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Hate crimes... or business woes?
JOLIET, Mar 15, 2010 (Billings Gazette - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Christie Krook, owner of the Salon 212 in Joliet, poses a plausible question.
"Why would we want to close the only restaurant in town?"
There's no debate that the Homestead Cafe, a fixture on the south end of Joliet, closed its doors in late February. But the reasons given for its demise vary from hate crimes to poor management.
Either way, Krook's point likely hits home with Joliet residents and Homestead regulars. When the long-standing establishment went out of business, townspeople were left with no other eatery -- save for two bars.
Thursday morning in Joliet, ambulance and fire sirens wailed a celebratory send-off for the girls' basketball team, the Lady J-Hawks, as they headed to the state tourney in Great Falls. The festivities offered brief respite for the town of 500-plus, which is reeling from unwanted attention traced to the cafe's closing.
"It makes our town look terrible," Krook said, referring to reports that the owners of the Homestead Cafe had been driven out by townspeople. "We're a small town. It's just taken on a negative thing."
It was just three years back when Robert Manis and his wife, Bettina, purchased the Homestead Cafe. Attracted by the scenery, the small-town atmosphere and the charm of the log restaurant, the couple -- former Las Vegas performers who played Elvis and Marilyn Monroe -- felt they'd found the perfect place to relocate.
"The Homestead was our little dream, our little baby," said Bettina, a soft-spoken native of Germany who bears a striking resemblance to Marilyn. "We wanted to make a warm, cozy place. That's why our sign said, 'A Place You Can Call Home.' " But last week, the restaurant stood empty and cold, its frilly red curtains stripped from its windows. Outside, a for-sale sign posted its current status.
From the get-go, the Manises say they were met by opposition from some of the locals.
"We've met a lot of nice people in Joliet," Robert said. "However, we've always battled the church(es), the mayor and the town council."
Interviewed in their new Homestead, located at the back of the Bull and Bear in Red Lodge, Bettina pulls a letter from a file that documents their troubles. The simple message, from a former Joliet city official, protests the transfer of the gaming and liquor license to the Manises at the time they purchased the property from the previous owners. No reason for the objection is offered.
The real trouble erupted a year or so later, when Robert and Bettina sought city approval to add a casino and sports bar onto the restaurant. Located directly across the street from the Baptist church, the proposal drew letters of opposition from the pastor, parishioners and others. It took four meetings before the project was finally approved, and even still, Robert said, obstacles were put in their path.
Barry Rowlison, owner of Rowli's Food Farm in Joliet, remembers the outcry. But Rowlison, who describes Bettina and Robert as "the nicest people," said that in the end the public's concerns were unfounded.
"The parking and beer cans all over, that just didn't happen," he said. "And Robert and Bettina did a heck of a job putting that (casino) in."
Strife over the casino eased with time and, according to Bettina, some of the locals even stopped in to apologize. But their troubles resurfaced in December of last year, about the same time the couple opened the Red Lodge Homestead. That's when, they say, they started receiving nasty notes with slanderous comments, most of them unsigned. Employees, too, were harassed, they said. At least one received a threatening phone call and another had a tire punctured outside the restaurant.
Then, on a Sunday morning in mid-February, Bettina's adoptive mother, Joy Peel, reported a gruesome discovery. As Peel tells it, the Manises were in Red Lodge and she was managing the Joliet restaurant when a customer took her aside and told her there was something she should see out front. She described the scene as a decapitated animal -- she's not sure what -- hanging on a hook, with a note underneath. The message cited a Bible verse and the words "we won."
Peel said the unknown man, who was driving a gray and burgundy two-tone Ford pickup, tossed the animal in the bed of the pickup and said he would take it to a trustworthy police officer he knew in Roberts. The animal has not been seen since.
A week to the day after the first incident, Peel called the sheriff again, this time to report a dead pheasant that was found -- still warm and limp, with its innards carved out --in an employee's vehicle. That was the tipping point for Robert and Bettina.
"It's like a wound," Bettina said. "You can hurt so many times and then you have to stop."
"We had planned to close after the summer," added Bob. "With the economy, the smoking ban, employees (problems), the hate mail and the slander and threats, after a while you say, 'I just can't take that anymore.' " The Manises perceive their troubles as intolerance that more recently evolved into a personal vendetta. Not surprisingly, at least several Joliet residents deny any prejudice against the flamboyant couple.
Krook, a Joliet native who worked in the cafe during high school, points out that Pam and the late Vinny Knapp, the previous owners, came from out of state, too.
"They did just fine," she said.
There are some in Joliet who trace the business' troubles to marginal food and poor service. Krook tells of waiting nearly an hour for burgers. Rowlison had good things to say about the Manises, commending them for some of the ideas they introduced at the cafe, but he, too, said the service was particularly slow.
"As a result, are you going to go back to that restaurant?" he asked. "You'd probably think twice."
Roger Green, who lived next door to the Homestead and ate there two or three times a month, offered a different opinion. "As far as I'm concerned, they had delicious food," he said. "And the service was fine."
According to Bettina, the Homestead Cafe was more popular with out-of-towners than the Joliet crowd. As she described the events leading up to its closure, she shows notes and cards of support from residents of Billings, the area and Joliet, too.
Last week, Red Lodge residents John and Edna Collins greeted Bettina with smiles and hugs when they stopped by the new Homestead Cafe. Longtime regulars of the Joliet restaurant, the Collinses were excited to have the new option closer to home.
"But I hate to see anyone put their business up for sale because of something like this," John said. "I can't see a reason in the world why this should happen. The churches should be totally against something like this."
Judie Swan, Joliet's mayor of three months, believes the situation has been blown out of proportion. She understands the Baptist church's original concerns over the proximity of the casino.
"The church was right across the street and they were concerned with liability," she said. And she doesn't believe the Manises were the targets of hate or bigotry. Nor does she think the couple was treated unfairly by the town's chief of police, who also serves as pastor of the Baptist church.
"I just don't think there's any credence to it," she said.
Carbon County Sheriff Tom Rieger seems to be scratching his head over the incidents reported to him.
"We went down twice to handle their calls," he said. "The first one (decapitated animal), the evidence was gone. It's hearsay because we never saw it."
Peel criticized law enforcement for a lack of follow-up, saying they could have at least checked for foot or tire prints. They never even stepped outside to look closer, she said.
She also criticized how local police handled the investigation into two fires, which ignited on separate days in separate flower pots, outside the Homestead Cafe in the summer of 2008. Even Robert speculated that the first fire was the result of a carelessly tossed cigarette. But when he saw it burning from underneath, and when a second pot caught fire within days, he was convinced otherwise.
"Then we knew it was intentionally done," he said.
Rieger said they've tried to contact the witness who found the dead pheasant, but so far the sheriff's department is batting zero, despite attempts by phone and door-to-door visit. The Manises explain that the witness, an employee of theirs, is ill with pneumonia and presumably in the hospital.
"There's something going on," Rieger said. "But at this point, we don't have anything pointing to anybody. We have nothing. Nothing adds up."
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