7-2-09 Outside Class Experience

At 9:49am on Sunday June 28th, I was woken up by my Mom texting and calling me. She wanted to let me know that Kep's Place in Washington was burning to the ground. Why do I care you might ask? My parents bought the building for Kep's in 2002. They gutted and remodeled the inside, my step father doing most of the work himself. The building originally was built as a racket ball facility, so in the basement were 4 racket ball courts, complete with flooring. My parents (along with many trips to Dr Delgado the chiropractor) took up the floor in 2 of the courts and refinished it. That floor became the dance floor, wainscotting and the top of the bar.
My contribution to the remodeling was nominal compared to theirs, but on the weekends you could find me there sanding and varnishing right along with them. We joked that that business was similar to the Field of Dreams movie. All of us would walk around repeating "If you build it, they will come."
My step father passed away suddenly on January 28, 2007. At the time we not only had the bar, but also a water distribution company in the basement of Kep's. He had been in bottleing water and left about 11:30 to take a quick nap before a meeting with the local liquor commission. He never made it to the meeting. My Mom who was in California with her terminally ill brother called and my son and I headed to the house. It was not me who found him, thank God.
Anyway, the reason I told the story about my step father is because not only did he spend so very much of his time in the remodel process, you could find him walking around Kep's at any time of the day looking around, or visiting with customers and that is the last place anyone saw him alive.
My mom sold it in January of 2008 and then bought a bar in Metamora. She said one of the reasons she needed to sell it was because it was too difficult to walk in there and not see him.
It is very bittersweet for me to hear that it is gone, burnt to the ground. The memories I have are both good and bad, like any you would have of a place that consumed 6 years of your life. As soon as I got the call I woke my daughter up and she drove over. She took pictures and sent them to me. It's devistating, the damage, nothing left but some of the outside walls. I heard that some of the employees are there rallying around the building. We did the same thing the day we found my step father, except now there is no bar to sit at and wonder how we were going to continue.