Tag: Family

Editorial: Vicious Fishes, memories, and gentrification

As folks move from populous expensive regions to our small affordable town, spurring development, we will have a fancier town. But comforting places like Vicious Fishes will be priced out and gone.

Yesterday, Vicious Fishes Fuquay Tap and Kitchen closed for good. The company said,

“Our lease is up – and the proposal is for a 55% rent hike. Given the dramatic increase and after a lot of consideration, we’ve decided we need to focus on what’s core to Vicious Fishes Brewery, which is making the best beer we can and serving it directly to patrons in our taprooms.”

Although the town of Fuquay Varina has its share of welcoming places where family and friends gather, Vicious Fishes was special. Maybe it was the staff that greeted you warmly, maybe it was the yummy food, maybe it was the family atmosphere.

Memories

On our family’s third day of moving to North Carolina – not knowing a soul, and trusting Providence that all would be alright – we went to dinner at Vicious Fishes. Somehow, that visit made us feel confident and welcomed in our newly adopted state. We went back many times after that.

Judging by the numerous comments on on-line posts about the departure of Vicious Fishes from our town, we were definitely not the only ones saddened by the loss of that place of comfort.

Gentrification

Businesses often think it best to return to their core function after experimenting with expansion. However, a 55% rent increase is bound to influence such decision!

Our town of 49,257 residents is rapidly growing, with a population increase of 42.54% since 2020. Town leaders are delighted. But some folks are not happy that farmland is shrinking, trees are being cut down, not as many deer are walking around neighborhoods, and development is everywhere.

Those are the inevitable results of people from populous, expensive regions moving to small, affordable towns like ours. As more folks move in spurring development, real estate prices go up. Some call this gentrification.

We will have a fancier town, but the comforting places like Vicious Fishes might no longer be there.

Shakespeare for Valentine’s Day

If Valentine’s Day candlelight dinner or box of chocolates is not in your budget this year, print a copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnet #116 and read it to your sweetheart. Then have a Happy Valentine’s Day!

How are you all celebrating Valentine’s Day? Romantic dinner by candlelight? Box of La Madeline au Truffe (US$25 per gram)? Or doing not much given the high cost of living?

If the latter, here is an unassuming suggestion: Print a copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnet #116 (funny thing about Shakespeare’s sonnets, they go by number instead of title), read it to your sweetheart, then talk a little bit about it. Not a big, deep discussion, please!

Why Sonnet #116? First, this is the most familiar of Shakespeare’s sonnets, so it must be good. Second, for so many folks, Sonnet #116 bursts into an epiphany when read or heard for the first time. Third, many find this sonnet worth revisiting by way of reminder.

So, here is Shakespeare’s Sonnet #116:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Depending on our age and social milieu we might know couples that still hold hands walking down the street after 40 years together, or we might know some of today’s ubiquitous single parents (some divorced, some never married).

In Sonnet #116, Shakespeare characterized his view of the hand-holding oldsters – once young with “rosy lips and cheeks.” Challenges surely came their way. Certainly, at times one or the other had to stay steady, like a star, and not bend “with the remover to remove.” Chances are these couples will bear it out “even to the edge of doom.”

Agreed, this is not your typical Valentine’s Day poem, dripping with gleeful passion and lovely allusions. You can tell that from the sonnet’s first line which refers to the “marriage of true minds,” not the marriage of true hearts.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Picture: Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher of James City, North Carolina. This picture is from Deep Roots at Home. As of February 2024 Herbert and Zelmyra still held the Guinness record for the longest married couple: 86 years of marriage. Herbert passed away in 2011 at age 105, and Zelmyra followed him two years later also at 105.

Here is an excerpt from Herbert and Zelmyra’s Choice Secrets Of Successful & Long Marriage, Deep Roots at Home, September 14, 2020.

“Together, as young friends and then later when married, they survived the effects of World War I and II, the Great Depression, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and 15 presidential administrations.

During the Depression, Herbert lived off the land and worked for as little as 5 cents a day. They had to raise their own food and ration it for their five children. Unable to afford a car, Herbert got to work as a mechanic the best way he could. Undaunted, Herbert built their home with his own hands in 1942.“