AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

 

          Earlier this week I heard the Northlake Tavern (NT) is closing. Today, it hit home when I saw a post on Facebook. I went online and looked for the NT web site. And, yes, it’s true, January 31^st will be the last day this wonderful place will exist as it now does. I have so many great memories of eating pizza and drinking wine/beer with so many different people.

          I was introduced to the Northlake Tavern in 1969 when I went to work at the Regional Primate Research Center at the University of Washington. Those were the days when staff went out to lunch on Friday. It was also the time when we drank at lunch. It was thanks to these women I learned to drink martinis, but I digress. We didn’t always go to the NT for lunch, but we did often enough to slake our desire for pizza.

          In turn, I introduced John to the NT. We’d go after work or on the weekend and order a LARGE COMBINATION. Somehow, we’d manage to eat the entire thing and when I say LARGE COMBINATION, that pizza had to weigh several pounds. When I left the Primate Center and we moved to Lake Forest Park, we didn’t go as often and actually went years without making a visit.

          I remember the next time we went there for dinner. We placed our usual order and looked at each other in disbelief when we had to ask for a box for more than half that LARGE COMBINATION. This was followed by my occasionally picking up a small combination after work and bringing it home. Even then, the small was more than the two of us could put away at one sitting.

          Then there was the time my Professor came back to town and wanted to take me to lunch. We went to the NT and he ordered an onion pizza. I couldn’t believe an onion pizza would be very good, but amazingly, it was excellent. I’d ordered something different, but he sent his leftover pizza home with me which is how I discovered it was quite tasty.

          This morning I wrote down the phone number and plan to call at exactly 11:00 am when the Northlake opens and order a small combination for pick-up. According to the Facebook poster, she had to wait three hours to get her two medium pizzas. It took two hours to order and an hour for them to be ready for pickup. I’m hoping I don’t have to wait that long, that I can get right through, order, zip down there and have yummy pizza for dinner…and lunch and dinner and maybe lunch again if the small combination is as large as it was in the past. If it is as good as it’s always been, I plan to enjoy every single taste and bite while I think about the people and times now in the past.

          So, another one bites the dust, becoming a strand woven to completion in my life tapestry over years and decades. The Northlake Tavern will join Wilson’s Drive-In on Aurora, the Twin Teepees, Lamont’s in Lake Forest Park, Goofy’s on Ballinger, the Aurora and Sno-King Drive-ins…well, at my age, I could continue elaborating but I’m sure you get the idea. I’m grateful for those past experiences and memories and understand why these places have ceased to exist, but having those particular tapestry strands tied off, so to speak, does make me sad.