Triangle Lake gathers over loss.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

TRIANGLE LAKE - At first there was the fear and the heat and the terrible orange glow that Cody Ott and Melody Barkley encountered when their Lakeview Grocery mom-and-pop store burned early Sunday.

Later came the realization that the business, the hope, the dream that the young couple had worked on pretty much dawn to dusk - seven days a week - for almost a year was gone.

"At first it kind of took our heart out of it," Ott said.

But before Sunday was through, the Triangle Lake School Booster Club passed a jar at its annual auction and collected $1,300 for the couple. A regular customer stopped by with a $500 check for them to buy whatever they need.

Now Ott and Barkley say they can't help but rebuild.

"If it were up to the community, they would come down with a hammer right now and rebuild it," Ott said.

The people of the Lake Creek Valley - a 45-minute drive on Highway 36 west of Eugene - immediately knew what they lost in the early morning flames.

The Lakeview Grocery is where previous owner Sheila Chizek-Bristow went for 38 years to work each day after she drove the Triangle Lake school bus.

The store is modest in its scope compared with the modern breed of super-mini-snack-gas-and-fast-food marts.

It had a shake roof, wooden grocery shelves and a bulletin board out front where the commerce of rural life was conducted on thumb-tacked scraps: A beautiful home on 1.25 acres, a 1978 8 1/2 -foot truck camper, a Bunko party at the Grange, and rabbits for sale - $5 each.

It's where retired trucking company owner Jake Jobe has gone to buy his daily can of Milwaukee, sit on the stoop and watch the traffic on lake and highway.

It's where retired carpenter Richard Hanson has stopped each day for odds and ends and always the beef jerky wafer that his golden retriever/husky dog, Molly, expects.

A revolving crowd held down the outdoor picnic table in front of the store for decades.

"You'd open a beer, sit down at the table and see who shows up," Hanson said.

"You'd see anybody you might not have seen for weeks or months."

High school seniors, exercising their new-found off-campus privileges, flocked at noon for corn dogs and burritos and a fist full of bubble gum for their less-fortunate underclassmen.

In the summer time, kids flippity-flopped across the highway in dripping swimsuits to buy their candy.

Elderly residents, who've given up the long drive to town, relied on the Lakeview Grocery for everything.

Through her long tenure, Chizek-Bristow had listened meticulously to her customers and saw that she always had what they needed.

She worked until she got sick and then signed the store's closing papers from her hospital bed just before she died, Ott said.

Since then, Ott and Barkley fell right into Bristow's footsteps, Hanson said.

"We had just a few of everything. We didn't have a ton of anything, but more than likely we had one," Ott said.

Ott stocked the shelves after working his day shift as lumber grader at the Seneca Sawmill in Eugene.

Barkley ran the store while caring for the couple's 5- and 13-year-old daughters.

The family kept brutal hours: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays and Saturday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.

They had been holding out for the day when Ott could quit his day job and help run the store.

The couple decided that because their children spent so much time there they needed to make a better place for them to play.

"We realized this is home now. Make it home. Make it comfortable for the girls," Barkley said. "This is home with a big refrigerator and a lot of company."

They remodeled a cedar cabin tipped into the hillside next to the grocery as a place their girls could rest and play.

Then on Saturday, Ott and Barkley closed up the store as usual about 8 p.m. Barkley went back about 10:30 p.m. to fetch hamburger buns and rocky road ice cream, the couple said. All was quiet then, Barkley said.

A friend called sometime after midnight to say the store was on fire. By the time they reached the scene, it was engulfed.

Three fire engines and two water tenders fought the fire, which was licking up into the trees on the hillside behind the store.

Little is left now. The iron legs of the picnic table. A few jars of Jiffy Peanut Butter on a lower shelf. A ceramic bowl that Barkley bought at the Triangle Lake Fair.

The store was insured and the agent tromped through the ashes Monday to make his estimate.

The old building's assessed value is little more than $34,000, according to county records.

But that doesn't count the walk-in cooler, the cold and hot cases and the kitchen equipment - or the replacement cost, which could be several times the assessed amount. Last July, Ott paid $180,000 for the building and land.

Deputy State Fire Marshal Kristina Deschaine continued her search for the fire's cause into a second day on Monday.

Witnesses told her it started on the picnic table, "which was a strange place to have a fire," she said.

Any number of things could have started the blaze, Hanson said.

But the thing to do now is to help Ott and Barkley get back on their feet, he said. He wrote the couple a check for $500.

"They're so sweet and they worked so hard. Bad things shouldn't happen to such good people," he said.

Besides, Hanson said, his dog Molly keeps nosing his hands and searching his pockets, seeking her daily jerky wafers from the Lakeview store. The fabric is torn.

"I can't explain to her we can't do that right now," Hanson said.