Great writing! The melancholy bittersweet comes though beautifully - sure you're not Russian?

Gotta wonder if you'd taken the capo up on his 'ask' for the place to become a clubhouse. If nothing else, your employees might have been more circumspect.

Either way, not being there right now is probably a feature. To quote my favorite saying from the old Unix "fortune" program: "In an accident, presence of mind is good - but absence of body is better."