Fifteen years. The length of my childhood. The length of my first marriage. A blip. Forever.

Year 1 had us sautéing on a three-burner camp stove in the back with an electric oven in the far corner of the dining room. Serving brunch on weekends would reveal Janet racing from the kitchen with a partially cooked frittata to finish it in the oven… hollering over her shoulder to me, “Someday you’ll know how crazy this is!”

I didn’t know.

Couldn’t afford to know. It was 2009.

The oldest of our six children was 20. Four of them were living with us at the time. The year before we had taken on lease guarantees for a business I’d intended to sell. Nobody was buying businesses in 2009 and nobody was interested in taking over our lease. We were caught “holding the bag” and had no choice but to slog on.

We had been open nine months, arduously pushing that meal assembly rope uphill. Janet said to me, “What this neighborhood really needs is a good restaurant.”

The meal assembly business was organized such that sixteen new menu items would be rolled out every month via email. Eight food carts were arranged into two four-cart pods and each cart was divided into two sections, one for each entrée. It was a relatively good idea inside a bad business model. We’d had it. Nine months of effort had drained our accounts and run up all our credit cards. Janet had stashed one card away and, with that $15,000 in borrowing capacity in hand, we installed a barbecue on the back porch to use as our grill and I became a reluctant restaurateur.

On the last day of March 2009, we emailed our final meal assembly menu. (Let us know if you remember this.) Janet had rounded up a number of recipes from a Backwoods Country Cookbook and just in time for April Fools Day we offered to let folks in to assemble the likes of “Bushy Tail with Apple Stew” and “Dove Nuggets,” which were gluten free! The “Kyle’s Flaming Turtle Soup” did not impress, but my contribution, the “Beaver with Cream Sauce – a favorite with large families,” caused quite a stir. One woman resigned as a customer because we were making fun of poor people who eat roadkill – she claimed to have eaten bear. Several called to offer us access to the raccoons that were ravaging their garbage.

And with that special flourish we lit the Dinners Ready funeral pyre and launched Bethany’s Table.

Sam and Linda gave us silverware.

I made tables from some rough-sawn beams I’d been hauling around and we bought a bunch of crappy plates and bowls for next to nothing from a caterer in Battleground.

Initially thrilled to average $250 per day, we kept raising our sights. I knew in my heart that if we could hit $1000 per weekday and $2000 on weekends that we would have more money than God. I was wrong. We now sell $5000 on weekdays and $8000 on weekends and God still has all the money.

There are few people who get to live lives as full as ours.

Fifteen years of robust relationships, new beginnings, growing families... We have even lost a few of you that were greatly cherished along the way. Several children of these families got their first job here. Most of our kids slogged their way through school while working here. My son John, as a line cook, snared Lauren the pantry chef (though who snared whom is a matter of debate.) The resulting grandchildren now grace the dining room when Lauren comes in to manage special events and catering.

Meanwhile, I live like a king, drink too much and have staff to clear my dishes. Janet’s story reads slightly differently as she is less clever and continues to have quite a few chores. There are 18 years left on our lease so there’s still time for her to learn to relax.

Truly though, we feel like Bethany’s Table is just getting started.

Over the course of years, we imagined the restaurant we would like to own. We gutted the dining room in 2014 and with some not-so-gentle prodding from the County we installed a hood, which greatly reduced the customer-eye-burning effect from smoke pouring into the dining room. (Those were the days!)

Last year we finally built the bar and, while we were at it, gutted and rebuilt our makeshift kitchen. We feel like we have graduated from a quirky neighborhood spot to a worthy regional destination. Though that is just our opinion, there are 9,000 subscribers to this email - so I figure there are maybe 20,000 people that may or may not agree. That leaves just 2,480,000 Portland Metro Area inhabitants yet to discover Bethany’s Table. Of those 20,000 customers, approximately half of them feel like they own us.

And we wouldn’t have it any other way.