Part 29: The Beginning Of The End

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.” – FDR

Things were changing in Mukilteo.  When Linda and I opened our restaurant we were the 6^th restaurant in town.  We filled the niche of being the primary family-oriented restaurant.  By now, six years later, there were 16 restaurants in Mukilteo and three of them were fast-food restaurants that cut into our family business.  At the same time, Reagan cancelled the defense contract with Honeywell which designed super-secret parts for atomic submarines, which resulted in the entire plant closing and 800 people being unemployed.  And Intermec Industries, another major business in the area, moved to a new location, and Boeing cut their employee lunch breaks back to 27 minutes or some ridiculous number which eliminated another major source of lunch business.  That was capped off by Kelly getting hired to a new job in Bellingham, Washington, and Bob deciding that he wanted to be an auto mechanic.  And I was getting a bit tired myself.  So, I put the restaurant up for sale.

My good friend, Murray, called one day to ask me if I would consider moving to Corvallis, Oregon and work with him as the Assistant Director of University Foodservices.  Seemed like a timely offer.  So, Linda and I traveled to Corvallis to visit the school district and the University.   We liked what we saw and decided the timing was right.  We received and accepted an offer to buy our little Irish Café and we prepared to close the restaurant, sell our house, and move to Corvallis.  Each of those changes were a bit stressful, but both Linda and I felt a sense of relief that we would no longer have the financial stress of owning a small, under-capitalized business.  And we hoped that the schools in Corvallis would be better than the schools our children were attending. 

We rented our house to the daughter of a friend until the house sold, collected the earnest money check from the restaurant buyer, packed up our goods and moved to a rental house until we could afford to buy a house in Corvallis.  We had no sooner moved to Corvallis when I was informed by the realtor that the buyer of our restaurant had backed out of the purchase agreement.  Now it was time to hang onto the knot at the end of the rope.