30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Thirty Five: The Juice Bar

Jay's interest in making raw juices continued, and apparently he had made an impression with Tony, the owner of Sundance Natural Foods where he worked. Tony owned the small strip mall where the grocery was located in southeast Eugene, and the unit immediately next door to the market was coming vacant soon. Jay pitched him on the idea of opening a "juice bar" where market patrons could order organic carrot, wheatgrass, apple or other juice blends and sit at tables to enjoy them while eating sandwiches and other small snacks.

Jay was casting about for a name for the establishment, and decided to bound it off the Schoolhouse crew. I suggested "Fountian of Jouth", which appealed to him and everyone else, as it gave the impression that fresh, raw juices were healthy and promoted youthful vigor. After consulting with Tony, the name got corrected to "Fountain of Juice", which was only partially disappointing to me, but understandable, as the average consumer isn't nearly as cerebral as me, and the name was likely to go over their heads.

Once the location was found, the name decided upon and all that, it was time to find a construction crew to actually build the juice bar. Woodley, Paul, and I jumped in with the understanding that Jay would be paying us something for our labors. Woodley quickly lined up some lumber and hardwoods to build the actual bar itself, and Paul began getting quotes on cedar lumber to build some eating booths. I was to be the head electrician and plumber on the job.

The day that the lease expired on the retail space beside the store, Tony has some of his more energetic employees removed the previous tennants equipment, so when we three builders came to the store, there were pinball machines all along the exterior walls and in the parking lot. Tony had never been very happy with the tenants, they were late with rent, catered to teenage boys from the nearby high school, who were a behavior problem, and the noise of the pinball machines came though the walls and drove everyone who worked in the store nuts. That the tenants hadn't paid their rent in a month or two, and their failure to negotiate a new contract, made eviction on the spot attractive to Tony.

Woodley and Paul and I sized up the space, made drawings with accurate measurements, scouted the walls to determine where the pass-through area to the store would be cut, and prepared for the job. Since we were trying to sp[end as little of Jay's money as possible, we reused as much of the existing facilities as possible. At one time, this had been a barber shop, and the far wall was already plumbed for three sinks. Health regulation required a large restaurant-style stainless steel sink, and a separate hand-washing sink. The existing plumbing meant that we didn't have to apply for a plumbing permit to install the new fixtures.

In order to make the lighting in the storefront more pleasing, new wiring was needed, but we didn't want to apply for a permit for that, either. One weekend, I put up all the new wiring required to put hanging fixtures over the bar and each booth, and before the end of Sunday, got back up on the ladder, and painted all of the conduit and junction boxes to match the ceiling. When asked by the inspector, we told him that we were going to reuse all that "existing" wiring that the previous tenants left behind. It worked.

Since I was spending so much time in the city working on the juice bar, I decided to move my Housetruck into town and stay there until the job was finished. It just made sense to use my portable house to save having to drive back and forth every day. For a while I parked on side streets around the neighborhood, but since my truck was large, it kind of stuck out like a sore thumb. I can remember waking up one morning and opening the living room drapes just as a school bus doing it's morning rounds drove by. The driver looked startled and not at all happy. After breakfast, I drove the truck to the job and parked it in the side of the lot. Woodley come in shortly afterwards and said that there were cops driving around the neighborhood, as they had received a complaint from someone about vagrants on the street. Hmmm.

It was time to arrange for more permanent parking from the truck. I tried to back into the rear yard of the house Jay was renting (by now he was spending a lot of time in town too), but quickly lost traction and sank almost to the axle. Attempting to use a jack to raise the truck resulted in several chunks of 2x4 lumber and a partial sheet of plywood disappearing into the muddy ground. Once I got the truck back on solid ground, I tried pulling into the same area frontward, with the same results, my front bumper was nearly touching the ground. Woodley brought his step van and using a stout chain, we pulled the truck out backwards. Woodley didn't stop once I was back on the dry ground and continued pulling. I ended up scraping the roof eaves of the neighbor's house, putting a big scrape in the sheet metal of the van body on my truck.

After that, I simply left the Housetruck parked in the lot of the health food store. Tony didn't mind, and although it made it a bit tight for customers to pull in and out of the parking spaces in front fo the store, only one old guy in a VW microbus backed into the trcuk, doing no damage.

While nobody around the store cared about the truck being parked there, the city code comliance officer was beside himself with fear. Every day, he would stop by the storefront and read us the riot act about not allowing a vehicle to be used for habitation. Every time he showed up, no matter who he happend to be complaining at, he got the same reply: the Housetruck wasn't a dwelling, it was a job shack, it was where we stored our tools and materials after hours. This went on for a week or more, and finally, he told us to please put cardboard in the "job shack" windows so that the uptight neighbors couldn't see any light from inside and so he wouldn't get any more complaints. We told him "sure thing", but never did anything of the sort. I guess the neighbors must have gotten over it at some point and so did he.