Sally & Gerry Sampson had run the Train Station Cafe over on Foxbar Road in Cooperstown for five years but they had struggled because they had not really made much of an effort to serve their neighbourhood and did not speaking Italian. They had never got involved in community events, never sponsored a team or contributed to a fundraiser. They wanted to be magazine cool… stylish… chrome, and mirrors, and grey leather… all sparkle, twinkle and nouvelle cuisine. I had stopped in occasionally over the summer for a light lunch because it was cool (temperature wise at least) on their verandah under the trees and quiet (except when the trains went through), but even I had noted that most of their clients had come from outside the neighbourhood… the starched stiff FOOFs* and WASPs* who had thought themselves brave and adventurous to come north of Hwy 301. The Sampsons were nice yuppies who had never really understood why things hadn’t worked out… on paper it had looked so good. They had emailed me this morning and told me that they were putting their restaurant on the market. Since I was taking Zeb to the daycare that morning, I had said I would stop by.
They told me their long saga of spiraling economic woe – over extended on their restaurant, on their penthouse condo, their cottage, their two cars, their club memberships... they were hemorrhaging cash and sinking so fast they didn’t even know where to turn. Everything was on the market in an attempt to stave off the bank that had loaned them way too much to begin with. Yet even with all of that, the attitude that had got them there was still firmly on display.
“Did you talk with Father Andrea at Holy Rosary?” I asked. “He usually knows is wanting to buy what.”
Gerry had sniffed and asked: “Charlie, I would never talk to one of those. Don’t you know what Catholic priests really are?”
Hoping that it was a rhetorical question, I ignored his ignorance but he persisted, so finally I said:
“Yes Gerry I do know what priests are. They are men with a vocation for serving God. Some are good, some are bad, some are wolves in sheeps clothing and some are absolute martyrs. The ones at Holy Rosary tend to fall into the good to martyr category. The Sisters who teach at the school and who run the daycare are very nice, even if they do think it is Pre-Vatican II and wear full habits.”
I then side stepped the whole thing by asking which real estate agency they had gone with.
“Oh we went with Ashlar Urban Realty” gushed Sally. “We are so lucky to be one of their clients.”
“Hmmm… I’ve never seen their signs outside of the downtown core,” I said. “Do they have a rep living up here who knows the area?”
“Oh Charlie,” laughed Sally. “They can handle it. They have all the best listings in all the best magazines.”
“I thought that the Re/Max Hallmark office over on Weldrick handled most of the commercial real estate around here?” I asked. “I know that their office has staff that speaks more than fifteen languages, which is kind of necessary around here.”
“Well we did speak with them but they said that we’d only get about $650,000 for it and we paid $550,000 five years ago. We expect to see a profit on our investment. They told us that the market had shifted and that… well they said a whole lot of things, including that we could not be listed as a highly profitable venture, and we were very offended,” sniffed Sally. “Ashlar Urban said that if we had been downtown they could have got us at least $850, 000 and possibly even $900,000 if we could get a bidding war going.”
I could only shake my head. Ashlar is a pretty reputable firm so they probably quoted them something around the Re/Max quote but presented it in a slick and glossy way. However Sally & Gerry’s brains had probably stopped listening at the $850,000 to $900,000 price. Talk about blind… but then again there was so much blindness to what was going on around them.
“Anyways… we are closing up now. September is always a big drop off month for us as people focus more on their children than the meals out they deserve. And now that the City has closed off access to the highway and is making this a gated community…” started Gerry.
“What a horrible idea those both were. You know I never understand how these decisions are made. You’d think that they would at least consult the public and business owners. I mean really, like our clients would ever drive into some gated community like this…” continued Sally.
“Did you know I even hear animals this morning!” stated Gerry.
“What type?” I asked, my brain still stuck on how a restaurant, across the street from a school, could lose money in September.
“Well I know there are horses – I even saw one!” said Sally going for shock value.
“Oh… right… those horses,” I replied. “They are part of the City’s mounted unit. Someone burned out their barn at Sunnybrook yesterday. Two of the horses were killed and two officers and three grooms injured.”
“Well… I mean… that is horrible… but those animals should be free you know, not being ridden around into dangerous situations… and why bring them here?” asked Sally freely quoting from the latest issue of City Urban Life.
You know that prayer you have when you wish that people could really hear themselves… I kept saying it to keep from really saying what I wanted to.
“Well Sally, the City owns a 10-acre property just north of us and the Police Department has cleaned it up and will now be stabling the horses there,” I told them.
“Gerry will that be a benefit to our sales plan or a detriment?” asked Sally. “Perhaps we could have pictures of us giving a cup of coffee to a mounted policeman in front of the restaurant?”
My mind boggled at the thought process.
“I suspect that the detachment is going to be pretty low key until they catch the arsonist,” I said.
“Oh right… now the other reason we asked you to come over is that we know that things have been tight for you and we wondered if there was anything in our pantries or freezer that you could use. We’d rather give it all to you than just throw it out.” Sally said with sickeningly sweet, false charity condescension as she led me though into their pantry.
I could have cried. The pantry was full of #10 cans of just about anything you could imagine and some that were odd even to me – peaches, pears, mandarin oranges, tomatoes, olives, roasted peppers in oil, grape leaves, more olives, there were gallons and gallons of oils – olive, hazelnut, walnut, thyme, basil, sunflower…, more olives, sacks of coffee beans, boxes of loose tea, wildly expensive hot chocolate, jars of homemade marshmallows, ropes of garlic, onions, and sausage. There were even big containers of spices like alkoura, white pepper, black pepper, dried chili peppers, paprika, savory, dill seeds, sage, garlic, sea salt (several varieties), oregano, bay leaves, dried onion, cayenne, Italian mint, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, chives, cloves… There were jugs of soya sauce (some fancy name), and Lea & Perrins, and the plethora of bbq sauces… There were five sacks of flour, three of sugar, the bounty went on and on… There must have been a couple thousand dollars’ worth of goods just in the pantry. I turned and looked at them.
“Are you sure you don’t want this?” I asked not bother to hide that I was incredulous. The supermarkets were on meltdown and these people were giving away food?!?
“Oh honey, we aren’t chefs,” said Sally in that patronizing tone. “But we thought you might… need… it and be able to use some of it. You must think of your darling little Zack…”
“Zeb,” I corrected automatically. “I can use all of this. You’re sure?”
Sally and Gerry both said yes.
So I called John and had him bring his truck and asked him to have Jack bring my Jeep down. Meanwhile, we went into the walk in fridge. It was full. So was the freezer. Again I said I would take it, but where to put it all… then Mrs. Moretti’s conversation about the solar panels. So I made a second call to Mr. Moretti. He agreed to come and collect the cold goods and to store it for us and to charge us a nominal feel to cut the restaurant size servings smaller if necessary.
“Sally?” I asked. “What are you doing with all the cutlery, plates and glasses.”
“Oh you poor thing!” exclaimed Sally. “We were just going to give them to the Salvation Army but take what you want… do you have some friends who could use them?”
“Well,” I said. “We have some elderly ladies…”
I didn’t get any further before Sally & Gerry were all over themselves to donate to little old ladies. So a call to Mrs. Orlandini. She and Mrs. Moretti came to collect them for their café (which we didn’t mention). Like matched dolls in black with heads covered, twittering away in Italian, they took the offered cutlery, dishes, mugs, glasses, and added knives and cutting boards. We even got the big butcher block! I asked for and got the toilet paper, cleaning supplies and some art work for my new clinic. John, Jack, and the Misters Moretti and Orlandini all did the work of stevedores hauling all the treasure back to the Coop. By the time we left, we had pretty much stripped the place. All that was left were the appliances and table and chairs which were included in the sale price – they were ugly as sin and not very comfortable but photographed brilliantly.
We wished each other well and I left with John. We were exhausted and it was only 11:00am...
*****
* FOOFs – Fine Old Ontario Families, WASPs – White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. FOOFs are always WASPs but very few WASPs are FOOFs. Ontario has become so multi-cultural that most derogatory ethnic designations have largely vanished (like Jerry, or Charlie, or JAP – which meant Jewish American Princess not an ethic Japanese, or Wop) but these two have survived.