The River Room........Part VIII

Early in my discussions with Abe regarding our purchase and subsequent operation of The Riverside, he took the time during one of our inspection visits to sit me down by the fire and give me some unsolicited advice; the do's and don’ts of running The Riverside, if you will – the benefit of his 20 years of experience. I should have paid better attention.

“Ricardo” Abe began, then paused, as if he were waiting for me to scribe these edicts for eventual inclusion on stone tablets “you do not, under any circumstances, want to open your bar to the locals – only to the hotel and dinner guests.”

“Abe, are you serious? You’ve got this beautiful bar and you want me to keep it closed up? I’m going to be looking for every bit of revenue I can get from this place. I’ve even got a decent amount of bar revenue factored into my projections.”

Answering me in his high pitched sing-songy falsetto, and for added dramatic effect halting for ½ second intervals between each word, “you do not want to open your bar to the locals! Trust me on this. That’s all that I’m saying. Take it or leave it!”

I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t take it - I left it; bad decision #46 in what would total 792 bad decisions that I would make during the next two years.

Late afternoon, December 28th, fresh from our buying spree in Denver, in barges one of the locals – and when I say barges, I mean barges. Bigger than life and louder than a Buckethead/The Mars Volta double-bill, Patty (not her real name, but pretty close) exploded into the lobby and yelled “I hear you bought Abe out. Are you guys gonna open the bar to locals? I sure hope so, ‘cause I could sure use a rum & Coke about now!” She forgot to say another rum & Coke, as it was obvious that this wouldn’t be her first of the day... or hour, for that matter.

Patty was not the owner of a Size 4 dress; in fact, I doubt very much that Patty had ever worn a dress of any size. She was a cowgirl to the max, rough and tough, with coarse, thick dark hair and massive pigtails that resembled those gym ropes that you used to straddle and inch up towards the top of the gym upon, all the while praying that you wouldn’t fall to your death.

“My name’s Patty, and I’ve been coming here for years. You got a room up there named after me. Could I get that rum & Coke?”

"Whoa", I thought. If Abe had only mentioned this local, I would have possibly taken heed of his advice; in fact he said ‘locals’, in that there may be more like this that will descend upon us in their quest for rum & Coke. Oh my, what have we gotten ourselves into?

Patty was served a rum & Coke, and Gabe, who quickly stepped in as both bartender and bouncer, charged her $5 for a shot of Old Jamaica rum and a hefty pour of Coca-Cola. Patty rummaged through her jean pockets until she came up with the cash, and said “If you guys wanna get the local trade, you gotta charge less than five bucks a drink for house booze. Just a friendly piece of advice, since you’re new around here….”

Unlike my educational session with Abe, I took stern notice of the advice I’d just been given by Patty; the price of a rum & Coke just went up to seven bucks.

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Thomas was kind enough to prep me regarding the impending blues/booze fest that I’d fallen prey to the old Hannibal double-shuffle into allowing to let happen.

“Uh..., Uncle Richard, I’m a little worried about this concert we’re having here Sunday night…”

“Why’s that, Thomas? Because there are 500 posters plastered all over Grand County advertising free music and cheap booze on a Sunday, when all of the other bars in Grand County are closed?”

“Oh, so you saw the posters? Yea, I thought it was a little excessive; could be a good time though….”

‘Nice…’, I thought, picturing buses pulling up in front of the hotel, the doors springing open, Patty and hundreds of her ilk barging out, then reeling into The Riverside; next, wadded up dollar bills being fished from dirty dungarees, eventually flying through the air, as the din from the calls for 2-for-1 PBR’s and rum & Cokes were drowning out Gabe’s high-voltage, bluesy, Marshall-amped up bye-bye to Grand County. The only upside to this scenario was that the whole sight and sound of it might possibly, once and for all, vanquish the hotel of the pranksterous spirits that wreaked havoc upon our person and our plumbing, providing we made it through the evening alive and didn’t end up joining them in permanent, immortal residence.

So I girded my loins, and stocked up on cases of cheap beer and cheaper hooch. Gabe and his band buddies set up stage in the Green Room, moving this and that to form an impromptu stadium, in the smallest sense of the word. Gabe prayed for a crowd; I prayed that my insurance agent and all of her office staff, relatives and neighbors were vacationing on Mars, or possibly a more distant locale.

God kind of answered my prayers…… with a blizzard.

At about 4:30 in the PM, an all-out, Grand County hum-dinging Son-of-a-bitchin’ blizzard unleashed from the Heavenly skies; not even for cheap beer and free music would a Grand County drunk venture out in this weather. Oh, don’t get me wrong; they’d break a sweat, they’d prowl around their house and suppose, they’d think that maybe it might be worth the risk – but at the end of the discussion, they’d lose out to a wiser spouse, a pleading child or the sober voice in their head that would say “are you out of your mind? It’s a freaking blizzard out there!! Plus, it’s not like we don’t have a jug of Popov in the cupboard.”

When I said God ‘kind of’ answered my prayers, I meant that the blizzard neutered all of the Grand County drunks that would have to drive to the Riverside Blues Fest. Unfortunately, there were those in Hot Sulphur that could get there by walking, blizzard or not; and for a fact, there’s no worse kind of drunk than a Grand County drunk who doesn’t have to worry about driving.

At 7:30, in walked Patty, in walked Jane, Isaac, Brad, Jim, and fifteen to twenty more of the Hot Sulphur locals; they’d braved the weather, and they were in the mood for some live music and Sunday night bar booze; after all, the Barking Dog wasn’t serving.

“What’ll you have?” I asked in cheerful bartender fashion to the first young man who sidled up to the bar.

“Gimme a rum and Coke; heavy on the rum and a little Coke for color!” (I’d soon learn that this was the Grand County bar mantra…heavy on the booze, light on the non-booze whatever else.)

“Done deal”, I said, “that’ll be six bucks.”

About four minutes went by, and the same young man came back and said “Gimme another rum and Coke, and go lighter on the Coke, heavier on the rum this time.”

“Here you go! That’ll be seven bucks.”

Pockets were searched and wrinkled bills were proffered. “Much better; pour me another one of those cause I’ll be back in a minute.”

This pattern would continue for the next few hours.

Gabe and his group got things going at 8:00, and he was fast ripping it up – great music, good time. But the locals were only perfunctorily interested in the music as a means of having access to a walking distance ‘Open on Sunday’ bar in a damn blizzard; Gabe was rocking his little heart out, but for all that the locals cared, he could have been playing a solo kazoo in the Green Room, so long as the rum & Cokes were flowing in the bar.

At 10:00 PM, as proprietor and owner of The Riverside Hotel, Bar & Restaurant, I’d decided that I’d had about enough. Our rum & Coke dude was all but having sex with one of the local maidens on one of our rickety bar tables. Some of the others in the bar were throwing darts – not at a dart board, but at each other. The Rook pieces on our Chess table had found their way into one of the patrons nostrils, and a Pawn in each of his ears. His attempt at bad bar humor was going unnoticed, as most of the patrons were cheering on the carnal performance of Captain Morgan and his table wench.

One of the locals that I’d previously seen at the post office – she was a sweet, grandmotherly looking lady that more than surprised me by her attendance – asked me to total up her tab, and would I take a personal check?

“Not a problem” I said. “That’ll be $32.00.”

“Thirty two dollarsh” she slurred, “How many beersh d’I have?”

“16 beers” I replied, “2-for-1 is 8 times four bucks apiece equals $32 dollars, assuming you don’t want to add a tip.”

“16 beersh!! Thash crazy! I coulda shworn I only had 14…hic”

It’s 10:07, and I loudly announce, “Last call Folks! The music’s winding down, and the bar is closing!”

At this pronouncement, Captain Morgan disengages himself from his local Hot Sulphur hottie of the night and staggers up to the bar, steadies himself, violently slams his fist on the bar –as much for ballast as exclamation - and says,

“BULLSHIT! Last call in Colorado is 2 AM. It’s only 10 OClock!” I was truly surprised he could tell time at this point. He had a look of wildness in his eyes that I’d never seen and wasn’t quite sure how to deal with; but I’d really had enough and decided I’d have to grow a pair. I looked him squarely back in the eye with a little wildness of my own and calmly said “Last call in this Colorado bar is 10 PM, and that’s right now. So what’ll it be?”

Shrinking back a little, he said “Gimme six Rum & Cokes; heavy on the rum, a little Coke for color.”

As I began lining up those six rum & Cokes, under duress and fear that the man may kill me in the event that I didn’t serve him, Abe Rodriguez seemed to me, at that moment, the wisest man in all the world.

To be Continued……….