OPENED IN MARCH, closed in October — efforts to bring interesting ventures to Cave Spring that might cater to the upscale residents and tourists that community so repeatedly states it desires sure don’t last long, do they?

It’s a shame the latest, the Water Club (so named for Cave Spring’s famous natural product) followed Bennett’s at the same location in giving up on feeding finer fodder and light libations to the masses that never appeared to support either venture — both the brainchilds of successful restaurateurs from elsewhere who fell in love with the community and wanted to become part of it.

In the case of the Water Club’s demise, one wonders what that leaves some officials to do there now that they can’t man surveillance posts to assure that beer and wine did not flow past the establishment’s front door.

Cave Spring has long, and correctly, promoted itself as a sort of curiosity. What’s becoming most curious about it is not just that change isn’t encouraged but that perhaps the free enterprise upon which America has been built is not as well. With this record, will anybody else even try in the future?