KILA – If there was ever a perfect pairing between a sound and a place, it is Keith Bassett’s laughter inside the Cottage Inn. It is the kind of laugh that makes people feel confident they’ve arrived at the right place, no matter what their destination was to begin with. It is the cheerful sound of an optimist.
Even on a recent day inside the Cottage Inn, surrounded by piles of his belongings ready to be auctioned off, Bassett’s laugh echoed through his English pub. Even after silent pauses for moments of solemn reflection, the laughter would erupt again. And even when confronted with the question of what comes next, now that he and his wife are losing both their business and their home, Bassett wanted to show a poem he had written to a visitor. The poem, he promised, was funny. He needed to laugh. The quiet Cottage needed it too.
“I went weeks with sleeping only an hour or two every night because of the stress,” Bassett said. “But I’ve learned equanimity and wisdom from this. In the end, we’re proud of what we did here.”
Keith and Cathryn Bassett closed the doors to their bar and restaurant in January, though they reopened for one final celebration on St. Patrick’s Day, which was the day the Cottage Inn first opened six years ago. On May 11, the Cottage and the Bassetts’ home, located nearby, will both be foreclosed upon. Then on May 18, everything inside the Cottage – from kitchen equipment to furniture to trinkets – will be sold at an auction, followed by an auction for their home’s possessions on May 19.
The foreclosure will be the official end to a place that has served as an essential gathering spot for Kila residents and passersby alike. For six years, if you wanted to find the pulse of the Kila community, to feel its heartbeat, you went to the Cottage Inn. Live music was scheduled most nights, with a local Irish jam band serving as the de facto house band.
“It was more than a restaurant – it was a community center,” said Barbara Calm, who owns a veterinary clinic in Kila and plays in the Irish band. “It was really important to a lot of people.”
“It was pretty much guaranteed you would always feel good when you went to the Cottage,” she added. “The loss that I feel for that place is very strong. I’m pretty sad.”
Helen Pilling, a 30-year Kila resident who also played music regularly at the Cottage, hopes the community turns out for the auction to show their support and put a proper end to “a wonderful, wonderful chapter in Kila.” Pilling says, in an area where “we all live in the hills,” the Cottage helped bring people of all ages and backgrounds together from the countryside.
“At the Cottage, it was fun to meet people in their 30s who are building homes in the hills just like we were 20-some years ago,” Pilling said. “We wouldn’t have ever met them otherwise. Without a community center, that changes.”
 |
|
A sign greets patrons using the Rails to Trails pedestrian path which runs behind the Cottage Inn in Kila. |
As the foreclosures near, the Bassetts remain hopeful the Cottage’s new owner will continue running the business as it is now. They are eternal optimists. They hope the Kila community, despite how dire the current situation seems, will not lose its cultural centerpiece after all, that the right owner might come along. But ultimately they know, once the foreclosure occurs, it’s out of their hands.
The Bassetts said they would be eager to help the new owner in any way they can to keep the Cottage’s spirit alive.
“We’d support it with all our hearts,” Keith said.
When the Bassetts purchased the Cottage Inn, the building had been sitting vacant for years. It previously was a bar that, dating back decades, had gone through a series of incarnations, most of them of the roughneck variety: the Cottage Bar, the New Cottage Bar, the Watering Hole, the Wild Rose and finally Fantasy, which hosted a night of dancing that was a bit more exotic than the Flathead is accustomed to. Law enforcement made sure the dancing never happened again, the Bassetts said.
The building, after years of drunken nights and poor maintenance, was condemned and sat empty for years. That was how the Bassetts found it. They were jewelers on the craft circuit at the time and had been mulling the idea of opening a gallery and coffee shop, but their vision changed once they began seriously considering purchasing the dilapidated Cottage.
“When I first saw this for sale, I dreamt of an English pub,” Cathryn said.
Keith describes it this way: “That was our dharma. That’s what we felt we were supposed to do – bring this to the community.”
The financial trouble started right away. The building was resting in a bog, so a septic tank on the property was out of the question. To even think about making the property viable, the Bassetts first had to build a well and septic system on their property across the street, which required drilling below the road to connect the Cottage to the system.
Then they had to place helical piers 39 feet underground, where they could rest on a bedrock foundation. On top of the helical piers was a jacking mechanism that raised the building anywhere from 6 to 17 inches, depending on how far that side of the building had sunk into the bog. A road was needed as well.
All of this, of course, was followed by the actual building renovations, which were extensive. The final product, many thousands of dollars later, was a quaint-looking English pub that rested safely above the swamp below.
“By the time we opened we were broke,” Cathryn said.
From there, the Bassetts tried to learn the ins and outs of running a restaurant, and they freely admit there were missteps along the way. As jewelry makers, they quickly learned that they knew more about art than restaurants. The money problems grew, even as the Cottage became a popular watering hole and dining destination.
“What we’ve done economically makes no sense,” Keith said. “Socially it makes sense.”
Six years later, they are staring down an uncertain future, both personally and professionally. Yet that Bassett optimism persists. They talk about the friends they’ve made and lessons they’ve learned. Their youngest son learned to cook there and now he is a chef in Portland at the early stages of a burgeoning culinary career. This makes them happy. And that’s what the Cottage needs before it goes completely dark, to have the Bassetts inside, happy and smiling. It needs to have that familiar laughter for just a little while longer.
“It’s been the most phenomenal adventure,” Keith said. “It was the most learning we’ve ever done. We’re not sad – we’re thinking that this was the best artwork we’ve ever done.”
For more information on the auctions, contact auctioneer Bobby Roshon at (406) 844-2159 or online at www.bobbyroshon.com.