Shady Pines Resort

It was fun sitting on the deck of the lodge watching Jimmy split firewood. I'd have been doing that twenty five or so years ago, but that was before. Now, I could take it easy, well, relatively easy. I still had a ton of maintenance to take care of before the first customers arrived in another month, but Jimmy would help with that as well so we'd be done in plenty of time.

Jimmy stopped after splitting a log and then stacking the quarters in the rack. He grinned at me as he stripped off the jacket he'd worn because it was still chilly in the mornings.

"Hey, Dad, sure you don't want to help? I got another sharp ax, and it'll warm you up. It's good exercise and Mom says you're getting' a little soft around the middle."

I probably was, but it was all the fault of Wendy's cooking. I mean, if you sat down to a roasted venison tenderloin with mashed potatoes and carrots, or a plate stacked high with walleye fillets breaded with corn meal and side dishes of fried potatoes and creamed peas, wouldn't you eat until you were stuffed? She always had to make a pie for dessert as well. Last night, she'd used the last of the wild blueberries she'd frozen the spring before, and the pie was just too good to pass up. She did limit me to one small slice though.

"Let me finish my coffee. Then I'll show you how you're supposed to split firewood."

Jimmy laughed as he put his gloves back on.

"Yeah, I'll bet. Last time you tried that, my stack was twice as high as yours."

"But my splits were all even, not different sizes like yours."

Jimmy grinned.

"Since when does a fire care if they're different sizes? You used to say as long as it burned, it was good enough."

"That's when I was teaching you how."

I sipped my coffee and noticed it wasn't quite hot. I'd have to hurry and finish it before it cooled off. As Jimmy sat another log on the one he was using as a platform and swung his ax, I couldn't help but smile.

I was really proud that he'd called me "Dad" since he was eight, because I wasn't really his biological father. I'd tried to be his dad in everything else, though, and it had worked. He'd grown up a good man, and his wife, Leslie, had become our daughter just as if Wendy had carried and given birth to her. Though I'd never told him, he's the one who made a lot of this happen. I'll have to remember to tell him that one of these days.

In those days, I'd never have believed I'd end up like this, sitting on the back deck of a fishing lodge on Lower Red Lake and watching the boy I'd helped raise starting to take over what we'd built.

It all started as a whim, or maybe it was some sort of way to thumb my nose at corporate America. I'm really not too sure. I know doing it was the second best thing that ever happened to me.

I was thirty-three and working in sales for a custom machine builder in Chicago. The economy was just coming out of a recession that had put many similar companies out of business. Now, things had changed for the better and we had the capacity to make the most of it.

Industries that had put off replacing their old custom machining centers were in the market again. In three years I sold thirty million dollars worth of custom machines to several suppliers to the auto industry. Between my salary and my commission, I was doing very well. I had a house, a new car, and a substantial amount in my savings and retirement accounts.

The fourth year was looking just as good. I had several prospects for new sales and was actively working on others. I loved sales because I like people. I also liked being mostly my own boss. In sales, as long as you're bringing in business, the boss leaves you alone, or so I thought until Steve retired and the company hired Howard.

Howard knew his finances, but he knew absolutely nothing about dealing with customers and what they're willing to pay for. I made proposal after proposal for bids to customers for equipment, and he always wanted them changed.

It wasn't just his changes that irked me. It was how he suggested, or in reality, mandated them. Howard had evidently taken a class at some time about dealing with employees where he was taught how to be critical while making the employee feel that he or she had done a great job. It was sickening to hear him after the first time because I knew his praise was fake.

"Gary, excellent work on this bid like always. I think a few changes might make it even better. I see you've included a two-year warranty. I have no doubt our equipment will last that long without breaking, but what if it does go wrong? Our entire profit on the job will be eaten up to get the equipment back and running again. If we only guarantee it for a year, the component suppliers will eat almost all the costs for any replacements and our profit will stay healthy.

"I really like your payment terms too. The industry standard, according to my information, is just what you've stated -- thirty percent on receipt of order, thirty percent upon delivery, and forty percent upon installation and checkout. I'm sure the customer will be happy with that...but let's look at something else.

"What if we quote thirty percent on receipt of order, twenty percent on approval of drawings, forty percent upon delivery and the last ten after installation and checkout? The first thirty percent will pay for materials, like always, and the twenty percent will lower our borrowing costs for construction. It always takes a month or so to get the equipment installed and running after it's delivered, so if we get forty percent on delivery, we'll have funding to invest for a whole month before we'd have the same funding in your proposal. Doesn't that make sense?"

It did make sense if you wanted to shaft your customer. It didn't make any sense when I was competing against other machine builders who offered the same terms and warranty I'd proposed. After I lost two orders because of Howard's changes, I started thinking about changing jobs.

It was becoming difficult to work with customers I'd had for years because they knew full well what I was trying to do and I was losing sales. It was also getting harder and harder to listen to Howard's "you did great, but I think we can do better" speeches.

It was after losing the fourth order I decided I'd had enough for a while. I'd called the buyer for a company I was pretty sure was ready to make a decision. I only got to ask him if there was any more information he needed before he told me I'd lost the order.

"I really wanted to buy from your company again Gary, and one of your competitors was even a little higher in price, but your payment terms don't fall within our company guidelines, and the company that got the order offered me the two year warranty at no cost."

Getting away for a while seemed to be a better way to blow off some steam than telling Howard he didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. I'd done a lot of fishing before I got caught up in the corporate world and had enjoyed it, so I started calling fishing resorts. I found a two week opening at Shady Pines Resort on Lower Red Lake in north central Minnesota.

That afternoon I sent Howard an email telling him I was taking the next two weeks off. He didn't reply, so I figured he was OK with it.

Lower Red Lake was one of the few lakes that hadn't been overrun by summer homes because it wasn't easy to get to. It was almost two hundred miles from Duluth and those two hundred miles were all two-lane highway. After Quiring, the road was a county highway. The actual road to the resort, if you could even call it a road, was just gravel that ran almost a mile back through the tall pines and birch trees.

The resort itself was in a nice spot on the lake, though it seemed a little run-down. I figured out why when I registered. Jim Birch was about sixty, I figured, and he walked with a limp. Arthritis, he said, and it looked like just walking from the desk to my cabin caused him a lot of pain.

The first week was great. I slept in until I felt like waking up. The cabins were all housekeeping cabins, meaning I had to fix my own meals, but that was great too. The only schedule I had to follow was my own.

I fished every day, kept a couple to eat, and released the rest. Of an evening, I'd sit on the small porch that faced the lake, sip my scotch, and listen to the loons call. About ten, I'd read for a while and then turn in.

I've always been what you might call a "busy" person in that I need to be doing something most of the time. As a result, by the start of the second week, I hardly thought about Howard anymore, but I was getting bored. I also missed talking to people. There were four other families in the resort, but they spent their days on the water or going into town.

On Tuesday morning, I was walking up to the lodge for a soda and saw Jim trying to pick up the trashcan at the cabin next to mine. He did this every morning -- put them on the wagon he pulled with his lawn tractor, hauled them up to the lodge and then trucked them to a dump. This one was heavier than most, and he was having trouble. I walked over and asked if he'd like some help. When he said he would, I put the can on the wagon and then asked if he'd like help with the rest.

That morning I helped Jim with all the trashcans, loaded them into his pickup for him, and then rode with him to the dump. On the way there, I asked him if it wasn't hard running a resort by himself.

He smiled.

"Didn't used to be, but this hip hurts like a bitch most of the time now. Martha cleans the cabins on Saturday, so I don't have to do that, but I still have to wash out the boats every Saturday morning and keep the grass mowed. I used to have deer and bear hunters until the season closed, but Martha and I, we're getting to old to do much once it gets cold. About October, I'll start closing up the cabins for the winter."

I said it must be a great life -- living on the lake and doing whatever he felt like.

He smiled.

"Wasn't anything better when we started. The summers were great -- people came and had fun, and Martha and I had fun right along with 'em. Fall was the hunters. Martha liked that time 'cause all the men flirted with her. Winters, it was just the two of us. We'd get snowed in but we didn't care. I'd have a deer and a moose in the freezer by then, so we had plenty to eat. Once the lake froze over, it was faster to take the snowmobile over the lake to town anyway."

We dumped the cans, or rather, I dumped the cans at the dump while Jim watched, and then started back to the lodge. On the way, he asked me a couple questions that made me think.

"You really like it up here?"

"Sure. What's not to like. The lake is beautiful, the fishing is great, and there's a chipmunk that sits on my porch every morning. He seems to like peanuts."

He laughed.

"That'd be Rufus. That's what Martha calls him anyway. She started feeding him a couple of years ago when she cleaned that cabin. He'll climb up your leg for a peanut if you let him. I figured a hawk woulda got him by now, but he's pretty sharp for a chipmunk. Stays under that porch until somebody walks out on it. You think you'd like to live up here year 'round?"

"It'd have to be better than what I'm going back to."

"Oh, what's that?"

"I'm in sales. I like sales and I like people, but my new boss is an ass."

"Yeah, I know the type. Used to work for one of 'em. That's why we bought Shady Pines. It was either that or I was gonna put my boot up his ass."

He chuckled.

"I figured I'd be out of a job either way, and I didn't much want to get my boots dirty, so Shady Pines won. Never been sorry. Maybe you'll find something you like better than sales, like I did with Shady Pines."

Jim stopped the truck in front of the lodge.

"We're thinking of selling this place and moving to town. You say you like people, and you know how to sell things so you could sell vacations at Shady Pines. You be interested in buying it from us?"

"I don't know. I don't know anything about running a resort."

"It's just like taking care of your house at home, mostly. There's seven cabins, but there's not much that goes wrong with 'em. You keep some cold beer and sodas in the lodge, keep the cabins and boats clean, and the people will keep coming back. We have the second generation coming now."

I thought about it for about ten seconds. I could tell Howard to kiss my ass, figuratively speaking, and I could be my own boss. I'd be living every day like I had for the past week and I knew I'd love that. I realized there was a lot of work to be done, but I'd have seven days a week to do it.

"How much?"

Jim thought for a minute.

"We talked to a realtor about that. There's quite a bit of work that really needs to be done and she said it probably wouldn't sell unless most of it was. She suggested seven fifty if I got everything fixed. I did an estimate and came up with about a hundred for materials, furniture and drive improvements if I did everything, a little over two if I had it done. I'm just not up to that much work anymore. What would you say to five hundred thousand?"

"For everything?"

"Yep. You'd get the fifty-three acres, lodge, cabins, boats and motors, bait house, fish house, ice house, all the equipment, everything except my pickup. I gotta keep my pickup. I don't need to know right now. You think about it."

That night, I sat on my little porch and did some figuring. Five hundred thousand for the resort and another hundred for repairs was a lot of money, but I could sell my house in Chicago for probably a couple hundred of that. If I borrowed the rest, I'd have interest to pay, but leaving my investments in place would cover part of that. I'd also have income from the resort. I didn't know how much, but Jim's pickup was brand new. He must have been doing pretty well to afford that.

The longer I thought, the more I thought this was something I really wanted to try. I was still young enough to recover if I failed, and I was old enough I had no dreams about the corporate world getting much better. I'd been reading about "down-sizing" and "flattening" organization structures for years. Both meant I'd be working more for the same salary.

The next morning I met Jim as he was collecting trash cans.

"Jim, I'm interested in buying the resort. I do need to know what your income is though."

"Well, last year, I paid taxes on a little over a hundred and fifty thousand."

I figured being single, I'd net between ninety and a hundred thousand from the resort. That would pay the principal and interest and leave me enough money to live on without touching my savings. That made up my mind.

It'll take me a while to get everything set up."

He smiled.

"I hadn't really made up my mind to sell, but I think you'd be one to carry on what we started. I'll give the realtor a call and she'll come out and witness everything. You'll have to put down something to hold it until you can come up with the money, I imagine."

I put my house on the market that Friday, and two weeks later it sold. After paying the realtor, I netted two twenty from the house. It took another two weeks to close on it and then another two to close on Shady Pines. The day after I signed the note for Shady Pines, I hired a mover to put all my furniture and other stuff in storage and cleaned out my desk at work.

I don't think Howard really read my resignation letter. He just looked up at me, smiled and said he was certain I'd thought carefully about everything and was making the right decision but maybe there was a better way. I walked out of his office as he was starting to explain how he could help me bring in more sales with a higher profit margin..

The rest of the summer, I learned how to run a resort. I helped Martha clean the cabins, helped Jim clean boats, take care of the lawn, and work in the bait house. In between, I took an inventory of things that needed to be done. I also met with Jim's bait supplier and got all the utilities switched over to my name. On the first of October, we closed up all the cabins and Jim and Martha moved into town.

I spent that first winter fixing up the lodge. It wasn't in bad shape, really, but it needed new carpet in the lounge area, and I spent several hours cleaning the accumulation of soot from the big fireplace. The bar got a new top and then I repainted the walls and ceiling. I spent New Year's eave sitting on the new sofa in front of the fire and drinking a scotch.

Between the time it warmed up the next spring and the date of the first reservations, I barely had time to sleep and eat. I painted the inside of each cabin, fixed a couple of the roofs, and cleaned all the wood stoves and chimneys. The road to the lodge got a new topping of gravel. The place wasn't yet what I wanted, but it would do, and I'd keep working through the summer. Two weeks before the first guests arrived, I hired Christy, a college student, to take care of cleaning the cabins and the lounge in the lodge.

The first guests were repeats and were impressed by what I'd done. As they left, half of them made reservations for the following summer, and they all said they'd tell their friends about how Shady Pines had changed. I was happy and the bank was happy.

The first week in July was when I met Jimmy and his mother Wendy. Wendy was a pretty blonde and seemed very proud of her seven year old son. I also met Wendy's husband, Carl. He didn't seem happy to be there. He didn't seem very happy with Wendy or Jimmy either. Carl didn't fish and didn't join Wendy or Jimmy when they went swimming on the little beach by the docks. As far as I could tell he stayed in their cabin, and judging by the number of beer cans in their trash, spent a lot of that time bending his elbow.

I was dipping minnows for another guest one afternoon when Jimmy walked into the bait house. He didn't say anything, but he watched everything I did. When the customer left, he asked what the little fish were for.

"Well, big fish eat little fish. That man will put the minnow on his hook and a big fish will come along and try to eat it. Then the man might catch the big fish."

"He got a lot of them. Will he catch a whole bunch of big fish?"

I laughed.

"He's hoping he will, but probably not. Fish are hard to catch sometimes. You like fishing?"

Jimmy shook his head.

"I don't know cause I never went. Mom say's Carl's sick and he can't take me. She doesn't know how to fish so she can't take me either."

I figured Carl was probably either drunk or had a hangover, and I thought it a little strange that Jimmy called Wendy's husband Carl, but all people raise their kids differently. I did feel sorry for Jimmy, though. Some of the times I remember best from my childhood are the times I spent fishing with my dad or by myself in the pond in the park where I grew up. It wasn't my place to interfere, but I didn't have much to do that afternoon.

"Tell you what, uh...what's your name?"

"Jimmy"

"Tell you what, Jimmy, you go ask your mom if you can go fishing with me. If she says yes, I show you how."

He ran off then. I closed up the bait house and went to finish mowing the lawn by the lodge. About fifteen minutes later, Jimmy came running up to the lodge. I shut off the mower when he started getting close.

He was out of breath from running, but he still panted out, "Mom say's it OK if you take me fishing. When can we go?"

I didn't know Jimmy well enough to know if he'd lie about that or not. I thought it best to hear it from his mother first hand. I had to finish the yard as well, and thought about telling Jimmy we'd go the next morning. One look at his face changed my mind.

"Jimmy, let's go ask your mom if she wants to go too, OK?"

I walked back down to their cabin. Jimmy ran, and by the time I got there, Wendy was standing by the road with Jimmy. I walked up and smiled.