This entry is a long one, painful to write at times. There are a lot of stories from this period. I'm not sure I remember them all properly anymore. I'm not sure I want to say everything I do remember. This period of my life changed me profoundly.
After about a month of unemployment, and Germany advancing in the World Cup, I found an ad for a wine shop manager in the Dispatch. I called and asked to speak to the manager, who I was speaking to. Asked about if I could interview, "I need a time" was the first of many strange things he would tell me.
Got to the shop, which was divided in two. One side the retail, the other a bar. A toothless drunk behind the bar says aloud to everyone and no one that her replacement is here. I don't even remember her name.
Chris, the owner arrived late. I recognized him from a vendor tasting I went to when I worked at the French Market. Time has erased what we spoke about, but it was lengthy and filled with interruptions. It was a couple of hours before I found out if I'd got the job. I have a feeling it was a given the moment I walked in the place. Meanwhile, my wife was waiting in the car. This did not help matters.
The business had been a wine shop since the early sixties, before that it was a gas station. It was run by the owner's Grandfather, who also owned the property and he passed it on to Chris giving him a lot of advice (and no rent) little of which took for he was a very irresponsible kid. The Grandfather died a few years before, leaving Chris to look after his Grandmother, who did not drive. She was also extremely wealthy.
The wine shop was a potential gold mine, at the time it was one of the few on the east side and sat right on the edge of the wealthy enclave of Bexley. They liked good wine in Bexley, and bought it too. It was a bit of a haul, since I still did not drive. I got to know East Main Street from my seat on the number two bus.
On one side of the building, sat the bar. A money pit of theft, drug dealing and other illicit behavior. Prostitutes met their clients here, strange things happened in the parking lot day and night. How it did not get busted is beyond me.
The bar itself was lovely, dozens of etched wine crates covered in layers of polyurethane lacquer. The back bar was a 24 bay Cruvinet, a wine tap system that worked as often as a 1968 Jaguar and was a pain in the ass to maintain. I hated it because it wasted money and attracted even more cockroaches. The clientele was diverse, a Columbus Municipal court judge was a very regular customer. Nice guy, but dying of emphysema, chain smoking unfiltered Lucky Strikes and the booze did not help. The man could fall asleep standing up, a talent we were all impressed with.
In the midst of all this I became trusted to do the ordering for the retail side and had little responsibility in operating the bar, this was good for everyone. I did not like the bar, the smoke and some of the people who came in there. I did not like serving cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon (this was before the hipsters embraced it) at 10AM, one bigot stared out the window and exclaimed, "You know, ten years ago, you never would have seen a nigger in Bexley, now they're everywhere."
I still have no real idea what went on in the bar at night. There was a lot of stealing. Friends of Chris were robbing the till constantly. He was too messed up to do anything about it. There was a lot of drug use. Chris left a substantial bag of pot in the middle of the retail counter one night for me to find when I opened. I just had to laugh. I guess people expected me to freak out. He asked me if I found an item that was, "indiscriminately left on the counter overnight." The drinking and the pot use did not bother me, it was the crack and harder stuff that ended it all.
In the midst of the chaos, I was learning a lot about wine here, especially the Germans. Despite his reputation as a burn out Chris knew his wine and I got a solid education. Learned to love Champagne here too and selling the stuff was quite a pleasure. One Christmas, I was interview by The Dispatch about an article they were doing on Champagne sales. One prominent local retailer said that sales, "were flat," while I said they've never been better.
It was depressing to watch his deterioration because of the cocaine. His family tried interventions, he was going through a divorce. Nothing worked. He was on his own road, riding his motorcycle drunk, or driving his Grandfather's Cadillac or partially restored vintage Mustang and excessive speed. It's a good thing he never made it to the cell phone era, more people would have been hurt with his attention span while driving.
We did have our fights, mostly about how the bar was being run as it took profits and customers away from the business. The theft from the bar was amounting to thousands of dollars a year. A grand a month, probably more. People were put off by some of the unsavory characters and excessive cigarette smoke that permeated the walls. the smell is still there, to this very day. I notice it.
Near the end, he was rolling with some very questionable characters, a few of whom were carrying briefcases full of what may have been cash and needles. They went upstairs to do their business, I never saw the bloodstains on the wall. I never would have cleaned those up. Why didn't I leave? I had nowhere else to go, so I thought.
He looked horrible the last time I saw him. Unwashed hair, dirty clothes, I think his belt was a piece of rope. He was taking beer out of the cooler, for himself and his buddies. He always called them buddies. I think it was a Tuesday.
Wednesday night, I think, my wife and I got home from whatever we did that night. I had just gone to bed when the phone rang just after ten. She answered it. One of his girlfriends who was now running the bar into the ground said that he died.
I did not know what the Hell to do so I went back to bed for a few minutes then asked if we could head to the house behind the store, where he was living, to find out what was going on.
When we got there, the house was empty, the bar was closed. It was about 11:30PM. I suggested we go to his Grandmother's, maybe something was happening there. The lights were on.
My wife tells me that when I walked into the house and saw his body on the floor of his Grandmother's living room I immediately went completely pale. She was right. His body was face down, covered in a sheet, and his mother was kneeling over his body. Did not expect to see any of this. I was not the same person after this moment. His dead body was the first I had ever seen. Not a body that expired because of old age or disease but a sudden overdose. I thought he died at the other house. His Grandmother was ill and living in an assisted care facility at the time.
About the only other thing I remember from this scene was when the coroner came to pick up his body. When he was lifted his arm fell, and not an a 90 degree angle, but more like a 30, because rigor was setting in. His skin was a mottled green and bruises and the image has never escaped me.
I went back to the bar and my wife called one of his other girlfriends, one of the better ones he had, she came over and we drank more than our share. I took all the money from the building just in case. I was worried about serious theft. We went to breakfast at Tee Jay's and got home about six in the morning. About two hours later, Chris' brother, Scott called.
His brother got out of Columbus and was living in Dayton with his wife and kids. He was an attorney. I ended up headed back over to the store, on about two hours sleep and hung over to talk.
He was not a bad guy, at all. He lost his father and now his brother due to drug addiction and he felt the need to be responsible for Chris' young son.
The wake and funeral were held, both very sad events. The store closed for a few days while Scott and I sorted some matters. The bar was closed, and stayed closed. I ran the business solo, for about a year. A very hard year.
How do you tell people a 33 year old man died when his aorta exploded while he was smoking crack? That's the ghost I was left with for weeks after as the news filtered out. I also had to tell people that their precious bar was closed, and would remain so. People were not happy. And why would they be, their route to free drinks and drug access had just been cut off. There were rumors, I do not think he was alone when he died, but I do not think he was murdered. I think they were doing drugs, Chris collapsed and died, the other guy, or guys, panicked and left.
Store hours were cut drastically, the business was to be sold as a going concern once the legal details were sorted out. Naturally, Chris left no will. This was going to take some time.
I had help during the holidays. My wife was an asset. A good man named Mike, who was one of the better and more responsible bar regulars assisted during the holidays and times I needed a weekend off. He died a few years ago. At his service were pictures of him with large bottles of wine. His daughter told me it was me who gave him the wine bug. A colleague of my wife's helped out as well. This could not sustain itself though.
The bills were being paid, the store was well stocked, Chris' debts were coming down, all due to one guy running a shop right. I'll concede there was no rent to pay, which is a huge expense the store did not have. Scott would frequently check in, ask how things were doing, how I was. "Better than Kurt Cobain," I replied on that day eighteen years ago. I know the cut in hours lost a lot of business, but things had to stay tight, and losses were kept at a minimum.
Vultures would come in, expecting they were going to come in and take the place at a steal. Scott was a but more realistic. I remember one potential buyer praised my merchandising, saying it looked like a New York Wineshop, and it for the most part, still has the same layout. If I remember right I pulled in a quarter of a million in sales, by myself. A drop from previous years, but still an impressive amount of money. There was no way this place, if run well, could not take in at least half a million. In the best year when I was there we came close to four hundred thousand in sales.
About a year after Chris died I got a phone call from the owner of another wine shop, he wanted to hire me. We talked terms. I talked to Scott, who wanted me to stay a little longer, but the ghosts were too much, especially during the down times when no one was in the store but me, and a lot of alcohol. I think we parted on good terms. He sold the shop to a man who had a store on 5th Avenue, who still owns it. I'm not sure of his level of involvement as he's had the same person managing it for years.
I had worked at this place from July of 1990 to April of 1994. I had no idea I was going from one form of retail Hell and straight into another.
