Did you ever watch “Northern Exposure” in the early 90’s?
Well, you should have.
I did, but only vaguely remembered it (since I was like, uh, 9 years old when it started), but remembered enough to know that it was a fun show with super-quirky characters. So Chris (who had never seen it) and I bought the season DVD’s one by one, and have been watching it over the past few years as if it were a new show. And he has declared it one of his all-time favorite shows. It is truly timeless.
However, this post has NOTHING to do with Northern Exposure except to reference one of the quirky characters in there. Maggie. Poor thing, she was a 30-something year old who had a boyfriend curse. She had 5 boyfriends who were killed by crazy-freak accidents (getting hit by a crashing satellite, getting frozen on a glacier, etc).
Like Maggie, Chris and I have a bit of a curse.
Luckily, no one dies from it.
It is a restaurant curse. All restaurants that we love, close.
This has been going on for our whole married life, and it is quite discouraging to us. More so, I daresay, to the owners of said restaurants, but at least they only have one restaurant each closing. ALL of ours close.
The first occurance, which we thought was just an odd fluke, was Ruby Tuesday at the Colonnade. When Chris and I were dating, he lived in Cahaba Heights and I worked in Cahaba Heights. So we would often meet at R.T. after work and have dinner, so we would consider it one of the places that we fell in love. Then, after we got married, we went there often for dates.
However, a year after we got married, it closed. When does a Ruby Tuesday’s EVER close??!!
The most painful closing was Wing Stop. I have blogged about it before (pitiful, I know). We were absolutely, 100% in love with it. And it was hands-down the best wing place in town, so it had no reason to close. However, due to us, it did. Luckily, our curse only has a localized reach, so only the ones in Birmingham closed. Therefore, we often plan trips around being in the vicinity of Wing Stops at meal-times.
The most ironic closure definitely has to be Sarris’ Steakhouse. We didn’t go there a lot, but it was important in our history because we had our wedding rehearsal dinner there. It is now the classy store, “Love Stuff”. Oh yeah. That beautiful brick, ivy-painted back room that we had our dinner in now holds the French Maid outfits, Fireman jackets, and Thigh high boots. Err, not that we would know.
Anyway.
Just in case you don’t grasp the depth of this problem, other restaurants affected by our curse include El Tapatio, our favorite Mexican restaurant; Mozzarella’s (also known as The American Cafe); The Heights Cafe; Copeland’s and Bahama Breeze, both of which had been around for a LONG time before we “discovered them”, then they shortly went out of business; Costa’s Bar-B-Que – we had only gone there twice and had made it our new favorite place to meet for lunch on a weekday, and then they closed; Bear Rock Cafe; Purple Onion’s Late Night Cafe (the home of our first date); and even poor Ralph and Kacoo’s got caught by the curse – it closed within a week of our first time going there, even though I didn’t even like it because of the huge fishtanks as walls (quirk – I don’t like seeing alive what I’m eating dead).
Besides restaurants, other important things in our relationship also seemed to get cursed.
They gutted and completely rebuilt the townhome that was our newlywed house, so it kind of “doesn’t exist” anymore (although we DID randomly knock on the door a few months ago and the very nice lady who lives there now showed us around and pushed us to vote for her son, who was running for judge. Which we did, of course.).
Also, we spent a lot of time at Overton Park when we were “just friends”. Then, shortly after we got married, they gutted the park and completely rebuilt it. That merry-go-round that we spent much time on is lonely somewhere in an abandoned junk yard. That gazebo that we first discussed being more than just friends is now firewood. Sad, sad, sad.
So basically, everywhere that has anything to do with our relationship is GONE. And we’re pretty darn sentimental people, so it is even more ironic that it would happen to us.
So, if any restaurant owners are reading this, you may want to have a “No Callahan’s” sign on your door. . .
And if we closed down one of your favorite restaurants also, I am dearly sorry.
I have more books to give away from Turner Publishing!! $175 worth!!!
The Road to Eden’s Ridge – Less than an hour before her wedding, Lindsey Briggs calls off the ceremony, leaving her family home in Maine to pursue her dream of being a singer-songwriter in Nashville. There she meets a country music legend, Ben McBride. Through the chance meeting, she discovers the depth of Ben’s relationship with her family as well as secrets from her past. A remarkable family tale is revealed for Lindsey, who learns the importance of pursuing her heart and about the power and endurance of love.
