe. …..Would you like a drink?” I asked with a sense of trepidation so intense that the least observant of people would've immediately known that not only was I not wanting to serve a drink, I was hesitant to take my next breath, even if my life was dependent upon it.

“Hell Yes we want a drink! We came here to party! It’s only 10:00 O’clock!”

“Dad, you go to bed. We’ll take care of things.” my brave daughter Rachel offered. She and Chef Danny were decompressing from the busy restaurant night and had no intention of calling it quits at 10:00 PM.

Without question, that was the best offer that I’d had all day, and I accepted it as quick as a hiccup.

As I quickly slunk out of the bar and headed towards our living quarters, feeling giddy as if I’d just gotten away with stolen money, I heard The Chief loudly proclaim to no one in particular, as if he were exhorting the tribes before battle, “My spirit was low, and my heart was heavy. But the waters have revived me. We will party tonight, and the drinks are on me! Owweeeee!”

I slunked out even more quickly……and double locked the door between the lobby and our living quarters.

To be continued……………

The River Room.....Part XIII

His real name was Chef Poopy Pants.

This poor guy had something seriously wrong with his intestinal tract that caused him to continually emit the foulest of foul BM odors with unheralded regularity. And to make matters worse, they were silent emissions; without any noise to serve as a harbinger to the impending assault, you’d find yourself suddenly engulfed, overwhelmed, olfactoraly assaulted if you were anywhere within 10 feet of the dude. The fact that he wouldn’t profusely apologize after besmirching not only the immediate air, but more than likely the ozone layer as well, tells me he was possibly oblivious to his condition and certainly devoid of a sense of smell.

That wasn’t the half of it. When Chef Poopy Pants used the facilities in the lobby to expunge his system of the viral monster that created the gas, he would literally clear the room. The first few times he did his business, before we knew what ‘doing his business’ wrought, there would be me and whomever else – my spouse, Riverside employees, hotel guests – innocently occupying the lobby, and then WHAM; it was as if a lethal stink bomb, the kind that they used in WWII in deadly combat, exploded and sent those assembled scrambling for the nearest exit. I AM NOT EXAGGERATING!

After those first few tear-inducing, eye-popping bowel movements, we knew to head for the fresh Colorado mountain air the second that he made a move for the commode door. How in the world did he live through it? Again, he absolutely had to have no sense of smell, nor I’m certain a sense of touch, as the heat from the act had to have been searingly intense.

On a positive note, he really didn’t have any kitchen experience either. It turns out that the only thing he had cooked professionally was crystal meth on the summer concert festival circuit. And as far as being able to pass a drug test, he did that with flying colors. Ask him anything you’d want to know about drugs, illicit or otherwise, and he’d know all of the answers.

I will say this for the young man – he worked hard and gave it his all; but if hard work and giving it your all made you successful, I would be King of Hot Sulphur Springs, sitting riverside on a pile of gold. One week after arriving at The Riverside, Chef Poopy Pants was back in his beater of a car, heading to parts unknown.

Darin, thank you for the new kitchen equipment, but no longer will you oversee human resources at The Riverside.

The final addition to The River Room staff, before we gave up the ghost at the end of 2009, was a friend of a friend who lived in Winter Park; enter Chef Ryan, one massively large human being. Our friend played baseball with him in a recreational, all blood and guts Sunday league (fast-pitch & serious hardball played by 20-30 year-olds who were good enough to have played some small college ball). Ryan was the pitcher, and the sight of this 7’ human being on the mound with his wild hair, thick glasses and control problems would have put the bravest of hitters into the fetal position before stepping out of the dugout. This dude was huge! When looking through the food service window into the kitchen, you could see Chef Danny’s torso and the lower half of his face; Chef Ryan, you could see only his knees.

No funny stories or odd habits from Chef Ryan – he was big, quiet and steady as a rock; not in Danny’s league for being able to cook, but more than adequate in helping Danny put together stellar meals night after night. The last summer of the restaurants operation, which other than the 2009 Christmas season and a few weekends here and there in 2010, was when Danny really had the opportunity to come into his own as a ‘Chef’, and he took full hold of it. His menus were sophisticated, but accessible to the type of clientele that lived in Grand County or would visit a historic hotel in an out-of-the-way locale; you didn’t need a degree in ancient colloquial Italian to select an entrée. Herewith follows the final official menu of The River Room restaurant, courtesy of Chef Danny.

Winter, 2009

Appetizers

Wild Mushroom Bruschetta- A plate of our house made crostinis topped with black olive tapenade, shitake, oyster, and cremini mushrooms sautéed with garlic, fresh basil and lemon juice…………$8
Roasted Garlic Hummus- A mixture of smashed chick peas, roasted garlic, fresh lemon juice, spices, finished with a touch of black truffle oil, served with warm pita bread……………………………..$7
Smoked Salmon- Fresh salmon, brined then slowly smoked over hickory & mesquite wood, served with our house made crostinis, lemon wedges, capers, and truffled aioli………………………………………$9

Entrees
All entrees served with either house salad or soup of the day

Trout Almandine- a filet of ruby red trout, pan seared, topped with sliced almonds and finished with Triple Sec, served with Riverside mashed potato and seasonal vegetables………………$20
Swai Jardiniere- A delicate white fish filet, pan seared with garlic, shallots, roasted tomatoes, and fresh thyme, finished with white wine, fresh lemon juice and a splash of cream, served with Riverside mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables………….………..$17


Chicken Picatta- A tenderized 6oz chicken breast, pan seared in butter with garlic, capers, and fresh thyme, deglazed with white wine and finished with a splash of cream and fresh lemon juice, served with Riverside mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables …………………………….$18
Pork Chop with Port Sauce- An 8 oz. bone-in sweet brined pork chop, seared and finished with roasted shallot raisin port sauce, served with Riverside mashed potatoes and vegetables……..$21


Braised Lamb Shank- a 20oz lamb shank, slowly braised and served fork-tender, set upon a bed of Riverside mashed potatoes in a rich gravy, served with seasonal vegetables………….……$23


The Dirty Ribeye- A Riverside tradition, this 16oz. cut of choice ribeye steak is cooked directly on a bed of hard wood coals, sliced on the diagonal and drizzled with a balsamic reduction, served with Riverside mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables……………..………………..$26

Dessert

Crème Brulee- the classic French dessert custard, made with fresh cream and vanilla beans, finished with a delicate layer of caramelized sugar…………………….……..………………$7

Riverside Tiramisu- A twist on the classic Italian dessert, made with fresh cream, mascarpone cheese, marsala wine, fine ground coffee, coco powder, and finished with espresso and brandy dipped lady finger cookies…………………………………..…………………………………$7


Mocha Pots De Crème- A French mousse, made with a mixture of chocolate, espresso, rum, and cream, served chilled……………………………………………………………………………$7

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All of this was prepared superbly and impeccably presented, all with touches in taste and visuals which Danny had gleaned from his predecessors. To the end, broke and fighting heaven and earth for ways to pay the bills, we never compromised on quality or ingredients – as previously stated, we went tits-up, but we did it with our chins held high. I can say this with all honesty and without bias, prejudice or subjectivity: I still have a hard time finding a restaurant, in The River Room’s price range, that equaled Danny’s consistent output in our last few months of operation – this includes KC, Jackson, New Orleans and a dozen other cities and restaurants that I’ve dined in this past year. As I taught him most everything he knew, I’m proud to report that Danny left The Riverside and, after knocking around Denver for a few months, is now Chef de Cuisine (#2 in charge) in one of Kansas City’s finest restaurants – they knew talent when they saw it.

Our venture was categorically a financial failure, but my dream for what I envisioned in a restaurant was a rousing success – first and foremost in my mind, and by most everyone else who dined with us, exclusive of a couple of nameless, raging jackasses. If I had a plethora of restaurant choices tonight, I would pay good money to eat one last time at Chef Danny’s nearly up-to-code River Room Restaurant.
…………………………………………

One year after the fact, and one thousand three hundred safe, warm miles from our ground zero in Hot Sulphur Springs, CO, when discussing The Riverside with friends and family, Julie will say that she has many wonderful memories, perhaps enough good memories to actually drown out the sobering reality of what we lost. I will profess the opposite – from the beginning, I knew that we had made a horrific mistake and as I was the one that bore the daily, nay, hourly burden of mentally dealing with our inevitable date with doom, I could never with a clear conscience enjoy what good there was in the experience. Walks with Julie and the dogs alongside the frozen river, through crystalline snow under the imposing façade of Mt. Bross, itself made all the less imposing by the serenity of the blue sky and the timeless peace of the cottonwoods; whenever I’d lose myself in a moment that many would risk all to be able to experience on a daily basis, I couldn’t help but zap myself back to the reality of the fact that I had risked all, and the painful foreboding knowledge that all would eventually be lost. It was as if I was renting those good feelings, experiences and pleasant memories of our time in Hot Sulphur and The Riverside; I knew that eventually I’d have to turn them back in, and there would be an ugly bill due at the end of the deal – one that I couldn’t afford to pay.

In addition to carrying this psychological burden, there was physical burden that came with running The Riverside. And truthfully, I have no fond memories of doing 7-10 loads of laundry per day, 20+ loads of washing and drying dishes, glasses, pots and pans, setting and unsetting and resetting 14 tables, making and unmaking then remaking 8 queen beds, 6 fulls and 2 twins, scouring and disinfecting three showers and 6 toilets or chain sawing and hand splitting 10 cords of wood every fall. I do have very pleasant feelings knowing that I no longer have to work like a dog and net nothing.

But in honest retrospect, I can say the times I was happiest at The Riverside – when I was able to put the worries aside and get lost in the joy of the moment – occurred in The River Room. With but a very few previously noted exceptions, I enjoyed waiting on customers, interacting with them and watching as they savored the food and the ambience. I derived a great amount of joy and satisfaction from knowing that we were able to greatly exceed the expectations of most who found their way into this rickety old building in the middle of the Colorado wilderness. And although our dream turned into something of a nightmare, for a while, in a small 14-table restaurant overlooking the Colorado River, the dream was sweet.

The River Room........Part XII

Dhoubi’s exhaust fumes hadn’t left the front parking lot of the hotel before Darin – the town mortician, gadabout, accused felon and our quasi restaurant manager (all of this is another chapter or ten) – showed up with a replacement for Dhoubi. Her name was Carrie Trent, and she was as sweet as Steen’s Cane Syrup – and to those of you unfortunate souls that don’t know about Steen’s Cane Syrup, that is about the highest sweetness compliment that could possibly be paid to a person.

Carrie had worked at restaurants all over Grand County, and had even tried her own little pie/diner/café place. She was in the process of trying to open another take-out only place that would serve to-go breakfast and lunch, but in the interim, would love to help us out by putting in a few hours here and there. Once again, I viewed her appearance at the doorstep of The Riverside as a serendipitous event. At the worst of it, if things went bad, I didn’t see myself fearing for my life if I had to let her go, as was the case with my last chef.

Carrie was a baker extraordinaire – bread was her specialty, and pies were a close second. The first day she was there she whipped up about a dozen loaves of the most airy, hard crust baguettes imaginable this side of Montmartre; she finished the day with a few Apple Jalapeno pies for dessert – flaky crust and sweet apple cinnamon filling with just enough of a hint of a peppery attitude to let you know that this wasn’t your Mama’s apple pie. Like Dhoubi’s ‘first day in the kitchen champagne cream sauce’, I’d never had anything quite like it.

Carrie also helped do some of the food prep for Danny – mostly chopping, slicing and dicing. What Carrie couldn’t do – and what we needed the most – was helping Danny on the front line during the dinner rush. So basically, to sum it up, Carrie would show up early afternoon, make all of the bread for the evening, and leave before the dinner rush when we really needed help; she would then give me a bill for her services for $300 - $400 at the end of every week.

Have I mentioned previously that we gave bread away for free?

So here’s the reality of the situation – here I was, nearly broke, paying someone $350 bucks a week to make something that didn’t make me one red nickel. And it gets worse! As her bread was so awesomely good and free, people ate tons of it, creating the need for Carrie to spend more hours baking for us. Those $350 labor bills were growing to $500-$600 per week. Couple this with the Black Olive Tapenade spread that Danny spent 30 minutes every day making by the gallon, which accompanied this awesome bread – also at no charge.

Have I mentioned previously that I went broke in the restaurant business?

Thankfully, Carrie left of her own accord to open her business, a successful one where she charged people money for the bread she baked.

Carrie’s last day was March 27th, 2009 - Easter Sunday brunch - our last day open before shutting the hotel down to take two weeks vacation back to the Kansas City area. Waiting for us when we got back was a kitchen that we intended to gut, put in a new floor, and re-equip with up-to-code stainless steel prep tables, a new cold table, a new freezer, a new flat top, a new oven with a six-burner cook top and new piping, plumbing and electrical. Danny and I would dismantle and dispose of the old tables and equipment and install the new tile floor, our friend Tony from down the street – Grand County’s only sober, reliable plumber – would do the plumbing and electrical, and Darin supplied all of the new tables and equipment, which he’d purchased at an auction in Denver. (Yes, there is a story to that as well which will be told later.)

Hopefully any of you who are potential restaurateurs have picked up this nugget of wisdom from reading about The River Room – you work your ass off when the restaurant is open, and you work your ass off even more when the restaurant is closed.

For the next six weeks, we flat worked our asses off. First off, dismantling the wooden work surfaces and shelving, next taking apart and hauling off the 1920’s era God-awful piece of crap stove, oven and flat top combination that was about the size and weight of small locomotive, and about as functional as a locomotive in a kitchen as well. Everything else was then moved out of the kitchen and we got on with tearing up three layers of old flooring – scraping up the top layer of 1950’s asbestos-reinforced vinyl tile, pulling up the mostly rotted, moldy ¼ plywood deck to which it was attached, then ripping up sheets of 1930’s asphaltic linoleum that was tacked (and tacks were apparently plentiful, cheap and really easy to hammer back then) to the original 1903 tongue and groove 1x4 wood floor. To this original floor we affixed, with screws, thirty-eight 3x5 sheets of 3/8” backer board – picture thin sheets of plywood that are made out of concrete. All of this was topped off by approximately 3700 hexagonal, industrial-grade ceramic floor tiles that were adhered with quick-curing epoxy onto the backer board. This is possibly the highest-end and highest-priced floor system you could purchase for a commercial kitchen – I received it for free from a friend in the business, overage on a large food storage freezer job in New Mexico; it was cheaper for him to give it to me than ship it back to Pennsylvania. The net result was a floor that will probably still be intact after the wrecking ball and bulldozer have had their way with The Riverside.

The new equipment was then installed, and by the end of May, just in time for our Memorial Day weekend re-opening, we had ourselves an honest-to-God, functional and mostly up-to-code commercial kitchen. Only one thing was missing, and that was kitchen help for Chef Danny. Once again, who stepped up to the plate for us in the personnel department but our good friend Darin.

Darin placed an add on Craig’s List – “Assistant Chef position at historic hotel located in the beautiful Colorado Rockies. $10/hour plus room and board. Prior cooking experience required. Must pass drug test.”

Even with economic times being what they were, Darin got very few hits on the ad (might have been that drug test requirement) – but all he needed was one, and he did get one. A young man from the Great State of Alabama was in his 1974 Cadillac Sedan Deville and headed west to Colorado at the end of his three minute phone interview, (Red Flag) ready and anxious to assist in the newly remodeled, almost up-to-code kitchen at The Riverside for $10 bucks an hour and room and board at Darin’s’ house.

Enter……….Chef Stinky Butt.

(Not his real name – but close.)

To be concluded.......