The River Room........Part II

The actual physical commercial kitchen that we inherited (purchased) from Abe was a perfect microcosm of the larger mess, in the shape of a hotel, that we purchased (inherited) from Abe. Not having any actual restaurant experience beyond dropping bucket-loads of money in them, I wasn’t savvy enough to see the pratfalls to success that were, unfortunately, the foundation of our venture; nor was the bank, and most importantly, neither was the gentleman that did the property inspection for me and the bank. He was touted as an expert in 1) old buildings and 2) commercial kitchens; when viewed in retrospect, he knew as much about commercial kitchens as I did – that kinship of ignorance equated to a tasty recipe for disaster.

In August of 2007, I flew out to Denver, and then drove to Hot Sulphur to be present at the mechanical inspection. At this point, we were still contractually able to walk away from the deal - no harm, no foul. If things were obviously askew, i.e. if there were blazing, flying, roaring red flags – red flags that someone would be looking for before throwing their life and money at a lark – we could’ve still simply said at that point ‘thanks, but no thanks.’ Anyway, I meet Mr. Inspector on a sunny Saturday, and he takes me on a tour of the physical being that is The Riverside Hotel. I’ll skip the discussion of the roof, the foundation, the crawl spaces, etc., and jump right to his assessment of the commercial kitchen – his advertised area of expertise.

“All in all” he began, “the kitchen and the equipment are in decent shape, considering their age. Let me show you a few things that you’ll need to address for the Health Department. See this gap on this (food prep) table? Food particles can collect in that and it’ll be a trap for bacteria. There are four or five of those in here that need to be covered up. Here’s another one. See?”

Didn’t seem like too big a deal; get a little silicone, a spatula and ‘presto’, no more little bacteria farms. He continued:

“One thing you’ll have to fix pretty quickly is this fluorescent light fixture. First off, the bulbs can’t be exposed like they are – they could break and send glass bits shooting all over the kitchen; definitely bad for business if people have glass in their food.”

(I stood in awe while listening to this expert assessment.)

“Plus, the grease on those bulbs has caught all those little bugs – again, you don’t want those gnats falling off those exposed bulbs and ending up on dinner plates. I’d get a new compliant fixture first chance you get.”

(I hastily took notes – no glass in the food or bugs on the plates. This info was killer to a novice such as me.)

Next he went to the equipment. “The stove works fine, again, considering its age; all of the burners work and both of the ovens. It’s missing a knob here, but you should be able to find a replacement pretty easily.”

“Fume hood works fine” he said, as he flicked the switch and the blower motor creaked to a rolling crescendo.

“Here’s the ice machine”, as he opened the door and showed me copious amounts of crystal-clear ice cubes. “No worries.”

Then, “three stainless steel dish sinks; everything drains and flows nicely.”

Good, I thought. Draining and flowing is good.

“Now I have to show you a few areas of concern that I have with the walk-in (cooler).”

I’d been in The Riverside kitchen maybe a dozen times to that point, but I never knew that that there was a walk-in cooler in the back room.

“Cool”, I thought. Then I saw the cooler.

Outside of the cooler, perched upon an 18” square platform that was precariously affixed to the wall was a black machiney-looking thing, with a little motor, a small tank and coils that looked a little like a mini-distillery; in total, it was a mechanical contraption that Tom Edison would have regarded as primitive.

Pointing at this little humming conundrum, Mr. Inspector said “this is the compressor. It’s on its last leg and will have to be replaced. I’m actually amazed that it runs and cools at all.”

He then opened the cooler door and said “you won’t believe this!”

To those of you who don’t know anything about refrigeration – I was you at that point – on the opposite end of a compressor there would be a condenser, with cooling coils and a blower to disperse the cold air about the space. In reality, suspended from the ceiling of the walk-in, there was a condenser, resting on a rotted piece of plywood which was affixed to the ceiling by pieces of cheap, electrical flex conduit. The cooling coils – picture a small car radiator with frost all over it – were fronted by a $10 box fan that was attached to the whole Goldbergian contraption with 100 yards of the finest duct tape. A continuous drip of water from the condenser found purchase in a massive pot situated beneath it on the floor; there was science project fungi floating in that pot. I shit you not.

“Oh my!” said I. “Is this up to code?”

“Not hardly!” said our commercial kitchen expert. “You’re looking at a few grand to get this whole thing up to snuff. Plus, you’ve got a few more of those bacteria catchers in the gaps between the floor tiles and the walls that you’ll need to caulk. I’m guessing you’re looking at $3000 - $5000 to get this up to code.”

“Wow!” I thought. ‘I didn’t even know that there was a walk-in cooler, let alone a walk-in cooler whose main functional attributes would have been a hysterical stand-up routine at a refrigeration specialist’s annual award banquet.’

So there I was, standing in this commercial kitchen, with a commercial kitchen expert, on a beautiful August day in the mountains of Colorado. I was looking at, ....what... not much bad shit... really? Some silicone caulk, a new $30 fluorescent light fixture and maybe $3000 - $5000 to get the walk-in up to shape.

"That’s it???"

"Geez, I’d have thought it to be much worse. Lucky me!"

To be continued…….

The River Room........Part I

Over the course of the next five or six chapters, I will attempt to tell but a small part of the heaven and hell of thrusting one's novice-ass self into the restaurant business. Those with similar aspirations, pay heed.

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I like to cook - a lot. I like to cook for family, for friends, for holidays, for relaxation, for fun, for serious and mostly, for myself, as like all cooks, eating and enjoying what you cook is at the end of what it’s all about. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years got to be where they weren’t about anything more important than opportunities to showcase my culinary skills to an adoring, friendly and mostly familial, kept crowd.

There are millions of us out there who share this passion for cooking, and most of us are smart enough to understand the chasm-atic delineation between farting around in your home kitchen and cooking in a commercial endeavor. The ones that aren’t smart enough end up borrowing money from banks, friends, family and personal savings to learn that difference after they’re about three-quarters of the way from going tits-up in the restaurant business.

Never did the original plans for buying The Riverside include me being the chef and cooking for a paying crowd. I knew that putting out a Thanksgiving feed for 25 family members wasn’t the same as consistently and competently dishing out six to eight different menu items to a busy 40-seat restaurant. What I felt I did have was a vision for what a good restaurant was supposed to be, what type of atmosphere and service would make people feel special, and what type of food our patrons would find appealing. I felt I knew this because of my prior experience of traveling the country and eating in literally thousands of restaurants – from local diner ‘meat & threes’ in Dangerfield, TX and duck blood soup-serving Croatian buffets in Cleveland, OH, to some of the finest and most famous restaurants in California, New York and everywhere in between. I shudder, and am a bit ashamed of myself, when I begin to calculate the amount of money I’ve spent dining out both for business and personal meals; I could feed a lot of hungry people well with the gratuities alone.

The River Room Restaurant in The Riverside was added to the west side of the building in 1971. It is 40’ long and 14’ wide, with 14 tables that seat 42 diners. There are five tables that seat two diners – two-tops, in restaurant lingo – that run along the western wall; all have excellent views of the Colorado river, Mt. Bross and the more than occasional spectacular sunsets. The room was impeccably decorated by Julie, always changing with the seasons, with fresh flowers on the table in the summer or small artfully-arranged centerpieces the other 11 non-summer months. There is a wood burning stove in the middle of the room that is no longer used, serving now as a substrate upon which faux greenery and twinkling lights have found purchase. The soft visual experience is topped off by an aural delight, that of the lilting strains of carefully selected classical music (with an occasional show tune – those Grand County cowboys are crazy for show tunes) gently floating through the air.

The previous owner didn’t build the room, having purchased The Riverside in 1980, but he did have the vision to make it into a one-of-a-kind, white table-cloth, elegant dining room; the kind of place that you know the second you enter, it’s not a place where you’ve come for a $7.00 burger in your camos. In fact, if you walk in clad in camos, if you’re the kind of patron we’re targeting, you’re saying, “Oh shit, I’ve got camos on, and even though I’m in Grand County where camos are at the high end of the sartorial ladder, this is not a camos kind of place.” You make amends for the fact that you’re ill clad by sitting down, ordering a $9.00 martini, a $24.00 Rib-Eye, and now acting, that in spite of your outlandish, but geographically proper garb, you belong in this place.

It was The River Room that made me fall in love with The Riverside. My best memories as a customer involved long dinners with family and friends during our holiday visits, the snow gently falling outside on the frozen river, while we sat safe and warm, and more often than not just a little inebriated, talking, laughing and whetting our appetites while waiting for the sumptuous feast that Jamie, Abe’s cook, was preparing. (Sumptuous, at least, when compared to the other fine dining establishments in Hot Sulphur Springs.......of which there were none.)

After every Christmas visit to The Riverside, on the subsequent ride home to Kansas, Julie and I would discuss the dream of what we, as owners, would do to make this wonderful place….more wonderful. The excited chatter of “why doesn’t Abe do this?” and “if we owned it, we’d do that” made the bleak, frozen, unappealing vistas of eastern Colorado and western Kansas, combined with the rote yardstick that is I-70, glide quickly by as we headed back to the New Year and the resumption of our daily grind. That distillation of the warm post-holiday/vacation feelings of staying in an out of the way wintery haven, fresh with memories of good friends, family and food, topped off by 10 hours in a car spent upon reflection of good and introspection of what could be, distilled the fuel for the engine that ultimately drove us to Hot Sulphur Springs and The Riverside.

Unfortunately, all of this windshield time happened before IPods were invented.

To be continued............

Prime Rib for Vegans

As we approach our first Christmas season in Mississippi, I’m finding myself with just a tinge of nostalgia for winter in the mountains. Well, maybe half a tinge. It’s warm down here; warm unlike any Christmas I’ve ever experienced. One thing you could count on in the mountains was snow and cold temperatures at Christmas; for that matter, you could count on snow and cold in July. While it will take some adjustment getting used to a sunny, 74 F day on the winter solstice, I’m confident that I’ll be able to deal with it in time.

One constant with Christmas and me, be it in Mississippi, Hot Sulphur Springs or Shawnee, KS, is the art of the feast. The menu has been unchanged for years – a standing rib roast on Christmas Eve, and Thanksgiving dinner redux on Christmas night. The standing rib roast recipe was handed down by my father, and all of the prime ribs made at The Riverside were prepared in this fashion. Prime Rib was our standard offering on all of our holiday and special event meals – New Years Eve, Valentine’s Day, wedding meals and large group dinners.

As this crust bakes and mingles with the marbled fat exterior of the roast, it takes on a life of its own, almost eclipsing the flavor and splendor of the smoky beef; kind of like finding cash inside of a gold nugget. By last count, I swear to God, we had eight, full bore, dining room conversions of vegans jumping ship as they rediscovered the wonders of carnivorousness. It brought tears to my eyes watching the color return to the cheeks, while smiles returned to the faces of these ill-humored, wan, sallow jicama junkies as they scarfed down these blood rare bits of roasted goodness, shouting “Amen Brother!” and “Hallelujah Sweet Jesus but this is tasty!” between mouthfuls.

Serves 8 (or 4 reformed vegans)

1 – 4 bone Prime Rib roast (6-7 pounds)
½ cup Dijon mustard
½ stick unsalted butter
6 cups non-seasoned bread crumbs
8 cloves finely minced garlic
1 cup finely shredded Parmigiano Reggiano
3-4 healthy sprigs of fresh rosemary leaves, finely chopped
½ cup Kosher salt
¼ cup freshly ground coarse pepper

Melt the butter in a saucepan and whisk together with the Dijon Mustard. Using a pastry brush, literally paint the exterior of the roast with the mixture until all is covered.

Mix all of the remaining ingredients in a large dish, and roll the coated roast in the mixture until all is covered. This can be done early in the day, storing the roast uncovered in the refrigerator. (The ‘store in the refrigerator’ part wasn’t necessary at The Riverside, as room temperature was typically in the low 40’s.)

Preheat oven to 475F. Put the roast on a V-shaped roasting rack (they sell these at Wal-Mart for 6 bucks) and put it in the oven for 20 minutes – this will sear and crunchify the crust.

Reduce the heat to 275F and slowly roast until the internal temperature hits 125F – that’s the high side of rare. Remove the roast, tent with foil and let rest for 30 minutes. The roast will still be cooking, and the internal temperature should get to 135F – medium rare – at the end of the resting period.

Slice, serve, stand back and watch, whilst even the most strident of the anti-red meat crowd quiver in anticipation, before caving and succumbing to that which must be enjoyed.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and all the best for 2011!

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

Our two-year story of Living Life Riverside is a classic comic-tragedy; the last seven installments of this blog detailed the tragic side of the story. Yet, I reported this side of the story at the end of the ordeal, in retrospect, after the building burned down and all that was left was to sift through the ashes (metaphorically speaking). Truth be known, beyond the dread, the vomit and the immediate buyer’s remorse, my first experiences of The Riverside were filled with hope and excitement. If you were to go back and read this blog from the beginning, you’d find that I was reporting our life from a state of awe and wonderment; always at the ready for what great things awaited us – no hint in my writing or mood of despair or failure. While I knew at the start that this was going to be an uphill climb, with a potential quick slide into financial hell were we unable to reach the apex, I had no choice but to cheerfully continue that climb. I had terrific experiences with people that still bring tears to my eyes; once in a lifetime experiences that continually reminded us why we chucked it all to risk everything and do what we did. Those memories will always be there for me, and they will one day hopefully overwhelm the reality of the financial ugliness.

I’m often asked if I have regrets.

Knowing what I know now???

Hell yes!! I have regrets. There isn’t one thing about this experience I don’t regret. Daily! Hourly!

“Well”, people say, “you can check that off your bucket list.”

Dear God, if only I could do it over and have it eternally on my bucket list. The pain of wishing you could do it and not having done it has to be miniscule in comparison to the pain of having actually done it and having that experience bludgeon you to death.

I beg of you, please consult with me if owning a bar, restaurant or B&B is on your bucket list.

Many have lauded us for simply trying. While I truly appreciate the lauding, the folks at WalMart don’t yet accept lauds in lieu of cash when purchasing Cheetos and Little Debbie Nutty Bars. The truth be known, I wish I was being lauded for showing restraint and sticking with the dull but ‘sure thing’ corporate gig. While I wouldn’t have the memories of charming Hot Sulphur Springs, $750/month water bills and all of the wonderful people we met the past two years (“Yuk! Clean it up!”, “Dog attack at the Riverside!”), I would instead have memories of fabulous meals in Paris, quaffing fine wines in Verona and most importantly, memories of quarterly meetings with my financial advisor.

But alas, I opted for that bucket list thing. And I blame nothing, or no one, but myself.

I do know that we bought an old hotel, an icon in the area and an important slice of history in Grand County, and for two years, we made it a warm and shining place in a cold, desolate outpost. We welcomed strangers who left as friends. We entertained guests from all over the world who hugged us as family when they departed. I truly believe that we brought new life to a dying town and county, if only for a short while.

While there were many wonderful guests and moments, there was a particular guest and moment that still makes me think that our adventure wasn’t a total failure. A delightful German couple stopped in one summer afternoon looking for a room for the evening; they ended up staying with us for four nights. The husband played first chair French horn with the Frankfurt Symphony Orchestra - a gentle man of class, culture and great elegance; he’d traveled throughout the world as a professional musician, and was in the midst of a month long ramble throughout the United States as a prelude to a two year resident teaching position in China. During their last evening with us, while dining in the restaurant, I stopped by the table to ask about their dinner. The man’s eyes were closed and his hands were clasped, as if he was praying, but the meal was over. He looked up at me and said “Everything is perfect. The beer and the food were wonderful, this room is wonderful, and you are playing Schumann’s Fourth Symphony. I can’t believe I am here in this place listening to Schumann. This is Allesklarbeidir. I know you’re not familiar with that word, but it is a German word that is even hard for me to explain the meaning, because I don’t know of the English word that exists to describe the meaning of the word, but I will try. I think a literal translation in English is the word ‘adore’, but you would never use this word to say you adore something in the German language, as it goes far beyond adoring something. And this is not a word that is used lightly, as very seldom do you experience the feeling of Allesklarbeidir. It describes an internal feeling that you have of total comfort and wellness, a feeling you have when you are wholly in love and at peace with all of your surroundings. It is a warm feeling, a feeling of quiet joy. I have that feeling, now, in this place of yours’.”

At that moment, the feeling was mutual.

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After I assume room temperature and should my life ever be examined by someone other than creditors, I’m hoping that it will be discussed by close friends at a nice bar; one that pours a good drink, as we did at The Riverside. I’m certain that after the cussing and discussing, all will agree that if I did nothing else, my greatest accomplishment in this life was that my follies were occasionally capable of inducing a feeling of Allesklarbeidir and my failures did well to serve as a warning to others.

I am at peace with my fuck-up.

It ain’t cancer.

May God continue to bless us all……

Friday the 13th...The Final Chapter / Part VII

Note: I'll apologize in advance for the F-bomb contained in the following entry. But really, there is no other applicable word.

The auction was held as scheduled and after numerous unanswered emails and phone calls, two weeks later I finally made contact with the auctioneer, who reported that the sale of the kitchen equipment (which we didn’t own) and the beds and remaining few personal items that we did own, netted us around $5000. He then asked where I would like the proceeds mailed, and said he’d get me a check. That was three months ago, and as of this writing, I’ve not received a penny.

Many of you might find it hard to believe that someone would, essentially, steal (auction) your belongings in broad daylight as you stand by and watch and then thumb their nose at you when reproached. It used to be hard for me to fathom the notion that people can be so blatantly dishonest, but my Colorado experience has shown me that no matter how solid, legal and on the up-and-up people and professions may appear, the reality is that thieves, cheats, liars and crooks can mask themselves with legitimate facades and walk and operate openly among us, and more often than not, with total impunity. Certainly I’m not inferring that this sort of behavior is peculiar to Colorado; it just happened to be in Colorado that I put myself in such a position of vulnerability as to be exposed to the predators that are licensed to prey and kill, and then next, be fodder to the vultures who feast upon the remains. Needless to say, this newly found knowledge and experience has hardened me a tad, as it is no longer elementary to my nature to give people the benefit of the doubt; ‘tis indeed a shame.

Friday, August 13th, 2010, 10:00 AM MST came and went without a whisper. It was the day after my 54th birthday, and a normal day at the office for me in Jackson, MS. I didn’t mark the minute, or even recognize until an hour later when it dawned on me that the foreclosure had occurred; no tremor in the force such as Obi-Wan Kenobi felt when Alderaan blew up. It just came and went; I didn’t feel sad, happy, relieved, depressed, jubilant or defeated, broker or richer. I think the fact that I’d been physically removed from The Riverside and Grand County for so long helped to ease the suffering, and it shook me to imagine the suffering I would have endured had I no place else to go, having had to stand my ground in Colorado and bear witness to the process to which I’d just been subjected. It was also important for our general health and well being that we so resolutely decided back in March to walk away from the venture, to quickly shed the pain of the struggle, the failure and the loss, and begin life anew in another locale. As someone on Madison Avenue so succinctly put it, “know when to say when”; I strongly suggest to one and all, when the opportunity/need arises, take heed in those words.

It’s easy to be philosophical and wax poetic about the laws of physics after you’ve been run over by a truck and survived. I can look back now and see with clarity the red flags that prior were obfuscated by my desire to live, what I thought at the time was, my dream job in my dream locale. The truth of the matter is that the night we signed the papers to purchase the hotel, December 27th, 2007, I had such an immediate, overwhelming feeling of dread and remorse that I literally became physically ill. My first night sleeping in the hotel and the new life that we’d just mortgaged our souls to obtain, I awoke at 3 or 4 in the morning with a high fever, bone-rattling chills and a bout of overwhelming nausea. Perhaps a nasty dose of altitude sickness for this unsuspecting heretofore flatlander? I think not, rather, a severe physical reaction to the notion that I’d just done something fatally stupid and irresponsible.

For a fact, the body’s natural defenses to illness can quickly break down when exposed to a severe stress, becoming impotent to the onslaught of a phantom virus seeking harbor in a fertile port which lacks the will or resistance to send it packing. If stress was luck, I had a boatload of it that night, enough so that there wasn’t a lottery that was safe from me the night of December 27th had I a free dollar left to play, and to wit, that transient virus found solid purchase upon my stressed-ridden body.

I made it through that miserable night, but midway through the next morning, I walked out of the hotel into a frigid day, a bright sun in an emerald sky and headed west down Grand Street, to stagger across the bridge over the Colorado River and walk through waist-deep snow on to the isolated western riverbank until I was out of sight and sound of the hotel and any human who might be wandering by, and I vomited from the very depths of my person, profoundly, loudly and violently.

As I trudged back to the hotel through the waist-deep snow and bitter cold that I realized was not just a winter vacation accoutrement but now a part of my day to day existence, the gut-wrenching nausea was gone, but the feeling of dread persisted. As forcefully as I had expunged the bug that had so quickly invaded me and rendered me a staggering, vomiting slug, I knew that the real source of my heartburn was yet eternal within me, both physically and mentally. Once back at the hotel, a hard look at the man in the mirror and a subsequent discussion with same found that we were both in agreement; buddy, you fucked up bad: HUGE – BIG TIME.

This was within 24 hours of our ownership of The Riverside Hotel. Talk about your classic case of buyer’s remorse.

To be concluded.......

Friday the 13th......The Final Chapter/Part VI

No sooner had the auction been advertised throughout Grand County and on the auctioneers website, than the emails from the bank & the SBA’s attorneys started flying – not directly to me of course, but to my designated $300/hr legal counsel. The auction was advertised as a ‘Foreclosure Sale’, giving the public the opportunity to snatch up countless bargains on priceless antiques; antiques that were advertised as having had inhabited The Riverside since the turn of the century. There were pictures of 30+ pieces of dressers, armoires, tables, chairs, ornate clocks, beautiful wooden bed frames, and so on; both of the attorneys claimed that all of these pieces were part of the property, germane to the operation of the business and needed to remain at The Riverside. There was also the SBA’s assertion that due to provisions in our loan, they had a security interest the items; they were in fact encumbered. And as for that Brunswick Bar, it took less than 24 hours after hearing from Billy Banker “it’s theirs if they can haul it out of there” for someone at Grand County Bank to wise him up on the value of the bar, at which point he, uh, reneged on his generous offer. I imagine the real scenario involved one of the cowboy bankers on the bank’s Board having found just the spot for that old bar in his $1,000,000 log home on the 14th fairway of Pole Creek Golf Course.

However, there was one small issue that these lawyers failed to consider before raising the hackles on their clients back to the point where they were asked to write expensive emails to my lawyer. Not one of the items advertised in the auction preview was at The Riverside – they belonged to the auctioneer, who intended to cart them from Denver to Hot Sulphur for sale, using The Riverside as nothing more than a vessel to give what weren’t probably genuine antiques in the first place a needed air of authenticity. Trust me; other than the Brunswick Bar, Abe left nothing of value at The Riverside after selling us the hotel and certainly not a valuable ‘antique anything’ that he could have otherwise carted off.

Back and forth, the emails went between the SBA, the bank and my attorney regarding this auction that was to be held for items that didn’t belong to any of the participants. The SBA attorney was including terms such as “in violation of the law” and “punishable by fines, imprisonment or both”; I just wanted to sell the beds we bought for the hotel, not rip the tags off of them. What we were talking about selling in the auction that did belong to us – remember, most all of value that we had left behind had already been pilfered – were principally the 14 primo queen beds that we’d purchased for the hotel, and are still technically paying for on our Master Card. I sat back, helplessly, as I watched one email after the other fly back and forth between my attorney and the attorneys for Grand County Bank and the SBA, all the while envisioning the dollar signs mounting into an ever burgeoning pile.

Finally, at about 10:00 PM that evening after the umpteenth email, I could stand the legal raping and pillaging no longer. I sent all three attorneys the following email; I won’t deny that alcohol might have helped fuel this rant.

Gentlemen: Re the auction of assets.

We're talking about selling some beds, beds that I'm still paying for on my Master Card, that were purchased after the 2007, bifurcated, 504, blah, blah, blah screw job loan that I signed without the aid of counsel. The auction company that we hired (after being given the OK by the bank to auction the furnishings) is bringing onto the site numerous items that are their property to sell, and using the old hotel as nothing but a backdrop for the sale of these antiques. Pay Attention - the items being auctioned are not the property of your client, the bank, or either of my LLC's, and are not subject to your lein, or were ever previously at The Riverside; they are being trucked up from Denver to be sold at the site.
Mr Jones (a fictitious name for the SBA lawyer), you say your client is now willing to discuss the ramifications of the bifurcated 504 loan application with me - too late. A representative of your client, Suzy SBA, did not answer 20+ calls, nor respond to any of the 20+ voicemails I left for her, placed between December 1st, 2009, and February 1st, 2010, to discuss her promised 6-month payment deferment due to my hardship. After Grand County Bank (GCB) declared the loan in default in early February, and I did finally get to speak with your client, Ms. Suzy, she rather sheepishly informed me that she was instructed by both Billy & Betty Banker @ GCB, not to return my calls and discuss my situation. I'm guessing the SBA deferral would have interfered with the banks plans to foreclose on the loan and get their guaranteed SBA paycheck.

My wife and I have left our $XXX worth of life’s savings in Colorado at The Riverside. We were trying to sell a few thousand dollars worth of personal effects to defray credit card debts - now it will be used to pay for expensive emails sent by lawyers. I don't know the definition of a bifurcated loan, but I do know the definition of carrion – that’s all that I have left for the bankers and the lawyers.

Mr. Jones, you threaten to come after my assets if we sell our personal items out of The Riverside; good luck with that, as I have no assets for you or anyone to come after. I'm broke! I live in a shitty little rental house in Mississippi, living paycheck to paycheck, and as of this writing, I have $242 in my bank account to get me to my next end-of-the-month payday. Had your client and GCB been as open, honest and diligent about the X's & O's of loaning money as they are about collecting it, neither of us would be in our current situation.

You can have the money from the sale of the beds. May you all sleep well.

That stopped the emails.

To be continued....

Friday the 13th...The Final Chapter / Part V

The deeper we went into the summer of our fiscal discontent, the more it became apparent that I was going to have to go back to work full time, way sooner than I had imagined; I was going to need every penny I could muster to help keep the sinking ship afloat. The plan involved me moving back to Kansas City, living in our unsold house and working at my old KC office. When our KC house sold, I’d move to an apartment in Jackson, and Julie would join me when the hotel sold. This solution to our problem, which involved living apart, was beyond distasteful to us, but there was really no other available alternative. We felt in our hearts that someone would come along and buy the place within the next two years, and with my job, Julie getting a job and the help of the bank in refinancing the loan (Not!), we’d be able to hang on long enough to sell.

After the Labor Day holiday weekend – the final thud to the summer from a revenue perspective – I packed some clothes, a few personal effects, a picture of Lucy and my fishing rods, and headed back to the old homestead in KC. As luck would have it (or perhaps by dropping our asking price by 30%), we had two offers on the house after two days on the market, and quickly selected what seemed the better of the two. This didn’t come without some wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, as even though the house was now priced considerably below its appraised value, it was, after all, still a buyers market. To ultimately close the deal, we had to put in four new windows, a new furnace, cut down a tree, paint some trim, fix part of the roof and throw in the brand new washer and dryer we’d just purchased. No hard feelings though, I wish the buyers well; and may they have all of their toilets simultaneously clog while prepping for their joint colostomy procedure!

The rest of the story has been told, including most importantly the bank and the SBA’s nefarious dealings, and we can fast forward to closing down the hotel, Julie moving to join me in Mississippi and me trying to get out of our ownership position with grace, notwithstanding already having had our financial asses handed to us.

On June 15th, 2010, I received a letter sent regular mail from the Grand County Treasurer. It stated, that “on August 13th, 2010, at 10:00 AM MST, on the steps of the Grand County Courthouse, the dwelling and real estate that is comprised of Plat # 23, 509 Grand Street, Longitude 32, Latitude 44, yadda yadda yadda....will be sold at public auction.”

So this is what our dream had come to; it was as cold and impersonal as Grand County itself.

There was no adjoining letter from the bank, nothing from the SBA – not a phone call or email to explain, describe, question or quantify the process to which were to be subjected. I had a lot of questions, but the only person who might be able to answer them would charge me $300/hour, and to this point, I’d have had more substantive results from my dealings with the legal profession regarding The Riverside by pissing away the money that I’d already given the lawyer on lottery tickets.

I didn’t hear anything from anyone for the next few weeks, until I received a call from a friend who was watching the hotel. He was contacted by that kind banker who called me with the bad foreclosure news, asking for a tour of the hotel. I guess he wanted another look at the property that they were going to purchase and own, if only for a few weeks before the SBA purchased it from them. When we left the hotel, we left it in stellar shape – show ready condition for a sale. The only thing we took were our personal furnishings, leaving all of the furniture we acquired from Abe, as well as the bar and restaurant furniture, all of the beds and bedroom furniture, all of the kitchen equipment (which we didn’t own), our two leather sofas and my favorite rocking chair.

We hadn’t been gone a week when it was reported to us that most of the remaining furniture – certainly all of the good stuff - ended up finding its way to various residences throughout Hot Sulphur Springs. Next went most of the pictures and decorator nick-nacks; those same pictures and nick-nacks that I literally risked my life transporting one night whilst pulling a 12’x 9’ U Haul trailer over Berthoud Pass in the middle of a big ass, total white-out blizzard.

So, as the banker was touring the place, my friend apologetically explained that we had left the place in better shape than it now appeared, and we had left quit a bit of furniture that was no longer on the property, the banker said “I couldn’t care less about the furniture, I’m only interested in the real estate.” Upon hearing this, I asked my friend to clarify a few things with his contact at the bank, mainly, could we auction off what of value we’d left behind that hadn’t been absconded with by the locals, including the original Brunswick Bar? While the thought of that bar not being at The Riverside pained me – it’s been there for 100 years – the thought of maybe getting a good chunk of money for it and helping to salve a few of our financial wounds at least had to be perfunctorily examined. The answer I received back from the bank was “we’re not interested in the contents, including the bar. If they can haul it out, they can have it.”

We only had two weeks before the foreclosure, so I quickly went about trying to find an auctioneer in the Denver area who would be interested in helping us unload what was left of The Riverside, sans the real estate; and oh did I find one. My hot streak of bad decisions being buffeted by worse luck was still solidly intact. It wasn’t long before it occurred to me that the auctioneer I hired, while not coming in very high on the Google list of ‘Denver-area auctioneers’, would have been first on the list had I Googled ‘disreputable, thieving, crooked Denver-area auctioneers’.

After a brief description of the property and the limited items we had to offer, not only was the auctioneer interested in holding the auction, he was most interested in the Brunswick Bar, as he said the current demand for these is “through the roof”. He was so interested that he drove to Hot Sulphur Springs the next morning, toured the hotel, stopped at the bank to discuss the auction and had me a contract to sign by that next afternoon. Can you say it again with me, le big-time, grand drapeau rouge?