Help Mr Wizard...
...time for this one to come home!
Okay, okay. This year -2019- I’m going to keep my head down and not get distracted by irresistible opportunities. I had been working on purchasing the Lostine Tavern in Wallowa County, but even that get-rich-quick-scheme (just kidding) has been put on hold.
It seems like every year I, David “Tooter Turtle” Bowles get lured into one boondoggle or another. A few years ago I got involved with a glass manufacturer with a breakthrough process for making glass using a microwave technology. The CEO turned out to be completely looney; it didn’t go anywhere. There was a foray into opening a scientific laboratory to test cannabis products, but the funders were some carpet baggers from New York with empty pockets and the final rules issued by the OLCC made that a non-starter. There have been others. Last year’s distraction was the craziest of all. By the time I had extracted myself I knew just what it was like for the folks stuck in Theranos, as featured in “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.”
My Elizabeth Holmes was our very own one-time County Commissioner for this district, Desari Strader. In hindsight, it was a most remarkable experience. Everybody was going to be rich! Tens and tens of millions would be pouring in… in two weeks. Always two weeks. It took a week to get in, two months to get out, another month or so to be extract repayment of several thousand dollars in expenses. And that paycheck? Forget about it! As Janet says every time I get into one of these exercises, “Until you get a paycheck, it’s just another hobby.” Everybody Des hired would work for free for a while -1, 2, 3, 4 months - and then, when they couldn’t work for free any more - or they figured out 2+2 really didn't add up to 7.5 Gw, they were “disappeared,” having then been found to be grossly inadequate for the job. There was a long string of exits. I don’t know of anybody who left with more than they came with. Just a bunch of chumps who, as Des liked to say, “don’t know how the game is played.” Yep! Got me there!
This year I’m just going to focus on my day job. Janet and I have a plan for taking Bethany’s Table to the next level. If things go well, I probably won’t be able to resist the Lostine Tavern in 2020. Crazy is as crazy does. Wish me luck!