Friday the 13th.........The Final Chapter

No, this isn’t another Riverside ghost story, but it is for damn sure a horror story. And as for the ‘Final Chapter’, is it the end of the blog?

Maybe….

There are still untold stories – some really, really good untold stories. I’ve yet to tell the story of the previous owner, and that is one humdinger of a story. There are other stories, partly written, about other characters and events that need to be told; but I want to make certain that we’ve been totally immersed into the Mississippi Witness Protection Program, with the requisite assumed identities, before exposing all of the juicy details of the people we encountered and events that occurred during our two year fling in the mountains.

No, these untold stories will be for the book. Let’s face it. I was foolish enough to think that I could chuck it all and make a go of it in the mountains of Grand County, CO; getting a book written and published would be folderol compared to the task of paying the bills and earning a living, during a depression, in a ramshackle, haunted hotel in Hot Sulphur Springs, CO.

During our first full weekend of living at The Riverside, I received a harbinger of things to come that made my already nervous self-examination about “have we done the right thing?” look like a hungry buzzard hanging around the back door of a Kobe Beef processing plant.

A quick update; we bought the hotel on December 27th, 2007. My daughter Rachel, and two other family members, ran the place the best they could under the circumstances, until Julie and I showed up on June 25th, 2008. As I was driving into Hot Sulphur Springs on June 25th, following the jack-leg moving company that I hired on the cheap, I took a deep breath and drank in the moment. The sun was setting over Mt. Bross and the spacious valley that was carved by the Colorado River, the valley that is Hot Sulphur Springs; it all lay before us in spectacular fashion as we drove in for the first time as residents.

“Ahhh”, I exhaled, and said out loud to both Julie and myself, “it’s June 25th, and we’re arriving at our new home, and our new life. It’s hard to believe that we live here! Let’s never forget this date!”

No sooner were the words were out of my mouth, when my history-loving nerd-gene grabbed me by the ear in a combined Jesuit/nun-like fashion, and screamed the following at a deafening level, to which only I was privy – “JUNE 25!! YOU IDIOT!!! THAT’S THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIGHORN!! YOU KNOW, CUSTER’S LAST STAND ??!! HE WAS A FOOL, RUSHING BRAZENLY INTO THE UNKNOWN, FOR GLORY, FOR HIS EGO, AND HE WAS SLAUGHTERED ON THIS DAY, 132 YEARS AGO.BRUTALLY SLAUGHTERED, I TELL YOU! DO FOOLS NEVER LEARN FROM HISTORY???”

My history-loving nerd gene has a bit of an attitude, and typically offers me way too much information. But he often motivates me, and this is what he tossed out regarding Custer’s quest for greatness; a quote from Teddy Roosevelt that was offered in defense of Custer’s folly. I relate to it, and embrace it as an excuse for my Colorado brain fart.

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat”

The content of this fine quote gives me great comfort as I chastise and feel superior to you poor spirits, you that live in that gray twilight; you that still have your 401K’s intact in the bank.

So much for the pursuit of glory….

So back to the harbinger. Our first weekend had us hosting guests in 6 rooms, and one of the couples were old time ‘Abe’ guests, i.e. people that had stayed at The Riverside for years and knew both its charms and its foibles. They were celebrating a wedding anniversary, and were staying in the two-room suite overlooking the river; a wonderful couple who were very supportive of what we’d done to improve the hotel. They had a lovely dinner that they raved about, complete with wine and champagne, then retired to the bar for a ‘final-final’. Through bar chatter I learned that the gentleman was a Circuit Court Judge in Denver; a very distinguished, gentle, intelligent man – a man who’s opinion would hold some weight.

After I shared our story of quitting our jobs, packing it up and moving to a brave new life in the mountains, he looked at me, and earnestly said, “I really admire you for what you’ve done. You’ve done great things with this place, and I really hope that you’re able make a go of it. But I can tell you, Grand County is a damn tough place to make a living. I can only wish you the best.”

When he told me this, the economy was still robust, or as we know now in retrospect, was still robust on the surface to us idiots. The bubble had yet to burst, and this guy who dealt with the day to day reality of making a go of it in Colorado, looked me in the eye, with a face that showed genuine concern, and said “….Grand County is a damn tough place to make a living. I can only wish you the best.”

After our first weekend in our new venture, it began to occur to me that the carrion of Kobe Beef might stand a better chance against vultures, and our ultimate demise, than we.

To Be Continued…………