Tag: Leslie Kennedy Adams

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Very Superstitious

Very Superstitious

 Very superstitious, writings on the wall
Very superstitious, ladders bout’ to fall . . . .

When you believe in things
That you don’t understand
Then you suffer

Superstition ain’t the way.

                                    Superstitious by Stevie Wonder

 Me? I respectfully choose to disagree with Mr. Wonder. I am very superstitious about some things. It’s the way I was raised.

Knock over the salt? Better throw some over your shoulder right away. See a ladder? Don’t walk under it. Step on a crack: break your mother’s back. And never, never break a mirror. That sets you up for seven years of bad luck. Luck is also why you must eat black-eyed peas, even if you only can get canned ones, on New Year’s Day . (I hated black-eyed peas with a passion growing up; that was a tough one for me).

This story starts in the fall of 1991 when my husband, then my boyfriend, asked me to marry him. I, of course, said yes and then went about the business of trying to find a date on the church calendar when we could wed.

I had always sworn I would never get married in the summer in Houston, Texas. I wanted a Christmas wedding. Like many teachers and professors, I like to plan big events and vacations around long holiday breaks.

A Christmas wedding was not in the cards, however. The church secretary and I finally settled on August 22, 1992.   It wasn’t an ideal date; the Republican National Convention was running through August 21st, but I knew we could make it work.

When I told my fiancé that we had a date set, his first response was, “You watch. With our luck, a hurricane will hit that weekend.”

I looked at him in abject horror.

“What?” he asked. “What did I say?”

“Really?” I replied. “Really? Honey, I’m just going to say this one time, so listen carefully. Never, ever joke about hurricanes.”

“You’re kidding, right?” he asked, a Steve Dallas smirk on his face.

“No. I am not kidding. My family has a history of dealing with hurricanes, and we’re very superstitious. My mother and I were living with my grandparents near Corpus Christi when Hurricane Camille hit on August 16, 1969. I had just turned five. One of my friends lost her home and had to live in a trailer for months until her parents could rebuild. My grandfather had his hands full trying to hold down the fort and keep an eye on his oil wells (he was an AMOCO field superintendent) while my mother, my grandmother, and I waited out the storm in San Antonio. In August of 1983, when I was in London visiting my aunt and uncle and my stepfather was in Aruba on a business trip, Hurricane Alicia hit. My mother rode out the storm with my aunt, her baby, our cat, and our dog. Please don’t ever say anything like that again. EVER.”

“Well, okay,” he replied.

And that was that. Or so I thought.

At this point, I should, in his defense, explain that my husband is from Knoxville, Tennessee. He didn’t make it down here to the Gulf Coast until he was a sophomore in high school.   Heck, he never even saw a raw oyster or a crawfish until his freshman year at Tulane University!

That’s why he just didn’t (and couldn’t) understand that those of us who were born and raised on the Gulf Coast NEVER, NEVER EVER joke about hurricanes.

As the wedding date approached, my fiancé continued to joke about the probability that our wedding would be ruined by the landfall of a tropical storm or a hurricane.

“Keep it up,” I said. “Just keep it up. When something bad happens, everyone’s going to blame you.”

He laughed it off.

That is, until the days leading up to our nuptials, when Tropical Depression Andrew became Tropical Storm Andrew, and Tropical Storm Andrew grew into Hurricane Andrew – on August 22, 1992.

Ironically, the weather on our wedding day in Houston was gorgeous. It wasn’t extraordinarily hot and humid as I had feared; it was, in fact, pleasant for a Houston summer day. I remember thinking how fortunate we all were as it was a 2:00pm service and the men in the wedding party were wearing morning coats.

The next day, we left our hotel and drove home to get our bags and our cat. We had plans to drop off the cat at my parents’ house before driving on to New Orleans for our honeymoon. By the time we reached my parents’ house, it was apparent that Andrew was going to make landfall in Florida. No one knew exactly where he was headed next.

So I decided to do what my family had always done in the past. I called the St. Anthony Hotel in San Antonio and asked for a reservation.

I have to say that we had a lovely honeymoon in San Antonio. It wasn’t New Orleans, but we were safe and dry. We counted our blessings and told ourselves that we’d see New Orleans another time.

Well, four years later, we decided to take a trip to South Padre Island for our fourth wedding anniversary. Our first day was wonderful. We swam in the surf, read trashy novels under a beach umbrella, and built a sand castle. The next day, when I woke up, my husband shared the bad news.

“Sweetheart,” he said, sitting on the side of the bed, “I hate to tell you this, but we have to leave and go back to Houston.”

“What?” I exclaimed.  I couldn’t believe it. Surely he was joking.

He wasn’t joking. Hurricane Dolly was headed straight for the south Texas coast. We had to leave as soon as we could pack our bags.

On the way home, I reminded my husband that it was HIS fault this had happened.

“If only you had listened to me all those years ago,” I said. “Don’t joke about hurricanes. But no – you had to make a big joke about the possibility of our wedding day being ruined by a hurricane and tell everyone because you thought it was SO funny.”

“I’ve said I’m sorry a million times,” he replied from the driver’s seat.

My husband, bless his heart, had learned his lesson the hard way.

Skip forward to 2005 when Tropical Storm Katrina became Hurricane Katrina on August 23, 2005. Two days later, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city where we had once planned to spend our honeymoon.

But the coup d’état occurred last month when, three days after our 25th wedding anniversary, Hurricane Harvey turned the Houston metroplex into a morass of contaminated floodwaters replete with giant rafts of floating fire ants.

This time, I have to take the blame. You see, I broke my own rule. When the meteorologists started tracking Tropical Storm Harvey, I actually was foolish enough to write this post on Facebook:

OF COURSE there is a tropical storm headed our way – you can blame it on Craig Adams. It’s all his fault because when we set our wedding date 25 years ago, my sweet husband to be said, “Just watch – with our luck, a hurricane will hit that weekend.” 

Shame on me. I should have known better.

Those who specialize in Folklore will tell you that superstitions are an important part of every culture. We may not know where a particular superstition was first believed or whether that belief was initially based in fact or on experience, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t to be taken seriously. As Dr. Alan Dundees, a professor at UC Berkeley explained many years ago in a New York Times article, “The meaning of these superstitions has often been lost to the conscious mind. . . . [However,] behavior doesn’t exist without meaning. People would not practice customs unless they meant something to the psyche.”

And that, my friends, is good enough for me.

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The Many Costs of Cancer

For the past four years, my mother’s husband fought colon cancer, a devastating disease. He fought hard, too: two surgeries, 36 chemotherapy treatments, 2 radiation treatments, and more. The cancer started in his colon and moved to his liver before eventually spreading into his bones and brain.

So many Americans are diagnosed with and suffer from cancer’s devastation these days that it is almost a cliché’ to say that cancer is a terrible disease. But it bears repeating: cancer is a terrible disease.

Cancer takes its toll not only on the patient but also on the patient’s loved ones and caregivers. I so admire the doctors and nurses who helped my stepfather fight the good fight and the hospice care team that provided him and my mother with respite and kindness right up to the end.

It’s not only the disease that works to wear down the patient, though. It’s the treatment and the stress that accompanies it.

My stepfather is an Air Force veteran, so much of his care was provided by the Veterans Administration in Dallas, Texas. The facility was located nearly 90 minutes from his home. My mother and her husband would get up at 4:00am to drive to Dallas for his appointments. Once they arrived, after fighting the notoriously bad traffic, it could take up to an hour to find a parking place. They never knew how many hours it would take for each visit’s planned procedure. The VA provides housing for patients undergoing treatment, but like all of its other services, it is limited. My parents often had to stay in a local hotel at their own expense.

My parents were fortunate because they did not have to foot the entire bill for my stepfather’s treatment.   That’s not to say it was virtually free. My parents were still responsible for a percentage of the cost of my stepfather’s care. My mother has often stated that she doesn’t know how people without health insurance and savings can afford the treatment and associated costs of fighting cancer.

Saying the health care system in our country needs reform is another cliché . It’s like saying, “It’s hot in Houston in the summer.” I certainly do not have the answer to the problem, but surely someone or some group of people does. We are a nation of great thinkers and intellectual powerhouses. Americans designed and put in place the world’s most vibrant and long lasting democracy, put a man on the moon, men and women into long term orbit around the planet, invented the deadliest weapons of war, and created Superman and Wonder Woman. Surely someone has the vision and the intellect to offer some tangible solutions to the health care crisis in this country.

So much of the cost of treating a deadly disease could be eradicated with foresight. Providing every American a yearly physical, dental exam, eye exam, and nutritional counseling is a must. Women who become pregnant must have access to quality prenatal care. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure – another cliché, but an obvious truth.

Many types of cancer can be defeated when caught early. Early detection also lowers the cost of medical treatment as well as the cost of treating the family members and caregivers for the resulting illnesses brought on by the grief and stress of caring for a loved one with cancer. High blood pressure and higher than normal levels of stress related hormones are just two examples.

Cancer is, ultimately, costing all of us in some way, whether it is the physical toll it takes, the emotional toll it takes, or the financial toll it takes on the patients who have it, the people who care for the patient who has it, and everyone who pays for its treatment in any way, including his or her taxes.

 

 

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Red Hot Mama: How My Uncle Got His Groove Back

In January last year, my aunt lost a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer. She fought hard, and her care team did its best to help her beat this terrible disease, but she finally succumbed.

My uncle, my mother’s brother, was devastated. He and his wife would have celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary last July. He found himself at loose ends, complaining that the house was “too quiet” and “empty” without her.

He did, however, take the time, finally, to take care of his own health. First, he had to undergo a much overdue colonoscopy to ensure that the stomach cancer he survived several years ago had not come back. Then he had surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff.

Designated driver

As my uncle had to be sedated for both procedures, he knew he wouldn’t be able to or allowed to drive himself home.  Since I work from home and am no longer responsible for carpool and day care drop offs and pick ups, he asked me if I could drive him home after each procedure.  When I asked him how he planned on getting to each appointment, he assured me that he could just take Uber.   That seemed reasonable to me, and I agreed to be his designated driver.

The first procedure, a colonoscopy, was very straightforward. The doctor found no evidence of cancer. In fact, by the time my uncle walked out of the recovery area, he was feeling so good that we had to stop at Nielsen’s Deli, located just up the street from the outpatient surgery center, to pick him up a roast beef sandwich and a Coke, as he had not eaten after midnight the previous evening.

His second procedure, surgery to repair a torn rotary cuff in the left shoulder, was a different story altogether.  As it would be an especially extensive and painful surgery, I knew my uncle would be on pain medication for at least a few days and, therefore, would need needed someone to stay with him for a few days until he was off the pain medication and could drive and take care of himself.  I agreed to be both designated driver and temporary caregiver.

Let’s do lunch!

Three days after the surgery, my uncle was feeling pretty good, so  I asked him if he wanted to get out of the house and grab some lunch. He said yes, so off we went.

My uncle was craving Tex-Mex and suggested a place near his home. On the way, I realized that one of my favorite places, Molina’s Cantina, was closer, so that’s where we went. It turned out to be a great choice, but not for the reason you might suspect. My uncle ended up with more than lunch – he also bought a car!

When we arrived at Molina’s, I parked my SUV and walked around to the passenger side to help my uncle out of his seat. It was then that I noticed a mint condition vintage red Triumph TR4 convertible across the lot. (I love sports cars; in fact, when my daughter was in middle school, I drove a 2005 red BMW Z-4 coupe, which I still miss very much. But that’s another story.)

The Triumph’s top was down, showcasing its rich black leather interior. It had been washed recently, and its paint shone in the sunlight. I also noticed that the front license plate had been replaced with a vanity plate for The Citadel.

Love at first sight

“Look at that beautiful car!” I said to my uncle.

My uncle turned, looked at the car, and said, “That’s the exact same car your father was driving the night he asked your mother to marry him.”

“Really? How cool is that?” I exclaimed.

I had often heard the story of how my father had wrecked his sports car on the way to ask my mother to marry him. My father, an F-8 Crusader pilot, literally drove off a bridge that night, totaling the car as well as his knee. The small town where my grandparents lived did not have an ambulance, so the local funeral home sent its hearse to take my father to the hospital in nearby Corpus Christi. Doctors there discovered that he had shattered his kneecap. Apparently it was worth it, though, because my mother agreed to marry him! And, fortunately, the Marine Corps allowed him to continue to fly.

My uncle started back towards the entrance to the restaurant while I snapped some photos of the car with my iPhone (one is at the top of this post). Then I went on into the restaurant, where we were quickly seated. As it was late in the afternoon, the restaurant was empty except for the two of us. When the server came to take our drink order, I asked him to bring me a Diet Coke and to bring my uncle a margarita made with the bar’s best tequila.

“He’s had a rough time of it,” I told the server over my uncle’s objections. “He deserves it.”

The server smiled and left for the bar. My uncle and I perused the menu and snacked on chips and salsa while we waited for our drinks.

When the server returned, he explained that the bartender suggested that, rather than wasting fine tequila on a margarita, my uncle order a regular margarita and a separate shot of the bar’s best tequila. We agreed to that. Before the server left, my uncle asked if he could also have a glass of iced tea. Seriously. I have the photos.

The server quickly returned with our drinks and took our order.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her

While we waited for our lunch to arrive, my uncle sipped his tequila and stared over my shoulder through the restaurant’s plate glass windows at the little red sports car.  I made small talk, but he was too distracted by the vision of the  Triumph to really pay attention to me or his food when it arrived.

“You know what your problem is?” my uncle asked.

“I have several.  Which one are you referring to?” I replied jokingly.

“You don’t know how to hot wire a car.”

“That’s true,” I said.  “However, I’ve never really needed that skill in my line of work.”

“I wonder who that car belongs to?” My uncle pondered, still gazing longingly through the window at the object of his desire.

“We could ask the server,” I replied.

Seeming not to hear me, my uncle said, “I wonder if the owner would be interested in selling it to me?”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” I replied. “We need to find out who owns the car and then we can ask the owner about it.”

That got his attention.

When the server returned to check on us, I asked him if he knew whether or not the owner of the red convertible parked out front was a customer in the restaurant or its bar. The server didn’t know but agreed to ask the hostess and the bartender.

When he returned with the bill for our lunch, the server told us that no one knew who owned the car.

“Oh, well,” my uncle said, much like Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh. “I guess we’ll never know.”

I took that as a challenge.

I take matters into my own hands, literally

“I tell you what,” I replied. “I’ll write a note with my name, cell phone number, and email address and leave it on the windshield under one of the wipers. That way, if the owner is interested in selling, he or she can contact me. ”

My uncle thought it was a long shot, but I was determined.

I pulled out my credit card and placed it in the folder the server had provided with the tab. Then I rummaged through my purse for a piece of paper, finally tearing a deposit clip in half and scribbling a note on it with a pen.

“Stay put!” I told my uncle before walking outside to place the note on the car.

I carefully lifted one of the car’s windshield wipers and placed the note under it. I turned to walk back into the restaurant. I had taken only a few steps when I heard a man call out to me.

“Excuse me, ma’am.  Do you want to buy that car?” he asked.

I stopped dead in my tracks.  I turned to my right; the voice had come from a man seated with two friends at a table on the restaurant’s palm frond roofed patio bar.  He was waving at me to get my attention.

“I don’t, “ I replied, “but I know someone who might be interested. How much do you want for it?”

“Oh, it’s not my car. It’s his,” the man replied with a grin, pointing to one of his two companions at the table.

I walked over to the group; the men were the only people seated outside. This was not surprising, as it was about 3:30pm in the afternoon.

I introduced myself and then had a brief conversation with the car’s owner, a young handsome man with short blonde hair and blue eyes. He explained that the other two gentlemen were his business clients and asked if he could join me and my party in the restaurant once he cleared his bar tab. I agreed and hurried back inside to my uncle.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Well, I found the owner of the car. He is sitting outside on the patio with two of his clients. I told him you might be interested in buying his car.  He’ll be here in a minute to talk to you.”

My uncle shook his head in disbelief.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, the owner of the car walked over. He introduced himself to my uncle, pulled out a chair, and sat down at our table.

My uncle asked, “What model year is your Triumph?

“It’s a 1963 TR4A,” the owner replied.

“That’s what I thought,” my uncle said. “My niece’s father had the exact same car. He used to let me wash it for him. I was twelve and thought it was the greatest car ever. Sadly, my brother-in-law totaled the car one night on the way to ask my sister to marry him.”

The owner thought that was a great story.

My uncle added, “Sadly, he died a few months after they were married. He was a Marine fighter pilot. His plane crashed in bad weather just outside Barksdale AFB in Louisiana. I accompanied my sister to Arlington National Cemetery for the burial “

“That’s terrible,” the owner said.

“Yes, it was,” my uncle replied. “So, my niece here tells me that you are interested in selling your car.”

“Yes,” the owner replied. “I have made the decision to sell it. I want to buy something larger and newer, like a Porsche.  I’ve been pulled over twice recently by the Houston Police Department while driving with my two young children in the back seat.  The police consider it is unsafe for me to do that.”

“How much do you want for it?” my uncle inquired.

The owner provided an asking price, adding that the car had been completely refurbished. In fact, he had just recently replaced all of the leather upholstery and interior trim.

My uncle pondered the price for a moment and then named a counter offer.

The owner thought about it before explaining that the price he had named was pretty firm; a member of the Houston Triumph Club had made him an offer just a few days before we met.

“I would really like to sell you the car, however,” he continued, “because I think you will take good care of it and love it as much as I do. Maybe we can work something out.”

It was my turn to interject.

“I noticed The Citadel vanity plate on the front of your car, and I see you are wearing a Citadel ring,” I said. “Back in 1995 while attending an NEH Summer Institute at the University of Montana, I met someone who taught Military History at The Citadel. I can’t recall his last name, but we all knew him as ‘Mel B.’ Did you know a professor by that name when you attended?”

“Yes! I do remember him,” the owner replied, adding, “It’s a small world!”

We chatted a little while longer before the owner handed my uncle a business card with his contact information.

“I’ll give you a call in a day or two,” my uncle said, “and we can set up a time for my mechanic to check out the engine, etc.”

“Sounds good to me,” the owner said before shaking each of our hands and getting up from the table.

Once the man had left the restaurant, my uncle turned to me and said, “Your aunt would really want me to have that car.”

“Oh, I agree,” I replied. “I think it would be a great way for you to get out and meet people, too, since he said the Houston Triumph Club holds regular breakfast meetings.”

We talked some more about personal financial issues. I won’t recount any more of the conversation out of respect for my uncle’s privacy; suffice it to say that my uncle could afford it.

I walked my uncle back to my car and got him settled before taking him back to his house. I packed up my things and returned home, but not before insisting that my uncle call me any time, day or night, if he needed help.

Red Hot Mama 

A few days later, my uncle called to let me know that he had bought the car.

“I’m so happy for you!” I exclaimed. “Do you have it at the house now?”

“Yes,” he replied. “The mechanic checked out the car.  It needed a minor repair, so it took a few days to complete the transaction. I drove up to the owner’s house in north Houston with Bruno (my uncle’s 8 year old black Labrador Retriever) and took him for a quick ride around the block before gave the owner a check and had the car loaded onto the tow truck for transport to my house.”

“Well, I’m looking forward to going for a ride myself,” I said.

“Just let me know when you’re available,” my uncle replied.

“Did you give it a name yet?” I asked.

“Yes – Red Hot Mama,” he said.

“I like it!” I replied. “Again, I’m so happy that I took you to lunch that day and helped connect you with the owner.”

I was just delighted. I could hear the difference in my uncle’s voice. He sounded better than he had in months.

My uncle got his groove back

Buying that car marked a turning point for my uncle. He soon met a lovely woman who had lost her husband to cancer seven years earlier; they have been dating for over a year now. My uncle regularly posts photos of the good times he has enjoyed with Red Hot Mama, too:  pictures of Bruno “riding shotgun,” the grandchildren’s first ride to the snow cone stand a few blocks from his home, his first breakfast with the Houston Triumph Club, and his first road trip with his newfound friends.

Red Hot Mama definitely helped my uncle get his groove back, but he won’t meet me for lunch anymore because he says it cost him too much money the last time, even though I picked up the tab for lunch.   Sooner or later, we’ll get around to that ride.  I’m looking forward to it!

 

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It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

It was a dark and stormy night.

My husband, my daughter, and I were spending our last night in Nashville, the last leg of a trip to the Smokies and to my husband’s hometown of Knoxville. After reading about local restaurants and hot spots in a publication provided in our room at the Hermitage, I decided we should have supper at the renowned Loveless Café. It sounded a lot like an Austin favorite of mine, Threadgills, and I was in the mood for comfort food.

My husband was a bit skeptical; he had never heard of Loveless Café and wasn’t crazy about making the 37-39 minute drive in the dark to get there. Plus, it was late; he and our daughter had spent the day at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and he thought it would be best just to try a restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. According to the article I had read, Loveless Café was a pretty amazing place, so I persevered. In the end, he agreed and off we went.

It had started to rain by the time we got downstairs and picked up our rental from the valet, but we weren’t especially worried about the weather at that point. In fact, when I saw a cigar store in a strip center on the way, I insisted we stop and that my husband go in and see about a getting a good stogie, which he did. We figured we had plenty of time to get to the restaurant.

It wasn’t until we left the bright lights of the city and the lightning intensified that my husband started to question whether or not the food at “this place” was worth the drive. The tires on our rental, we realized, were in dire need of replacement, and the lightweight Nissan Rogue was proving difficult to keep on the road, much less in a designated lane.

“This place better be really good,” my husband grumbled, his fingers tightly wrapped around the steering wheel.

“I’m sure it will be,” I said, “and I know that you will get us there safe and sound.”

“Maybe it will even be open by the time we get there,” he replied with an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

Flashback to scenes from Psycho

We drove on through the storm; finally, we saw the restaurant’s 1950s era blue sign, with the words picked out in pink and green neon. With the exception of the color of the neon, it looked exactly like the Bates Motel sign from Psycho.

The resemblance did not end there. The pictures on the restaurant’s home page do not convey the creepiness of the place on a stormy night. Loveless Café was once a motel with a layout similar to the Bates Motel and other travel court motels of the era.

The restaurant sits where the original office would have been, and the original motel rooms flank the restaurant in adjacent lines on the left and right. That night, their dark windows looked forbidding. Just to reassure myself that Loveless Café had no skeletons in its closet, I looked up and to the left for a rundown two story Victorian mansion.

I didn’t see anything looming in the distance, but I still felt much like Janet Leigh as she checked in the Bates Motel as I got out of the car with my daughter and entered the restaurant while my husband parked the car.

Warm, welcoming interior, cheerful and friendly staff

My fears were further allayed by the cheerful, brightly lit lobby of the restaurant with its green wood plank walls covered in framed photographs, polished wood floors, and old fashioned hostess stand. It provided a welcome respite from the stormy night outside. We walked up to the old fashioned hostess stand, which included a display of Loveless Café items for sale, and were greeted by a friendly young woman who asked for the number of people in our party before picking up three menus and leading us into the main dining area.

My daughter and I took our places at a table for four covered in a red and white checked oilcloth and looked around at the paintings and framed photos on the walls. I had told the hostess that my husband wouldn’t be hard to miss, since he is 6’7” and, sure enough, a few minutes later, she escorted him with a smile to our table.

got biscuits?

While we perused the supper menu, our server brought us a plate of warm biscuits, plenty of butter, homemade preserves, and honey before taking our drink orders: iced tea for me, sweet tea for my husband, and a Coke for our daughter who refuses to drink iced tea in any form.

After we laughed at the salad options listed on the menu (after all, who goes to a place like Loveless Café to eat healthy?) my husband opted for the Loveless Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes, and fried okra; I ordered the Country Fried Steak with cream gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Our daughter, ever the picky eater, ordered her two mainstays: chicken fingers and macaroni and cheese.

Our supper soon arrived piping hot; the portions were more than generous. This was not our hometown mainstay, the Luby’s LuAnn Plate: one piece of chicken (white or dark), two sides, and a roll. No – I was faced with a chicken fried steak twice the span of my hand and fingers. My husband was served HALF a chicken. And the food was delicious.

A word about the importance of iced tea

 The iced tea was fresh and perfectly brewed, too. If you didn’t grow up in the south, you may not appreciate the value of a freshly brewed glass of iced tea. Few things in life are more refreshing on a hot day, whether you have just come in from mowing the yard or are enjoying dinner or supper with family and friends.

I learned that all glasses of iced tea are not created equal after living in Minnesota for four years. All too often, I would order iced tea only to be served a cloudy dark tea colored liquid that tasted god-awful. You couldn’t get Coca Cola, either. If you ordered a Coke, you were often told, “We only serve Pepsi.” For some reason, the natives preferred the syrupy, too sweet alternative. Plus, people looked at you funny if you asked for a Coke instead of a “soda” or a “pop.”

Dessert? Yes, please!

 By the time we finished our meal, it was near closing time, so we ordered dessert to go. Loveless Café offers diners an array of southern favorites: Chess Pie, Chocolate Chess Pie, Fudge Pie, Coconut Pie, Pecan Pie, and Banana Pudding (listed as “Puddin’” on the menu). I opted for Banana Puddin’ and my husband chose his favorite, Coconut Pie, after confirming it was Coconut Cream Pie, not Coconut Meringue Pie.

When we left the restaurant, the rain had stopped, so we had a much quicker and less harrowing drive back to our hotel, where we polished off the desserts – having no in-room refrigerator, we were compelled to eat them lest they spoil.

The next day, we flew back to Houston, but not before I bought myself a hot pink “got biscuits?” t-shirt from the hotel gift shop. I love my Loveless Café t-shirt; it’s now eight years old and going strong. Every time I wear it, people always ask me where I got it.

If you are ever in Nashville, take my advice and head on out to Loveless Café. You’ll be glad you did!