For a time in the 1990s, one of my best friends lived in the city of Salem with his wife on a side street that was just a few blocks away from the iconic Salem Diner. The building's futuristic design had always caught my attention so I suggested we all go there for dinner one day. They were receptive to the idea but married life kept them busy. When I asked again a few months later, they said the diner had strange hours because whenever they drove by the place, it was closed. We never did wind up going because my friend and his wife decided to beat the high cost of living in Massachusetts by moving to Arizona. Salem State University eventually bought the Salem Diner and ran it for a little while before it closed for good in 2019. The school plans to develop the entire block and they want the historic eatery to be removed from the property. One proposal had the Salem Diner being hoisted to the top of an apartment building for a rooftop restaurant but as of this writing, it remains in the same spot vacant and forlorn.
Another “well have to go there someday” place that comes to mind was the Warwick Cinemas in the town of Marblehead. The old movie house was built in 1919 and I must have driven by it with two different sets of friends back in the 1990s. The theater closed in 1999 and was eventually demolished by a developer in 2011 with a replica of the facade and marquee gracing the front of the new complex.
It's no coincidence that most of these “someday” places have been restaurants because the industry's turnover rate is so high. Thankfully, one friend who shares my love of foreign foods and adventurous dining experiences helped me cross a few of these now defunct restaurants off my bucket list but for every Elephant Walk, Addis Red Sea, Sabur, and Russian Village there were places that escaped me like Cafe Budapest, West Street Grille, Lala Rokh, and that little Somali restaurant on Green St. with a name I can't recall. (Some of these establishments have also made it onto my lengthier “great places I would have taken a date” list.)
During my college years, I spotted a cute Middle Eastern restaurant in my travels that looked interesting. Unfortunately, the stars never aligned with any of my friends and since I didn't want to eat alone, the place remained out of reach for almost 30 years. In early 2022, a project for work would take me very close to this restaurant so I thought about going there after all this time. A quick internet search revealed the place was still in business but when I reached out to a few friends to see if they wanted to tag along, everyone had prior commitments. So I'd be going by myself after all.
As a chronic single, most trips to someplace new have me wondering if I'll meet the woman of my dreams there and this restaurant was no exception. Due to some delays at work, I entered the establishment around 2 PM. The young waitress at the door was just okay-looking and a bit dismissive since she was very involved in a conversation with her coworker. The place wasn't busy but there were a few other customers finishing their meals. Since I promised my mother we'd go out to dinner later that evening, I didn't want to fill up too much. Instead of trying one of the restaurant's signature entrees, I opted for an appetizer which was pretty big anyway.
Eventually, all but one group of remaining customers left so I found myself eating in a near-empty dinning room which only made my feelings of isolation worse. To top it all off, the waitress's attentive service got lax and at one point I had to get up from my table and call her over for the bill. So after almost 30 years, I finally crossed this place off my bucket list but my time here could have been so much more memorable had I only come here with friends a few decades earlier.
While sitting in the plexiglass-lined booth, I thought about how certain experiences seem to have a “freshness date” because if you wait too long to try something, it won't have as much meaning. My thoughts then turned to dating and marriage. Since I've been lonely for so long, would I even know how to have a long-term relationship? Would love and romance now have the same significance as it might have had in my 20s or 30s? Have all those years of bitter isolation left me too jaded? Does sex lose its meaning as we get older? Would the act itself bring a touch of resentment if the woman always longed for kids but was now infertile?
Then of course, as people get older, they tend to let themselves go. To be frank, the dating scene at my age isn't a pretty sight. That married friend from Salem tells me when you're with someone for many years, you tend to overlook those changes. Some people call this having wife goggles. This friend also admits that if he met his wife for the first time as she looked today, he wouldn't find her to be attractive but because of the shared history between them, he loves her regardless of those extra pounds.
I think my dining experience underscores the need for an increased sense of urgency from the Church when it comes to helping singles who want to get married. Contrary to what some of my priests have said, young people don't have all the time in the world. Before you know it, thirty years have slipped by and “someday” is looking more and more like an impossibility.
