NOTE:
The following story was posted with permission from The
Newport/Gem State Miner Newspaper - Fall 2002 Horizon
The
Riverbank Restaurant: Some say original owner never
left
Fall
2002
By
Andrea Evans
If
you ever hear an old 1950s song playing on the jukebox in
Ed and Jake's Sports Bar, don't bother putting your quarters
in to hear it again - it's probably not in there. The owners
say it's just Fay McEvers, the original owner of the bar
and adjoining Riverbank Restaurant in Oldtown, having his
way again, even though he died in 1985.
But
fay is seemingly hanging around his old pride and joy just
to make sure it's running alright and mainly to help out.
Ed
and Kat Gordon, the new owners of the restaurant, said Fay
has especially helped them. With the help of Ed's mother,
Wilma, the Gordons purchased the establishment this past
June 4. The Gordons are now the fourth owners of the Riverbank.
But the restaurant was, and apparently still is, Fay's passion.
He built the place in 1963 and successfully owned and operated
it until 1985. After he passed away, his family decided
to sell it. Twice the place was sold and given back to the
family. Now it belongs to the Gordons, who plan to keep
it running. But without Fay's help, the Gordons said they
might not be doing as well with it as they are.
Fay
Emerges
Debbie Shultz, Fay's daughter, said her father first "came
out" when the family took the restaurant back over
in 1989. At first, she and her mother would just see things,
like she could see him in her peripheral vision. After that
things would turn up missing on occasion. Then he seemed
to only come out when things got tough, Schutz said.
"It
just became part of life," Schultz said.
Wilma,
Ed, Kat and Ed's brother Jake started noticing some strange
things happening when they started cleaning up the restaurant,
the day after they bought it. The first project they decided
to tackle was cleaning up the walk-in cooler. The floor
was warped and so covered in mold that they had to tear
out the first layer of flooring. The floor was pretty damp,
so Ed and Jake put some fans on the floor to help it dry.
But the fans kept turning off. They woudl turn them on,
but they'd keep turing back off.
"I
kept running around yelling at everybody," Ed said,
thinking it was someone there turning them off. The fan
in the rear corner was turing off the most, so Ed decided
to check the wiring. When he got to the back of the cooler,
he fell five feet through the floor into the crawl space.
Had he not gone back there and fallen through, he may have
not known that the entire floor needed to be replaced, right
down to the joists.
Shortly
after that incident, the two men were working late one night,
as they often did, and were taking a break around 10 p.m.
They kept hearing hummering sounds, like someone was working
under the building, Thinking they had a prowler outside,
the two headed under the building to investigate. Whenever
they got near the sound, it would keep moving further away.
After about 20 minutes of crawling around under the building
chasing that sound, they were at the last place they heard
the hummering. And it was there they they discovered a concrete
footing that had been washed out from rain runoff. hey two
repaired it the next day.
"I
would have never gone back there," Ed said.
Fay
must have been feeling especially helpful the day Ed was
up in the attic replacing the deep-freeze insulation. While
Ed was handing down the old insulation to Jake, his droplight
went out. It was completely dark in the attic. Ed could
feel his way back when he felt something push him down.
he sait it scared him"something fierce." He scrambled
for the attic way and Jake got the lights back on. Ed discovered
that right were he had been pushed down, there was a bare
220-volt wire that he would have walked right into.
"I
would have been electrocuted." he said. he also said
he felt like there was somebody up there with him the whole
time.
Kat
Gordon said she often times sees something out of the corner
of her eye, but when she turns to look, there's no one there.
Jumpin'
Jukebox
Fay apparently also loved music. The Gordon's said he has
made this evident by playing songs on the jukebox, and he
seems to be having fun with it. The vendor dropped it off
two days before the restaurant opened. Ed had the vendor
eliminate the random play - he didn't want it blaring out
in the middle of a game in the sports bar. At about 10 p.m.
that night he and Jake were fninshing up a few things. Ed's
back was to the jukebox and Jake was facing it.
Suddenly
Jake asked what was going on with the jukebox, and said
he saw the pages flipping. Ed turned around, saw nothing
and told Jake he was a lunatic and that he'd been working
too long. Then "In the Heat of the Night" started
playing. Thinking it was probably just Fay, Ed went to cancel
the song. When he was looking to find what page it was on
he discovered that song was not even in the jukebox.
Another
time, while discussing what the bartenders should wear,
one line of an AC/DC song blurted out of the jukebox. The
line was "back in black." It wasn't the whole
song, just that one line, then silence. So taking Fay's
"advice" the two decided the bartenders should
wear....No more of the article can be found. |
