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……..
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment