Part IV...............A Fluid Farewell
On March 21st, at 6:15 PM, we closed the doors, gave a local caretaker the keys, tearfully hugged our close friends’ goodbye, and drove out of Hot Sulphur Springs, away from the Riverside Hotel. The flood of emotions that came with that action were literally metaphorically a flood - a massive, violent, lifting, rumbling jumble of both destruction and cleansing; washing away the old and clearing a way for our ultimate rebirth. A flood is the perfect metaphor for what occurred, as we stood back, helpless, and watched a force much greater than us sweep over and destroy our dream, and despite our protestations and earnest but futile efforts, take that dream and leave us with little more than the reckoning of what comes next. What hopefully comes after a flood, provided it didn’t kill you, is rebirth, reorganization and the realization that you got smacked hard, but you’re still alive and, Thank God Almighty, you’re able to smack back.
What destructive force took us under? The list is as long as a Grand County winter and it would be small of me to blame first and foremost anyone but myself for my bad business acumen. Couple that with a horrible economy in an out-of-the-way place whose sole existence and economy is based upon discretionary income – the first type of income that goes south in a bad economy. Add to this volatile mix the local financial institution, the supposed backbone of this beautiful, rugged but financially strapped area, run by a bunch of wealthy ranchers that combined a lethal mixture of financial naiveté, avarice and a moral compass that would make you pray for Somali pirates as your business partners. The final F-up would be our poor choice of location – a small, out-of-the-way town whose only raison d’être is to draw a select group of clientele to a hot springs complex that ranks at the bottom of all hot springs complexes in the State/Country/World. We’re catering to a very small, very select group, going to the (arguably) worst of all possible very small, very select places. No knock on those that love the place, as we did, but honestly, it’s a very select group; and a depressed economy can be a financially fatal time to cater to a select group. Oh well, I’d been lucky in life up to this point; odds dictated that there eventually had to be a bump in that road.
The packers were supposed to show up on Thursday, March 18th, and the moving van on the 19th to load us up and take us to our new world. But Colorado had a parting gift for us – a blizzard the morning of the 18th that shut down I-70, Berthoud Pass and most of Grand County; to this point, the largest snowfall of the year in this snow/water starved environ. Unfortunately the ski slopes closed the weekend before – no question, timing is everything. The blizzard put the move back two days, with the packers now scheduled to arrive on Saturday, March 20th, and the moving van on Sunday the 21st.
When I awoke early on the morning of the 20th – the first day of spring – the temperature in Hot Sulphur Springs was a robust 18 degrees……below zero. While there were innumerable things I would miss about living in Grand County, CO, the blissful memory of greeting spring with 18 degrees below zero would be tossed quickly into the recycle bin. As the packers had to have doors open to move in and out of the building, the temperature for most of the morning – in the hotel – was below zero. Recycle bin that memory as well.
I learned something interesting about the relocation industry that day, especially those involved in corporate relocations – the kind where the company picks up the total tab. I would have assumed the cost of the move was based upon mileage and cubic feet of truck space; in fact, it is based upon gross weight. This would explain why a packer would use a 24”x12”x12” box, loaded with 3-4 pounds of packing paper, to carefully and thoroughly wrap a box of paper clips, a roll of scotch tape, a small stapler and a pencil holder from the top of our office desk. In total, the carton and its contents weighed 7 pounds – the actual contents (things I would have thrown away vs. packing) weighed less than a pound. We had large moving boxes – 36”x24”x24” – containing two 8- ounce lamp shades, secured by reams of packing paper, total weight approaching 15 pounds. Oh, and they also charge per box and per 1000 sheets of packing paper. They were nice people, but what a racket!
Sunday arrives, along with the moving van, and the 10AM thermometer reads 30F; that’s a 50 degree swing from the previous morning. It took the movers until about 4:00 PM to load all of our furniture, appliances, a 1300-pound gun safe (cha-ching!) and 123 boxes of various weights, shapes and sizes. As the movers emptied a room, we cleaned behind them, as our intent was to leave the place spotless for future sales showings, then get out of town before dark. At 3:00 PM, I did the final upstairs walkthrough. We’d left all of the furnishings in the rooms, so there wasn’t the empty feel that our downstairs living quarters would offer. A sad, slow walkthrough, room by room, filled me with a thousand memories – things like “I’ve made this damn bed a thousand times” and “I’ve scrubbed this damn toilet a thousand times.” I said my final goodbye – aloud, in case I wasn’t alone - knowing that I’d made that bed and cleaned that toilet for the last time.
I joined Julie downstairs, watching as she made her final pass with the vacuum. Speaking of doing something 1000 times, Julie knew every square inch of that floor from the handle of our Riccar, and I know for certain that her vacuuming memories would soon be joining a few of mine in the recycling bin. We were joined by a few remaining friends as we wrapped things up, preparing to leave the Riverside forever, as the owners. I needed to make a final pit stop in our bathroom before heading out, and I headed back to our living quarters for what I thought would be the last time.
Business completed, I gave one final flush, and watched in horror as the water in the bowl began to rise. Oh my, how could this be? After all, it was business #1, not the number of business that typically clogs a toilet. I quickly shut the water off, and headed to the tool room to retrieve the plunger. Needless to say, I’d done this more than a few times in this plumber’s nightmare of a house.
Plunge. Plunge. Plunge………nothing. Damn!
One other time during our ownership did the plumbing main back up – I’ve chronicled this New Year’s Day nightmare in a previous blog. But that clog was the result of full hotel rooms for 3 straight days, which equates to pretty extensive number two-ing. We’d had no guests in the hotel for the last two weeks; I couldn’t imagine how – and why now, why today – we could have a clogged main sewer line.
I checked another downstairs toilet, and sure enough, the main was backed up. I shut the water off to all of the toilets, and stood looking at the throne in our bathroom, wondering just what in the hell I was going to do about this. And as if a switch had been turned on, the water in our stool began to slowly rise. Holy crap! I’d shut the water supply off. What could be causing this? In a matter of seconds, the water began flowing over the brim of the bowl, onto the just cleaned and disinfected tile floor. My neighbor came running when he heard my screams, and quickly surveying the situation, he ran to the tool room to grab the wet vac. He began vacuuming the water out of the bowl – it took less than 10 seconds to fill the 5-gallon vacuum canister. I grabbed the 40+ pound bucket and moved outside as quickly as I could, dumping it into the street in front of the hotel. I won’t get graphic here, but suffice to say, the water wasn’t fresh and clear. Back and forth I went, filling the vac and dumping the water into the street, all the while the water continuing to slowly rise.
(An important aside to this part of the story; Darin, the local mortician who had seriously considered purchasing The Riverside, was standing in the empty office, watching quietly as I ran back and forth, gently carrying, so as not to spill it on the cleaned floors, the 40 pound buckets full of flotsam and jetsam before dumping them into the street. I've never seen the face of a man who’s just learned that he’s been given a death sentence commutation, but I was pretty certain that was the look I was seeing on Darin's face.)
Where in the hell was the water coming from?
To Be Continued....................
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part III……………………………Making Like The James Gang
As Billy Banker never said anything in our subsequent discussions like “How dare you infer that Hell won’t have me!”, I never found out whether or not he read the original unedited letter that I inadvertently sent; (or was it really inadvertent – is there such a thing as a physical Freudian slip?) After what they did to us, I would’ve loved to have the opportunity to scream those nasty things to their face. And for the record, I would like them to rot in hell. And I also believe that hell is too good for them. And yes, Big Fat Hairy F-You!! It’s not like they could do anything worse to us than they are currently doing; (“Oh yea? Well if that’s how you feel about us, we’re gonna double foreclose on your property!”) so why not let them know how we really feel about them.
Billy Bankers only response to the letter was a terse email saying that there was no written record that I’d ever requested a line of credit, and when questioned, Betty Banker told him she’d never promised us a refinancing, and finally, that he was left with no choice but to proceed with the foreclosure process. Well, I had written proof of our credit line discussions in the form of my bank-approved business plan; and as for Betty Banker lying to Billy Banker about not promising us a refinance – who would ever expect her to tell the truth about anything? I’m certain she looks in the mirror every morning and lies to herself about her not actually being a lying, heartless, thieving bitch.
After reading the email, the reality of our situation was paralyzing, suffocating; it literally took my breath away. And couple getting this email prior to an afternoon meeting with my largest account – me getting Billy Banker’s email then having to sit all afternoon in a rather tense meeting, acting to the assembled crowd as if my entire world hadn’t just come to an end. Oh yes, then I had to call Julie, still fighting it out at the hotel in Colorado, with the news that Billy Banker and his scythe-wielding, sulphur-breathing she-bitch-from-hell may show up at any moment and demand that she vacate the premises. I had no idea what to expect, as I’d never had anything happen like this before. Julie was only slightly hysterical beyond the point of being consolable.
Our next step involved finding a real estate attorney who was licensed in Colorado. I was led to a highly recommended gentleman with a pricy firm whose first words to me, after I explained our dire situation, were “Mr. Paradise, I want you to calm down and relax. They can’t throw you out of your house or take your possessions. There is nothing about this situation that can’t be fixed.” So calm down I did as the attorney laid out the options.
Option #1 involved getting current on the loan– he echoed my friend’s opinion, that in this economy the legal system would look very harshly upon the bank if they tried to foreclose on a current loan. We can then fight them in court as to the validity of the ‘material change in the operation of the business’ reason for calling the note. However, Option #1 involved us coming up with a lawyer-load of money for legal fees, (it could ultimately cost $50,000 - $100,000) and we still had the potential for a downside if we didn’t prevail in court. Well heckfire, if I had $50,000 or $100,000, I wouldn’t be in this mess; so, cancel Option #1.
Option #2 was to move heaven and earth, pull a rabbit out of my hat, part the Dead Sea and then find a buyer for the hotel in the next 60 days. In the 10 months the hotel had been on the market, we had one potentially serious buyer, and he backed out when the sale of the adjacent hot springs fell through – it was kind of a package deal. So I didn’t hold a lot of hope for coming up with someone in 60 days, and certainly not someone who would buy the place for a reasonable sum.
Option #3…… walk away. That's right.....just walk away. Walk away from our investment, our equity, our labors, our memories, our friends, our dream, our successes, and sadly, our failure. Walk away from a lot of good things, but more importantly, walk away from a boatload of bad things. It’s referred to as a 'Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure’. You simply give the bank the deed to the property, the bank excuses the indebtedness and you walk away clean.
No more $5000/month mortgage payments, no more $1000/month electric bills, no more $750/month water bills. (Yes, that’s right; our water bill, regardless of usage, was a fixed $750/month.)
Most importantly, no more Julie and I living apart.
When the lawyer explained this to me, and how easily it could be accomplished, I literally exhaled all of the air I’d been suffocating on since early that afternoon. I began to breathe normally again. The tightness in my jaw and chest relaxed, this time without being the normal result of swilling a couple of Bombay’s. The massive weight and profound stress that had been burdening me the past two years slipped off of my back like a cheap kimono.
Just walk away.
But what about our equity and all that we’d invested? Equity is only equity if you sell X for Y. There wasn’t a chance in hell of us selling X for Y anytime soon, yet the thousands of dollars in monthly expenses would continue indefinitely – the biggest percentage being never-to-be recovered interest to those slimy, scum-sucking bastards at Grand County Bank. Realistically, how much longer could we continue to fund this financial Waterloo, all the while living like paupers in Mississippi?
Knowing that all of the pain and suffering could be over, and we could begin to live a normal life again, albeit broke, for the price of something that may never have existed or been attainable anyway, was almost too good to believe. When I explained the situation to Julie, I could hear her smile over 1000 miles of fiber optics. No question it SUCKS that it ended the way it did, BUT IT ENDED, and the peaceful feeling of realizing that it was finally over was worth more money than you can ever imagine.
To Be Continued……….
As Billy Banker never said anything in our subsequent discussions like “How dare you infer that Hell won’t have me!”, I never found out whether or not he read the original unedited letter that I inadvertently sent; (or was it really inadvertent – is there such a thing as a physical Freudian slip?) After what they did to us, I would’ve loved to have the opportunity to scream those nasty things to their face. And for the record, I would like them to rot in hell. And I also believe that hell is too good for them. And yes, Big Fat Hairy F-You!! It’s not like they could do anything worse to us than they are currently doing; (“Oh yea? Well if that’s how you feel about us, we’re gonna double foreclose on your property!”) so why not let them know how we really feel about them.
Billy Bankers only response to the letter was a terse email saying that there was no written record that I’d ever requested a line of credit, and when questioned, Betty Banker told him she’d never promised us a refinancing, and finally, that he was left with no choice but to proceed with the foreclosure process. Well, I had written proof of our credit line discussions in the form of my bank-approved business plan; and as for Betty Banker lying to Billy Banker about not promising us a refinance – who would ever expect her to tell the truth about anything? I’m certain she looks in the mirror every morning and lies to herself about her not actually being a lying, heartless, thieving bitch.
After reading the email, the reality of our situation was paralyzing, suffocating; it literally took my breath away. And couple getting this email prior to an afternoon meeting with my largest account – me getting Billy Banker’s email then having to sit all afternoon in a rather tense meeting, acting to the assembled crowd as if my entire world hadn’t just come to an end. Oh yes, then I had to call Julie, still fighting it out at the hotel in Colorado, with the news that Billy Banker and his scythe-wielding, sulphur-breathing she-bitch-from-hell may show up at any moment and demand that she vacate the premises. I had no idea what to expect, as I’d never had anything happen like this before. Julie was only slightly hysterical beyond the point of being consolable.
Our next step involved finding a real estate attorney who was licensed in Colorado. I was led to a highly recommended gentleman with a pricy firm whose first words to me, after I explained our dire situation, were “Mr. Paradise, I want you to calm down and relax. They can’t throw you out of your house or take your possessions. There is nothing about this situation that can’t be fixed.” So calm down I did as the attorney laid out the options.
Option #1 involved getting current on the loan– he echoed my friend’s opinion, that in this economy the legal system would look very harshly upon the bank if they tried to foreclose on a current loan. We can then fight them in court as to the validity of the ‘material change in the operation of the business’ reason for calling the note. However, Option #1 involved us coming up with a lawyer-load of money for legal fees, (it could ultimately cost $50,000 - $100,000) and we still had the potential for a downside if we didn’t prevail in court. Well heckfire, if I had $50,000 or $100,000, I wouldn’t be in this mess; so, cancel Option #1.
Option #2 was to move heaven and earth, pull a rabbit out of my hat, part the Dead Sea and then find a buyer for the hotel in the next 60 days. In the 10 months the hotel had been on the market, we had one potentially serious buyer, and he backed out when the sale of the adjacent hot springs fell through – it was kind of a package deal. So I didn’t hold a lot of hope for coming up with someone in 60 days, and certainly not someone who would buy the place for a reasonable sum.
Option #3…… walk away. That's right.....just walk away. Walk away from our investment, our equity, our labors, our memories, our friends, our dream, our successes, and sadly, our failure. Walk away from a lot of good things, but more importantly, walk away from a boatload of bad things. It’s referred to as a 'Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure’. You simply give the bank the deed to the property, the bank excuses the indebtedness and you walk away clean.
No more $5000/month mortgage payments, no more $1000/month electric bills, no more $750/month water bills. (Yes, that’s right; our water bill, regardless of usage, was a fixed $750/month.)
Most importantly, no more Julie and I living apart.
When the lawyer explained this to me, and how easily it could be accomplished, I literally exhaled all of the air I’d been suffocating on since early that afternoon. I began to breathe normally again. The tightness in my jaw and chest relaxed, this time without being the normal result of swilling a couple of Bombay’s. The massive weight and profound stress that had been burdening me the past two years slipped off of my back like a cheap kimono.
Just walk away.
But what about our equity and all that we’d invested? Equity is only equity if you sell X for Y. There wasn’t a chance in hell of us selling X for Y anytime soon, yet the thousands of dollars in monthly expenses would continue indefinitely – the biggest percentage being never-to-be recovered interest to those slimy, scum-sucking bastards at Grand County Bank. Realistically, how much longer could we continue to fund this financial Waterloo, all the while living like paupers in Mississippi?
Knowing that all of the pain and suffering could be over, and we could begin to live a normal life again, albeit broke, for the price of something that may never have existed or been attainable anyway, was almost too good to believe. When I explained the situation to Julie, I could hear her smile over 1000 miles of fiber optics. No question it SUCKS that it ended the way it did, BUT IT ENDED, and the peaceful feeling of realizing that it was finally over was worth more money than you can ever imagine.
To Be Continued……….
Monday, April 19, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part II - You Can Edit That Out, Can't You?
I called a good friend, who is an attorney, with my devastating news. Devastating on two fronts – the obvious one where I realized that all that we’d invested, both financially and emotionally, and all that we’d accomplished the last two years at The Riverside was at the stools edge, ready to topple into the bowl and be flushed down the toilet. But perhaps even more disturbing was me coming to grips with my naiveté regarding the banks total manipulation of us and our money. I trusted them implicitly, viewing them as my most essential and necessary partner in this venture. Learning that they were anything but a partner, in fact, they were an adversary, made me question my core ability to comprehend the most basic mental tasks – reasoning, deducing, anticipating, obviating, etc.
I also always thought I was a pretty good judge of people – well go right ahead and throw that notion to the four winds. To think that this bank lady that I trusted so entirely – I can’t begin to tell you the information I shared with her, not only financial but personal – was probably the most devious, evil, dishonest person I’d ever encountered. It was as if I decided that it was probably OK to try and French kiss a hooded cobra. I sat in this woman’s office and cried both in sorrow as I recounted my financial situation, and in joy, as she told me everything would be alright. Little did I know that as I was pouring out my heart & soul, her hands were under her desk sharpening a scythe that would make the Grim Reaper envious, while her gentle demeanor was masking what she was really probing for as she looked at me with her comforting eyes; namely, the best part of my fleshy personage to whack away at with that toad sticker she was honing.
My lawyer friend was fired up when I told him the situation, saying “just because the bank says it’s so doesn’t mean it’s so! Let’s put these bastards on notice that you’re not going to just sit back and let them have their way.” His thought being that in these tough financial times, and with the current national and legal mood regarding financial institutions, that there wouldn’t be a judge in the world that would let them take our hotel from us if we were current on our payments. But first and foremost, I needed to go on record with the bank and write them a letter detailing some of the issues – the fact that they lied regarding a refinancing, and another heretofore unmentioned issue of them promising, and then reneging on a line of credit.
When we were in discussions regarding our loan before purchasing the hotel, it was discussed at length and I was promised a line of operating capital, which was to be secured by the equity we had in the hotel. It was detailed in every cash flow statement, every operating statement, and explicitly discussed in my business plan; all of which were approved by the bank loan officer, the loan committee and the board of directors. I would have never considered purchasing the hotel without a line of credit. Not even close. Take that cash infusion out of my five-year projections and the venture would be dead after two years, as all of my numbers reflected.
When the time came to sit down and request the line, about 10 months into the venture, the loan officer had me give him year-to-date financials and a write up on the general state of the business, including improvements we’d made to the hotel and actual sales and expense numbers vs. budgeted numbers. I complied, and off he went to the loan committee for what I was assured was a done deal. (I wasn’t asking for much – less than 5% of the equity we had in the hotel – just enough to get through the end of the year until the busy holiday season refilled the coffers.)
When I received the news that, in fact, the line of credit was denied, I said to the banker, “We’re dead”, and he didn’t deny it. As previously mentioned, every financial blueprint I’d come up with had that line being essential to our survival; I never figured it any other way.
So a letter was written that detailed what I felt were misrepresentations by the bank that were critical in the failure of the business. My job in writing the letter was to enlighten Billy Banker regarding some of the past history, regardless of his professed lack of interest in “past history.” The letter was to be written in three parts, part one being “we were promised this”, part two was “you welched on your promises”, and part three, to be completed by my lawyer friend, was “now here’s what we’re going to do if you don’t make things right.” I had no clue as to the legal what we can and what we can’t do, so I let the lawyer have at that.
I write parts one and two, and when I get to part three, I decided to have a little fun and vent, as I knew my friend might get a kick out of it, and it might make me feel a little better. In lieu of the legalese that my friend would supply, I started part three of the letter with “So, Grand County Bank, all I can say is BIG FAT HAIRY F**K YOU! You lying, thieving pack of bastards can rot in hell, assuming hell will have you!” Then I emailed the letter to my friend.
He sent me back an edited version, changing some of my text in parts one and two, and adding the all important legal piece at the end of the letter. He used that Microsoft Word program where the deletions are shown in red with a line through them, and the additions are in blue. I cleaned it up, or so I thought, and sent it on to Billy Banker. I then went to lunch. After lunch, I decided I’d open the email I sent to the banker and re-read the letter, trying to get the feeling Billy Banker would get when he opened and read this legal tour de force.
“Ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit!”, I said to myself; I inadvertently sent Billy Banker the original, the one where I end it with “So, GCB, BIG FAT HAIRY F-YOU!”
I thought I got rid of all of the colorful deletions and additions; especially that real colorful part at the end of my original letter. But nooooo; unfortunately, and again with very bad timing, there are still some applications in Microsoft Word that I’ve yet to master.
So really really fast, I sent another version – this time as clean as our bank account – to Billy Banker in an email that said “Please disregard the previous draft submission. Clean version attached.”
To be continued……
I called a good friend, who is an attorney, with my devastating news. Devastating on two fronts – the obvious one where I realized that all that we’d invested, both financially and emotionally, and all that we’d accomplished the last two years at The Riverside was at the stools edge, ready to topple into the bowl and be flushed down the toilet. But perhaps even more disturbing was me coming to grips with my naiveté regarding the banks total manipulation of us and our money. I trusted them implicitly, viewing them as my most essential and necessary partner in this venture. Learning that they were anything but a partner, in fact, they were an adversary, made me question my core ability to comprehend the most basic mental tasks – reasoning, deducing, anticipating, obviating, etc.
I also always thought I was a pretty good judge of people – well go right ahead and throw that notion to the four winds. To think that this bank lady that I trusted so entirely – I can’t begin to tell you the information I shared with her, not only financial but personal – was probably the most devious, evil, dishonest person I’d ever encountered. It was as if I decided that it was probably OK to try and French kiss a hooded cobra. I sat in this woman’s office and cried both in sorrow as I recounted my financial situation, and in joy, as she told me everything would be alright. Little did I know that as I was pouring out my heart & soul, her hands were under her desk sharpening a scythe that would make the Grim Reaper envious, while her gentle demeanor was masking what she was really probing for as she looked at me with her comforting eyes; namely, the best part of my fleshy personage to whack away at with that toad sticker she was honing.
My lawyer friend was fired up when I told him the situation, saying “just because the bank says it’s so doesn’t mean it’s so! Let’s put these bastards on notice that you’re not going to just sit back and let them have their way.” His thought being that in these tough financial times, and with the current national and legal mood regarding financial institutions, that there wouldn’t be a judge in the world that would let them take our hotel from us if we were current on our payments. But first and foremost, I needed to go on record with the bank and write them a letter detailing some of the issues – the fact that they lied regarding a refinancing, and another heretofore unmentioned issue of them promising, and then reneging on a line of credit.
When we were in discussions regarding our loan before purchasing the hotel, it was discussed at length and I was promised a line of operating capital, which was to be secured by the equity we had in the hotel. It was detailed in every cash flow statement, every operating statement, and explicitly discussed in my business plan; all of which were approved by the bank loan officer, the loan committee and the board of directors. I would have never considered purchasing the hotel without a line of credit. Not even close. Take that cash infusion out of my five-year projections and the venture would be dead after two years, as all of my numbers reflected.
When the time came to sit down and request the line, about 10 months into the venture, the loan officer had me give him year-to-date financials and a write up on the general state of the business, including improvements we’d made to the hotel and actual sales and expense numbers vs. budgeted numbers. I complied, and off he went to the loan committee for what I was assured was a done deal. (I wasn’t asking for much – less than 5% of the equity we had in the hotel – just enough to get through the end of the year until the busy holiday season refilled the coffers.)
When I received the news that, in fact, the line of credit was denied, I said to the banker, “We’re dead”, and he didn’t deny it. As previously mentioned, every financial blueprint I’d come up with had that line being essential to our survival; I never figured it any other way.
So a letter was written that detailed what I felt were misrepresentations by the bank that were critical in the failure of the business. My job in writing the letter was to enlighten Billy Banker regarding some of the past history, regardless of his professed lack of interest in “past history.” The letter was to be written in three parts, part one being “we were promised this”, part two was “you welched on your promises”, and part three, to be completed by my lawyer friend, was “now here’s what we’re going to do if you don’t make things right.” I had no clue as to the legal what we can and what we can’t do, so I let the lawyer have at that.
I write parts one and two, and when I get to part three, I decided to have a little fun and vent, as I knew my friend might get a kick out of it, and it might make me feel a little better. In lieu of the legalese that my friend would supply, I started part three of the letter with “So, Grand County Bank, all I can say is BIG FAT HAIRY F**K YOU! You lying, thieving pack of bastards can rot in hell, assuming hell will have you!” Then I emailed the letter to my friend.
He sent me back an edited version, changing some of my text in parts one and two, and adding the all important legal piece at the end of the letter. He used that Microsoft Word program where the deletions are shown in red with a line through them, and the additions are in blue. I cleaned it up, or so I thought, and sent it on to Billy Banker. I then went to lunch. After lunch, I decided I’d open the email I sent to the banker and re-read the letter, trying to get the feeling Billy Banker would get when he opened and read this legal tour de force.
“Ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit!”, I said to myself; I inadvertently sent Billy Banker the original, the one where I end it with “So, GCB, BIG FAT HAIRY F-YOU!”
I thought I got rid of all of the colorful deletions and additions; especially that real colorful part at the end of my original letter. But nooooo; unfortunately, and again with very bad timing, there are still some applications in Microsoft Word that I’ve yet to master.
So really really fast, I sent another version – this time as clean as our bank account – to Billy Banker in an email that said “Please disregard the previous draft submission. Clean version attached.”
To be continued……
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part I - Black Tuesday
It should be no revelation to those that knew us and our situation that we were struggling to make a go of it at The Riverside; we were struggling hard. I didn’t move by myself to an apartment in Mississippi for the view. Our timing flat sucked in purchasing a business that had no record of profit, in a real estate market that, arguably with maybe an idiot, is the worst real estate market since real estate markets were valued. Like my grammar and my luck, our timing couldn’t have sucked more worser.
But ‘woe is me’ aside, we did everything we could to keep the place afloat. Thank God for Ergon. And Thank God for the fine folks at Grand County Bank, who promised to work with us in re-doing our loan to make the monthly nut more affordable. In October of 2009, when we were struggling to keep current with our payments, the bank sent us an angel who promised us that if we got current on our 1st mortgage and paid up another short term loan they’d given us, our loan would be refinanced, allowing us a reduced monthly payment where we could keep our mortgage current with only my job revenue. This sweet-faced, seemingly innocent Bank VP – she could be mistaken for an ex-nun – looked us in the eye and promised us a sanctuary from the impending financial doom, provided we did our part in getting current. Our part included depleting both Julie’s and my retirement accounts, which we gladly did in an effort to satisfy the bank and pave the way for a new financial future. Even better news, as in early December, our ex-nun bank angel brought a savior to The Riverside, a savior who was brought in from the outside to help us with our situation. Julie made them coffee, showed them around the hotel, and bid them off with the feeling that our fate was in the hands of these caring, helpful souls. There was a light at the end of the financial abyss, provided we kept up our end of the obligation.
As promised, and with much effort and at the expense of vendors and creditors, we paid the bank every owed cent by years’ end; a gut-wrenching process, but what a feeling of relief when the bill was paid.
During this process, in early November I received an email from our realtor, which brought news to which I was uncertain of its affect regarding our situation – Grand County Bank had been issued a “Cease and Desist Order” from the feds. A modicum of research – Wikipedia, I think – told me that this is what the feds do before they barge into your bank unannounced and seize it at 4:30 PM on a Friday afternoon; a not-so-gentle last warning to ‘get your financial shit together’, or you’ll quickly have no financial shit to get together. This wasn’t a surprise to me, as I’d weekly seen numerous foreclosures on $600,000 weekend getaway homes, crumbling Grand County businesses and a major financial sinkhole in a 36-hole golf course/fly-fishing resort, on the banks of the Colorado River, that went totally tits-up 1/3rd of the way through the development process – all on the balance sheets of Grand County Bank.
All of a sudden it dawned on me that Grand County Bank giving us a loan might not have been the vote of confidence I was looking for in higher financial powers having an educated insight into the potential success or failure of our dream. Throughout the process of our buying The Riverside, Julie would ask me “I wish we could get a sign as to whether or not we’re doing the right thing.” I would answer, “The banks will give us that sign. If we can’t make this work, they’ll have smart people that will blow my numbers out of the sky and we won’t get a loan.” I naively relied on the bank, knowing every last one of our intimate financial details and relying upon my ‘worst-case-scenario’ 5-year pro-formas, to tell me whether or not we had a viable business venture. What a fool I was.
January came and went without news from our sweet angel from the bank regarding our refinancing. At the end of the month, I sent her a brief email saying “waiting to hear from you re our refinancing. Don’t want to get another month behind…” February came and went, with no news from the bank. I was worried, but I knew that our angel was working behind the scenes to make our path easier. But now I was coming up to being two months behind on the mortgage.
Tuesday, March 2nd, the Grand County Bank savior sent me an email. “Mr. Paradise, you are two months behind on your mortgage. Make payment immediately or we will begin foreclosure proceedings.” Wow! I’d never met or spoken with him, but Julie said he was a nice guy who said he wanted to work with us; this email was a little chilly. I called our new friend and explained that I’d held off making payments as I was waiting to hear from the bank regarding my promised refinance. If need be, I could make the January payment immediately, and the February payment by March 15th.
This is where the story turns. This is when I realized there was more at play than us being late with the mortgage. Billy the Banker told me how it was going to be:
“Mr. Paradise, first and foremost, you need to take that money and hire legal counsel. Regardless of whether or not you get current, we are going to declare you in default. You have a clause in your loan that states if there is a material change in the ownership, management or operation of the business, and you living in Mississippi with plans to close the hotel April 1st certainly qualifies as a material change in the operation of the business, the bank can declare the loan in default. We are going to exercise that right.”
“But what about our refinancing? All we want to do is hang on to the place until we can sell it.”
“Mr. Paradise, the Cease & Desist order that we are operating under doesn’t allow us to refinance your loan.”
“Wait a minute!!! Betty Banker promised us that if we got current, we would get refinanced, and you’ve been under the Cease & Desist since early November. Did she just flat lie to us to get every last penny we had before you called the loan?? She knew we couldn’t refinance yet she strung us along until we drained our retirement accounts and handed them over to you??? She seemed so sincere. How could anyone be that evil and not be doing life somewhere?”
“Mr. Paradise, that’s past history. I’m only concerned with the here and now.” (That is a direct quote.)
It was at this point that the disdain and vitriol that I usually reserve for the legal profession was now borne by those in the banking profession – particularly these lying Grand County bastards. In fact, I now needed to embrace the legal profession, as it was my only course for being able to deal with this den of thieves.
To be continued…..
It should be no revelation to those that knew us and our situation that we were struggling to make a go of it at The Riverside; we were struggling hard. I didn’t move by myself to an apartment in Mississippi for the view. Our timing flat sucked in purchasing a business that had no record of profit, in a real estate market that, arguably with maybe an idiot, is the worst real estate market since real estate markets were valued. Like my grammar and my luck, our timing couldn’t have sucked more worser.
But ‘woe is me’ aside, we did everything we could to keep the place afloat. Thank God for Ergon. And Thank God for the fine folks at Grand County Bank, who promised to work with us in re-doing our loan to make the monthly nut more affordable. In October of 2009, when we were struggling to keep current with our payments, the bank sent us an angel who promised us that if we got current on our 1st mortgage and paid up another short term loan they’d given us, our loan would be refinanced, allowing us a reduced monthly payment where we could keep our mortgage current with only my job revenue. This sweet-faced, seemingly innocent Bank VP – she could be mistaken for an ex-nun – looked us in the eye and promised us a sanctuary from the impending financial doom, provided we did our part in getting current. Our part included depleting both Julie’s and my retirement accounts, which we gladly did in an effort to satisfy the bank and pave the way for a new financial future. Even better news, as in early December, our ex-nun bank angel brought a savior to The Riverside, a savior who was brought in from the outside to help us with our situation. Julie made them coffee, showed them around the hotel, and bid them off with the feeling that our fate was in the hands of these caring, helpful souls. There was a light at the end of the financial abyss, provided we kept up our end of the obligation.
As promised, and with much effort and at the expense of vendors and creditors, we paid the bank every owed cent by years’ end; a gut-wrenching process, but what a feeling of relief when the bill was paid.
During this process, in early November I received an email from our realtor, which brought news to which I was uncertain of its affect regarding our situation – Grand County Bank had been issued a “Cease and Desist Order” from the feds. A modicum of research – Wikipedia, I think – told me that this is what the feds do before they barge into your bank unannounced and seize it at 4:30 PM on a Friday afternoon; a not-so-gentle last warning to ‘get your financial shit together’, or you’ll quickly have no financial shit to get together. This wasn’t a surprise to me, as I’d weekly seen numerous foreclosures on $600,000 weekend getaway homes, crumbling Grand County businesses and a major financial sinkhole in a 36-hole golf course/fly-fishing resort, on the banks of the Colorado River, that went totally tits-up 1/3rd of the way through the development process – all on the balance sheets of Grand County Bank.
All of a sudden it dawned on me that Grand County Bank giving us a loan might not have been the vote of confidence I was looking for in higher financial powers having an educated insight into the potential success or failure of our dream. Throughout the process of our buying The Riverside, Julie would ask me “I wish we could get a sign as to whether or not we’re doing the right thing.” I would answer, “The banks will give us that sign. If we can’t make this work, they’ll have smart people that will blow my numbers out of the sky and we won’t get a loan.” I naively relied on the bank, knowing every last one of our intimate financial details and relying upon my ‘worst-case-scenario’ 5-year pro-formas, to tell me whether or not we had a viable business venture. What a fool I was.
January came and went without news from our sweet angel from the bank regarding our refinancing. At the end of the month, I sent her a brief email saying “waiting to hear from you re our refinancing. Don’t want to get another month behind…” February came and went, with no news from the bank. I was worried, but I knew that our angel was working behind the scenes to make our path easier. But now I was coming up to being two months behind on the mortgage.
Tuesday, March 2nd, the Grand County Bank savior sent me an email. “Mr. Paradise, you are two months behind on your mortgage. Make payment immediately or we will begin foreclosure proceedings.” Wow! I’d never met or spoken with him, but Julie said he was a nice guy who said he wanted to work with us; this email was a little chilly. I called our new friend and explained that I’d held off making payments as I was waiting to hear from the bank regarding my promised refinance. If need be, I could make the January payment immediately, and the February payment by March 15th.
This is where the story turns. This is when I realized there was more at play than us being late with the mortgage. Billy the Banker told me how it was going to be:
“Mr. Paradise, first and foremost, you need to take that money and hire legal counsel. Regardless of whether or not you get current, we are going to declare you in default. You have a clause in your loan that states if there is a material change in the ownership, management or operation of the business, and you living in Mississippi with plans to close the hotel April 1st certainly qualifies as a material change in the operation of the business, the bank can declare the loan in default. We are going to exercise that right.”
“But what about our refinancing? All we want to do is hang on to the place until we can sell it.”
“Mr. Paradise, the Cease & Desist order that we are operating under doesn’t allow us to refinance your loan.”
“Wait a minute!!! Betty Banker promised us that if we got current, we would get refinanced, and you’ve been under the Cease & Desist since early November. Did she just flat lie to us to get every last penny we had before you called the loan?? She knew we couldn’t refinance yet she strung us along until we drained our retirement accounts and handed them over to you??? She seemed so sincere. How could anyone be that evil and not be doing life somewhere?”
“Mr. Paradise, that’s past history. I’m only concerned with the here and now.” (That is a direct quote.)
It was at this point that the disdain and vitriol that I usually reserve for the legal profession was now borne by those in the banking profession – particularly these lying Grand County bastards. In fact, I now needed to embrace the legal profession, as it was my only course for being able to deal with this den of thieves.
To be continued…..
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The Riverside is gone, but the blog lives on...
Closing the hotel, escaping Grand County under the darkness of night, arranging for assumed identities in Mississippi....Damn it, I've been busy!!
The blog is not dead, as our Grand County exit, replete with a final good-bye from the Riverside ghost, is forthcoming.
The blog is not dead, as our Grand County exit, replete with a final good-bye from the Riverside ghost, is forthcoming.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Au revoir....for now
This is a tough one. It’s not a blog about Grand County drunks, dogs, ghosts or ketchup. It’s not about the magnificent Colorado, the spring lupine or the majesty of Byers Canyon. It’s about our life.
I’ll try not to be bitter, and try to keep it beyond the sort of thing that would tip the scale on your not visiting here.
Let's see...Rome, Grand County; Rome, Grand County; Rome, Grand County…oh, that nasty, bitter blog – Rome it is!!!
Effective March 13th, 2010, we have closed The Riverside; forever, under our ownership.
We gave it our all – mentally, physically and financially. We poured our heart, soul and savings into the old girl; they’re all still there, but we are off. As you might already know, I left the hotel in October to take a job in Mississippi, and Julie will join me this next week in Mississippi, as it should be. We’re walking away from a lot, both personally and financially, but nothing in this world is worth being without the person you love; nothing.
Please don’t feel sorry for us, as we are at peace with what we did, and for how we are ending things. There is no question that our timing in undertaking this endeavor couldn’t have been worse. ‘The perfect storm’ is an over-used descriptive term for Murphy’s Law being fueled by Armageddon; over-used, but still very applicable in our situation. Oh well….
What happens next? Lot’s to be sorted out, hopefully with a buyer, but most likely with the banks, the feds and the lawyers. At the end of the day, we’ll be in a new place, with our health, good jobs, and memories and experiences that you simply can’t put a price upon. We can walk away with our heads held high, in that we succeeded in our goal of taking this beautiful old building and turning it into an extension of ourselves; a warm, welcoming place of good taste and good cheer. And we have you, our friends, family and patrons, to thank for helping us realize our dream.
I won’t hang my head over our situation, as I am daily reminded, by the travails and real sufferings of others, that we are still blessed. Our situation is a little business deal gone badly; it’s not health, life or death.
I’m not bitter. I'm sad, I’m proud, and I'm ready to move on.
I’ll try not to be bitter, and try to keep it beyond the sort of thing that would tip the scale on your not visiting here.
Let's see...Rome, Grand County; Rome, Grand County; Rome, Grand County…oh, that nasty, bitter blog – Rome it is!!!
Effective March 13th, 2010, we have closed The Riverside; forever, under our ownership.
We gave it our all – mentally, physically and financially. We poured our heart, soul and savings into the old girl; they’re all still there, but we are off. As you might already know, I left the hotel in October to take a job in Mississippi, and Julie will join me this next week in Mississippi, as it should be. We’re walking away from a lot, both personally and financially, but nothing in this world is worth being without the person you love; nothing.
Please don’t feel sorry for us, as we are at peace with what we did, and for how we are ending things. There is no question that our timing in undertaking this endeavor couldn’t have been worse. ‘The perfect storm’ is an over-used descriptive term for Murphy’s Law being fueled by Armageddon; over-used, but still very applicable in our situation. Oh well….
What happens next? Lot’s to be sorted out, hopefully with a buyer, but most likely with the banks, the feds and the lawyers. At the end of the day, we’ll be in a new place, with our health, good jobs, and memories and experiences that you simply can’t put a price upon. We can walk away with our heads held high, in that we succeeded in our goal of taking this beautiful old building and turning it into an extension of ourselves; a warm, welcoming place of good taste and good cheer. And we have you, our friends, family and patrons, to thank for helping us realize our dream.
I won’t hang my head over our situation, as I am daily reminded, by the travails and real sufferings of others, that we are still blessed. Our situation is a little business deal gone badly; it’s not health, life or death.
I’m not bitter. I'm sad, I’m proud, and I'm ready to move on.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Bad Blood
Editors Note: This blog has nothing to do with living life in Colorado or Mississippi. If either of those topics are essential to your reading this blog, then save your time on this one. On a positive note, this posting isn’t a bitter rant, nor should it dissuade anyone from vacationing in any particular locale.........
BAD BLOOD
An internet-alert friend of mine made me aware of the following, long-overdue technological advancement in the field of consumer product packaging. Surely you’ve all learned of this by now, but in case you haven’t:
http://fastfood.freedomblogging.com/2010/02/06/heinz-testing-new-dip-squeeze-ketchup-at-fast-food-chains/50795/
My friends interest in this story centered on the fact that previous ketchup packaging – those little foil thingies – have been used by Heinz for the past 50-years without any change or advancement. In that 50-year span, technology in all areas has grown at warp-speed, and you’d have thought someone in the packaging department at Heinz might’ve stumbled across some sort of package improvement in the past 50 years. Damn, you might think they’d have stumbled on some new ideas from screwing around and perusing the internet during their work day, in lieu of actually spending time developing new packaging products! Anyway, 50 years later, Heinz has delivered us an improved ketchup package.
Why, you might now be asking yourself, would I take yours and my time to carry this discussion any further? Well I’ll tell you why – the old Heinz ketchup single use package has a very special place in my heart; it ties in to one of my early life memories so solidly that every time I see one of these packets of sugary, red goo, I’m drawn back to a hot summer day in July of 1967. In retrospect, I thought it was much earlier – and when you discover what a senseless thing I did on that fateful day, you’ll be astonished that I was 11 years old, and not 4 years old – but I dated it with the release of the album ‘The Doors’, which I remembered listening to ad nauseam that summer. And in subsequent summers.
When we were kids, and we weren’t privy to the economic struggles that adults encounter trying to house, educate, feed and clothe kids – 5 kids, no less – we thought my Dad was a bit of a tightwad. (I now wonder and marvel at, how on one salary, he did what he did, and made us feel like we were rich – I’m certain if you’re in my age group you wonder the same thing about your parents.) Tightwad or not, my Dad did Christmas and vacations right. Regardless of how often he reminded us throughout the year that “we can’t afford that!” or “you eat that cereal like you’re getting paid for it!”, he never disappointed us come Christmas and vacation time. Again, I don’t know how my parents did it.
However, our summer vacation of 1967 was substandard compared to all of the others; I know now because my parents were in the process of building our final family house – the five bedroom one with central air and all of the 1967 bells and whistles. Instead of a week at the beach or a northern lakeshore, we went to visit family in St. Louis for a few days, then on to Chicago to visit the Museum of Science & Industry – an absolute requisite for a WWII-era engineer with three sons.
Chicago was awesome, but it’s St. Louis where my ketchup connection occurred. I was born in St. Louis, but moved to Kansas City at the age of three – I’ve got peripheral memories of St. Louis at best - but my older brother and sister had some solid memories of St. Louis, and some of their fondest memories involved the St. Louis Zoo. All kids love the zoo, and my 11-year old standard for a zoo was the Kansas City Zoo – damned fine by my estimation, but then it was all that I knew, and I was informed by my older siblings that the KC Zoo was bupkis compared to the St. Louis Zoo. So needless to say, being a normal, zoo-loving kid, I was unconcerned about our truncated vacation and jacked about a visit to what had been described to me, by reliable sources, as the Mecca of all zoos.
The St. Louis Zoo was all that was promised, and far superior to KC – an entire building dedicated to reptiles, a massive big cat house, Phil, the poop-slinging gorilla, a walrus pool – that’s right, a freakin’ walrus pool.
I was in heaven, but I was hungry; time for lunch at one of the crowded concession stands. Hot summer day at the zoo, lots of people at the concession stand, waiting in line, hungry for lunch; lots of kids, lots of dads – lots of hot hungry kids, lots of hot, hungry, cranky dads. No matter to me, as I told my Dad what I wanted to eat, he got in line, and I moseyed around taking in the sights. There were perhaps twenty or thirty people huddled around the concession stand counter – it wasn’t organized in an airport security checkpoint back-and-forth fashion; it was kind of a mob at a counter – one of those situations where the loudest guy got waited on. People were hot, people were hungry, and people were cranky. No worry for me, as I was waltzing around in zoo la-la land, waiting patiently for my father to fight that crowd and bring me a burger with fries.
“Oh, what’s this?”, I asked myself, “an empty counter to lean against, with lots of napkins, plastic eating utensils and mustard and ketchup packages.” So lean I did, and I can’t say that what transpired next involved an orderly, rational discussion with myself. Perhaps it was the mid-day summer heat, or the hunger, or the lingering euphoria of experiencing the walrus pool – I honestly can’t say what drove me, in an unconscionable instant, to grab about a dozen of those ketchup packages, put them on the ground, and stomp upon them with all of my might.
You golfers know what it feels like to connect with the ‘sweet spot’ on a drive. It’s a feeling so clean and so pure that the second it happens you know you’ve hit pay dirt. My Size 6 sneaker absolutely experienced that sweet spot feeling as it laid into those 12 grounded ketchup packets; really bad timing for that ‘sweet spot’ thing. That hot, hungry, cranky crowd that was huddled, begging, growling and fighting for food at the concession counter was, in an instant, taken away from their heat and hunger pangs, and left to concentrate on a blistering Heinz ketchup assault from their unprotected rear flank.
I knew immediately that I had made a mistake. It was much like jabbing a rutting lion in the ass with a hot poker, having it turn to see what poked it, and standing there to face that angry beast – naked and unarmed. My action didn’t kill anyone, or cause any actual physical harm, but the crowd looked as if lots of them were dying. The masterful distribution of the 12 ketchup packs – it wasn’t a linear distribution, it was exponential – made it seem as if I’d spurted 50 gallons of ketchup at that crowd with a sophisticated piece of spray equipment; the kind of spray equipment that firemen would lust after. There were big gobs on this guy, fine spray on that guy, ribbons on the next one. And in 1967 fashion, all of the dads had on white shirts, and all of the kids had crew cuts. I still have this vivid image of a dad on his knees, his white shirt splattered with ketchup, him furiously wiping ketchup from the side of his 5-year old crew-cutted son’s head. He was cussing; he was not remotely jolly about his clean-up effort.
As I was surveying the carnage that I had wrought, my Dad was on me in an instant. He grabbed me by the shoulders and started shaking me, saying “What in the hell were you thinking??? What made you do a stupid thing like that??” I think I still remember a lot of the other dads saying “You’d better kill that little SOB, or we sure as hell will!” I clearly remember that no one laughed it off. These guys were going to have to walk around for the rest of a 100 degree day at the St. Louis Zoo with ketchup sprayed and splattered all over their clothes, crusted in their hair and the sweet, sickly smell of Heinz’s finest permeating their nostrils into the late afternoon hours.
The great thing about this, and the great thing about my Dad, was that there was no serious aftermath to this incident. He probably thought it was funnier than anything he’d seen in a while, and he knew his little display in front of the angry mob was all he needed to teach and all I needed to learn regarding the negative consequences of a once in a lifetime opportunity to plaster a crowd of people with ketchup packages.
I have one little experiment yet to conduct. What would happen if I were to take these new-aged, high tech ketchup packs and stomp on them? If you nailed them as I did the old-fangled packets, just right, would they wreak the havoc that was wreaked on that sunny St. Louis day in 1967? What if I could hit that sweet spot again?
It’s a comfort to know that if the new ones don’t work so well, I’ve got a trusty, proven, low-tech 50-year old back up.
Just when is the next Hot Sulphur Springs town meeting?
BAD BLOOD
An internet-alert friend of mine made me aware of the following, long-overdue technological advancement in the field of consumer product packaging. Surely you’ve all learned of this by now, but in case you haven’t:
http://fastfood.freedomblogging.com/2010/02/06/heinz-testing-new-dip-squeeze-ketchup-at-fast-food-chains/50795/
My friends interest in this story centered on the fact that previous ketchup packaging – those little foil thingies – have been used by Heinz for the past 50-years without any change or advancement. In that 50-year span, technology in all areas has grown at warp-speed, and you’d have thought someone in the packaging department at Heinz might’ve stumbled across some sort of package improvement in the past 50 years. Damn, you might think they’d have stumbled on some new ideas from screwing around and perusing the internet during their work day, in lieu of actually spending time developing new packaging products! Anyway, 50 years later, Heinz has delivered us an improved ketchup package.
Why, you might now be asking yourself, would I take yours and my time to carry this discussion any further? Well I’ll tell you why – the old Heinz ketchup single use package has a very special place in my heart; it ties in to one of my early life memories so solidly that every time I see one of these packets of sugary, red goo, I’m drawn back to a hot summer day in July of 1967. In retrospect, I thought it was much earlier – and when you discover what a senseless thing I did on that fateful day, you’ll be astonished that I was 11 years old, and not 4 years old – but I dated it with the release of the album ‘The Doors’, which I remembered listening to ad nauseam that summer. And in subsequent summers.
When we were kids, and we weren’t privy to the economic struggles that adults encounter trying to house, educate, feed and clothe kids – 5 kids, no less – we thought my Dad was a bit of a tightwad. (I now wonder and marvel at, how on one salary, he did what he did, and made us feel like we were rich – I’m certain if you’re in my age group you wonder the same thing about your parents.) Tightwad or not, my Dad did Christmas and vacations right. Regardless of how often he reminded us throughout the year that “we can’t afford that!” or “you eat that cereal like you’re getting paid for it!”, he never disappointed us come Christmas and vacation time. Again, I don’t know how my parents did it.
However, our summer vacation of 1967 was substandard compared to all of the others; I know now because my parents were in the process of building our final family house – the five bedroom one with central air and all of the 1967 bells and whistles. Instead of a week at the beach or a northern lakeshore, we went to visit family in St. Louis for a few days, then on to Chicago to visit the Museum of Science & Industry – an absolute requisite for a WWII-era engineer with three sons.
Chicago was awesome, but it’s St. Louis where my ketchup connection occurred. I was born in St. Louis, but moved to Kansas City at the age of three – I’ve got peripheral memories of St. Louis at best - but my older brother and sister had some solid memories of St. Louis, and some of their fondest memories involved the St. Louis Zoo. All kids love the zoo, and my 11-year old standard for a zoo was the Kansas City Zoo – damned fine by my estimation, but then it was all that I knew, and I was informed by my older siblings that the KC Zoo was bupkis compared to the St. Louis Zoo. So needless to say, being a normal, zoo-loving kid, I was unconcerned about our truncated vacation and jacked about a visit to what had been described to me, by reliable sources, as the Mecca of all zoos.
The St. Louis Zoo was all that was promised, and far superior to KC – an entire building dedicated to reptiles, a massive big cat house, Phil, the poop-slinging gorilla, a walrus pool – that’s right, a freakin’ walrus pool.
I was in heaven, but I was hungry; time for lunch at one of the crowded concession stands. Hot summer day at the zoo, lots of people at the concession stand, waiting in line, hungry for lunch; lots of kids, lots of dads – lots of hot hungry kids, lots of hot, hungry, cranky dads. No matter to me, as I told my Dad what I wanted to eat, he got in line, and I moseyed around taking in the sights. There were perhaps twenty or thirty people huddled around the concession stand counter – it wasn’t organized in an airport security checkpoint back-and-forth fashion; it was kind of a mob at a counter – one of those situations where the loudest guy got waited on. People were hot, people were hungry, and people were cranky. No worry for me, as I was waltzing around in zoo la-la land, waiting patiently for my father to fight that crowd and bring me a burger with fries.
“Oh, what’s this?”, I asked myself, “an empty counter to lean against, with lots of napkins, plastic eating utensils and mustard and ketchup packages.” So lean I did, and I can’t say that what transpired next involved an orderly, rational discussion with myself. Perhaps it was the mid-day summer heat, or the hunger, or the lingering euphoria of experiencing the walrus pool – I honestly can’t say what drove me, in an unconscionable instant, to grab about a dozen of those ketchup packages, put them on the ground, and stomp upon them with all of my might.
You golfers know what it feels like to connect with the ‘sweet spot’ on a drive. It’s a feeling so clean and so pure that the second it happens you know you’ve hit pay dirt. My Size 6 sneaker absolutely experienced that sweet spot feeling as it laid into those 12 grounded ketchup packets; really bad timing for that ‘sweet spot’ thing. That hot, hungry, cranky crowd that was huddled, begging, growling and fighting for food at the concession counter was, in an instant, taken away from their heat and hunger pangs, and left to concentrate on a blistering Heinz ketchup assault from their unprotected rear flank.
I knew immediately that I had made a mistake. It was much like jabbing a rutting lion in the ass with a hot poker, having it turn to see what poked it, and standing there to face that angry beast – naked and unarmed. My action didn’t kill anyone, or cause any actual physical harm, but the crowd looked as if lots of them were dying. The masterful distribution of the 12 ketchup packs – it wasn’t a linear distribution, it was exponential – made it seem as if I’d spurted 50 gallons of ketchup at that crowd with a sophisticated piece of spray equipment; the kind of spray equipment that firemen would lust after. There were big gobs on this guy, fine spray on that guy, ribbons on the next one. And in 1967 fashion, all of the dads had on white shirts, and all of the kids had crew cuts. I still have this vivid image of a dad on his knees, his white shirt splattered with ketchup, him furiously wiping ketchup from the side of his 5-year old crew-cutted son’s head. He was cussing; he was not remotely jolly about his clean-up effort.
As I was surveying the carnage that I had wrought, my Dad was on me in an instant. He grabbed me by the shoulders and started shaking me, saying “What in the hell were you thinking??? What made you do a stupid thing like that??” I think I still remember a lot of the other dads saying “You’d better kill that little SOB, or we sure as hell will!” I clearly remember that no one laughed it off. These guys were going to have to walk around for the rest of a 100 degree day at the St. Louis Zoo with ketchup sprayed and splattered all over their clothes, crusted in their hair and the sweet, sickly smell of Heinz’s finest permeating their nostrils into the late afternoon hours.
The great thing about this, and the great thing about my Dad, was that there was no serious aftermath to this incident. He probably thought it was funnier than anything he’d seen in a while, and he knew his little display in front of the angry mob was all he needed to teach and all I needed to learn regarding the negative consequences of a once in a lifetime opportunity to plaster a crowd of people with ketchup packages.
I have one little experiment yet to conduct. What would happen if I were to take these new-aged, high tech ketchup packs and stomp on them? If you nailed them as I did the old-fangled packets, just right, would they wreak the havoc that was wreaked on that sunny St. Louis day in 1967? What if I could hit that sweet spot again?
It’s a comfort to know that if the new ones don’t work so well, I’ve got a trusty, proven, low-tech 50-year old back up.
Just when is the next Hot Sulphur Springs town meeting?
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