It wasn’t until after Brenda Heavrin, former owner of Brenda’s Double Deuce, and former barmaid at Lakeside, invested in Lakeside that it reopened.
“This is home again,” she said.
Home was a lonely place on Thursday, Sept. 16. With the Cincinnati Reds game on the TV sets above the bar, there were only a few regulars on the stools.
This isn’t your older brother’s Lakeside Inn. Valentine, the eighth owner of the place, has traced its history back to 1921, one year before the Manchester Inn opened. That makes it possibly the oldest bar/restaurant in the city.
Just a few years ago — when local companies were hiring instead of laying off — customers were lined out the door waiting for a seat in the dining room. The doors were opened Thursday, but no one was walking through.
Valentine said once sales reached $15,000 a week. He celebrates now if he breaks $4,000.
The slow sales didn’t deter the bill collectors from finding him. Valentine, 62, hated to answer the phone or the door.
To cut costs, he eliminated his health insurance. “And I’m not in good health,” he said.
During his glory years, charities reached out to him for door prizes and financial assistance. When a customer needed help paying rent, Valentine loaned the money.
Now, he said, “I’m one of them.”
He used to cash $10,000 in payroll checks every Thursday and Friday. Now, he said, unemployment checks are the only ones he cashes.
“It’s just sad,” he said. “I’m just trying to stay alive, trying to keep this dream alive.”
He can’t walk away. This is what he knows, what he loves. He has been associated with the bar business for 40 of his 62 years, washing pots and pans at chili parlors, waiting tables, tending bar and managing restaurants between here and Cincinnati. “You name it,” he said. “I can do it.”
Now he doesn’t know how much longer he can hang on. He calls this his “last hurrah,” because as he said, “If I can’t do it now, I can’t do it,”
I asked him his definition of faith: “To be certain of something you’re not sure of.”
Just then, a smile crossed his face. A customer walked in.
Contact this columnist at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.
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