Low Profits Killing Small Dreams

It was a dark and stormy night, and I had a cold. Then there was the phone thing to consider …

Sneezing, feverish, I longed to be in just one place on that damp April 1990 night: in bed.

Instead, I was winding down a slick and deserted rural Virginia road with only myself to blame.

That winter, my globe-trotting, I’ve-been-toevery-continent beau had asked where I wanted to go for my birthday. I’d said, “Surprise me.”

He did - informing me that he’d found a bedand-breakfast just an hour away in Millwood, Va. Ever polite, I’d blurted, “Not someplace warm - an island? Florida?”

No, we were going to somebody’s old house. Near midnight, we spied the bright colonial with a hand-painted sign: “Brookside: 1780.”

I was nervous. Like many African Americans, I’ve dealt with “the phone thing” - moments in which white business people couldn’t hide their shock when the potential client-employee-guest they’d welcomed over the phone turned out to be black. This time I felt too miserable to handle it.

So I wasn’t prepared to be immediately fussed over by Carol Konkel, who co-owns the inn with her husband, Gary.

I didn’t expect the mountainous feather bed and down comforter rising from the canopy bed in our room, the starched, antique nightgown laid out for me, or the warmth that wafted from a crackling fireplace.

I didn’t expect heaven.

Awakened the next morning by classical music, I felt terrific enough to face my unfair stereotypes, my boyfriend’s “I told you so” and a breakfast of sumptuous French toast. I felt something like … peace.

Harried ‘90s types will understand why I’ve visited four times since, to sit by the stream and reflect on its murmurings, to study the yellowed christening gown on the wall and imagine who wore it.

Unfortunately, heaven will close after Memorial Day.

What’s happening to Brookside has happened to small businesses all over America. My hideaway, with its Villeroy and Boch china, new brass fixtures and collection of Victorian-era high-button shoes, isn’t closing because its rooms aren’t filled - they are. But because increasingly in America, only the big survive.

“After eight years of striving, we realized that we were doing as well as we could at our size,” says Carol. “But our size doesn’t work.”

The most successful B&Bs, say the Konkels, have at least 10 rooms, an on-site restaurant and no freebies. What I love about Brookside - its five intimate rooms, high-quality antiques and complimentary fresh fruit and sherry - doomed it. The Konkels’ efforts to enlarge by annexing a nearby building didn’t pan out.

Perfection isn’t always rewarded.

It should be. Ten years ago, the Konkels had the typical, lightning-paced Washington area life: She was an international trade analyst; Gary was a computer systems expert (his independent consulting still keeps them afloat). The Alexandria couple, both devoted antiquers, had never stayed at a B&B. But Carol dreamed of providing hospitality with a hint of history.

Then only partially restored, Brookside - with its pastoral setting by a historic mill, its past as the former home of a Thomas Jefferson crony and its location 20 minutes from Middleburg’s horse culture - seemed ideal.

“I had a vision of what it should be like - ironed sheets, unlimited firewood, free champagne on special occasions. We furnished it like our own home,” says Carol, who with Gary put “tens of thousands” of dollars in personal savings and loans into Brookside and its antique shop.

In a world in which many are content to produce mediocrity, loving effort should be celebrated. But many of us are too enamored of the big, fast and easy to cherish the small and painstakingly nurtured.

In such times, running a small business is “brutal,” Carol says. “By the time you comply with all the rules - benefits, unemployment, workmen’s comp … you’re losing money. … Look around - you’ll see Wal-Mart putting everybody out of business, (major chains) killing off little gas stations and country stores. … Local merchants can’t compete.

“We’re losing something we can never replace.”

The Konkels’ loss may be temporary - they’ll live in the house and haven’t ruled out making another go at the B&B. Though Carol’s anticipating “getting up on Saturday and actually saying, ‘Let’s go for a drive,”’ she’ll miss her “dream.”

Some nights, she crosses the street and stares at Brookside, imagining “all the guests who’re trying to reconnect, see them in front of their fires. The house is being used, as in the past, when full families lived there.”

She has loved providing hints of “a more tranquil time” and sharing in so much - “in wedding nights, anniversaries … people looking for a place to feel safe.”

But these days, profitably providing such a haven is tough. Making real a dream, says Carol, “can wear you out.”

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