Their business had already experienced the winter fall off. It was hard to stay afloat in a seasonal tourist town. Business owners had two options: close or reduce staff. Kristie knew that if she reduced staff, they might not be available to work for her when the season picked up again.
But she had to make decisions. Winter was here. She minimized as much as she could, but she still had to keep a cook, a dishwasher, two bartenders, and a waitress. The overhead was killing, and not in a good way. She had one of those new fangled loans that seemed to go up every month. She was now paying $1500 more per month than she had planned on. The bank could raise their rates anytime they felt like it.
The bank was making lots of money, but she was going broke. The last thing they needed was a flood. The restaurant was closed for the season, but the bar, the mainstay of her business income was still open. When they got word that a flood was coming, they moved as much as they could upstairs in the freight elevator before the power went out.
They kept the bar open until they were standing in a foot of water. The last of the customers helped put up the bar stools and had one last drink. Two of the tenants who lived in the apartments next to the bar set up house keeping upstairs in the closed restaurant. One gal made her bed up on the stage and the other set up an actual tent for privacy in the lounge. Their dog and cats also took refuge in the closed upstairs restaurant.
The flood came and went in two days, but the damage was done. Everyone was saying, “Now you’ll have plenty of money to fix things up.” But that wasn’t the case. First of all, the money was slow in coming and they needed to get the place opened as soon as possible. Secondly, there was damage to the whole building, and it was a mess of mud and muck. They needed cash to hire workers to help.
They tore out the carpet and power washed the bar. Then they began working on the apartments. All the sheet rock had to come down. The tenants received free room and board during the repair process, and were also paid to help in the clean up. More money out of pocket.
Money! Money! Money! Everything was costing money. And they didn’t have much. They had to open the bar up immediately. They were living day to day on what they could make. Everyone was busy mucking out, so they would stop by for a couple of beers and a hamburger. The barbecue had been stored upstairs and was perfectly fine for making a burger or a pot of chili.
It was such an uplifting story that the local paper printed photos and an article about the courage of the survivors. But then the Health Department came by and denied them a permit to serve food.
Jack was trying to do most of the work himself occasionally hiring a helper. Kristie was confined to her upstairs loft keeping in touch with everything by phone until the workers finished the clean up. It would be a hard six months. The money that was promised never came. Every creditor was at her door. Cash only.
She paid everyone in cash, not because she was trying to be underhanded, but because she never knew if the check she would write on any given day would clear the bank. It was quite embarrassing for an employee to try to cash a check for $38 just to have it declined.
“You mean to say that you don’t have $38?” one of her wait staff asked incredulously.
The State Board of Equalization made sure that she didn’t have any cash. They pretty much emptied her account on a regular basis. At one point, not believing that she was as broke as she said she was, they sent a little old mousy collector to sit and collect every cent she took in. The customers were so put off by this that the old bat only took in $64. “You see,” Kristie cried to the bitch, “I was telling the truth. I really don’t have any money.”
The final blow was when she was under suspicion of selling drugs. One of her bartenders had been caught selling meth to an under cover agent. Kristie knew nothing about it. There wasn’t anyone straighter in this town than she was. She didn’t even drink!
They continued struggling through the lackluster summer season and finally closed on Halloween at midnight. The demise of her dream. It was the saddest party she had ever been to. She was really going to miss all these characters that had come into her life. All total it was three years of adventure, back breaking work, and broken dreams. They lost everything except each other. But years later, in spite of their loss, they were still glad they had tried it.
(First published 10/29/12)
