Why did an Irishman build an Ashland inn? Building an inn is what some of us do after retirement - when all the books are read and all the coffee's cold - when Mondays are just like Saturdays and you know in your heart of hearts, you never could have been a great golfer, even if you had played all day, every day. So you gave away your clubs and then really began to miss doing something meaningful and real. Was this all retirement was meant to be? Besides, somewhere in some third story attic of my mind, lingered memories of warm fires and small country inns...of red wine and redder roses; of mellow people and quiet evenings by the fire.

But in my mind, those inns were all such bastions of peace and solitude, such wonderful places to spend a dark rainy afternoon, or even a bright sunny one. After a time the dream began to become real, more real than reality. Then the dim edges of the illusion we call reality began to blur and as the new images of an inn began to replace my fading reality, the idea of an Oregon resort in the country began to take on a life of its own.

It was about warm fires and mellow wines, of country gardens and gentle green lawns. It was a place to heal the mind, the body, and the soul; where people came back again and again: A place with that "coming home" feeling, where old friends met old friends, and together they made new ones, where new lovers got to know each other, and old ones found themselves all over again.

So fields became gardens, and lawns were planted where berry vines grew. The banker said "No". The attorney said, "You're crazy." The accountant just watched and was very quiet. The innkeeper just kept on dreaming. But then a daughter said quietly, "Dad, build it and they will come" long before someone plowed up a cornfield in Iowa. Old friends offered encouragement; a building grew out of the ground... then another...a little bigger here...a little wider there. As it began to take shape, friends brought plants for the garden and books for the library. Strangers stopped to look.

Then people started to come, a few at first, then more and more. As bread was baked and grass was mowed and fires built, lovers came and old friends returned. New friends become old friends. And the Inn Keeper got a little grayer, but felt younger all the time. So, that's how the innkeeper and his cat became innkeepers. It was a dream within a dream, one that didn't sleep, and perhaps it never will.