continued… The Great American Dream!

So here we are in Fargo, 21 years old, middle of December freezing cold … My brother Alex had dropped Geoff and I off and left for the three hour drive back to Winnipeg. We were in the USA. No car barley any money, I do recall having a Sears card. We went to a hotel, grabbed a telephone book and started flipping through the used car lot telephone numbers. We found this dealership in Moorhead. The guy was absolutely fantastic, I told him we have no money, no credit but need a used car, I also told him we cant even drive to test drive cars because we don’t have a car to get there. So what does the salesman do… he brings a light blue Chevy Cavalier to our hotel. This was perfect for us.  drove him back to Moorhead and filled out paper work. Now we had a car. Next thing was to find an apartment. We  couldn’t spend another night at a hotel. We asked a Realtor that we  to give us a referral for a apartment. Sure enough there were brand new apartments being built right on 35 Th st. We went to the rental office, and got all the paper work done. They wanted a month of rent up front, I explained that we were opening a Greek and Italian restaurant and every penny we had was going into it. We explained that we would pay the extra month as soon as we get up and running. They agreed. So now we had a car and an apartment. Can you believe we couldn’t even afford furniture? Remember I said earlier that I had a Sears card? We went to Sears and bought blow up mattress … Gosh, we could blow that thing up at night and by morning it would be flat as a pancake! But it too served us well. When Geoff had come to Fargo the first time with my father they had found a fantastic location for our restaurant on 13th ave. It was an old closed down Wendy’s, the plan was to open get some good exposure and expand… We went to the realtor and asked to look at the  building. We walked through mocking up where tables and chairs would go, where we would put the server station and the bar. It was so exciting, the dreams were flying. We told the agent we want to sign a lease but not only a lease, we want to do a lease to purchase, he said OK. lets sit down to figure this out, in other words put in an offer. We looked at him and laughed. Then we said we have no money but we know  our food is very good and people will go crazy over it. What we have planned will work. We told him we will have a busy restaurant here in Fargo but we need a chance to get opened. He said.. Oh boy… I must talked to the owner. We agreed to meet him, We went to the meeting bright and early. The owner took one look at us and said are you crazy? Do you think I will just let you take my building with out money or credit? We had to do  it this way because we  couldn’t go to a bank for a commercial loan yet. So Geoff and I put our heads down and left the meeting. I tossed and turned that whole night, couldn’t take no for an answer… How will we make this happen? Not only that.. we also had to deal with immigration and getting investor status, we had do find a contractor that would transform an old Wendy’s building into a up scale dining room. tbc….We