“Hot Tea, Please” – A Story for Wedding Season

Bride and groom, 1975

A Remembrance by Patrick O’Connor
(Part of a work in progress titled “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up; The Charmed Life of a Boomer”)

Since June is prime wedding season in Northeast Ohio, I have this freshly-married recollection from 1975, when Sue and I were wed.

Sue and I spent our first day or two as a married couple in Radford, Virginia. I had taken a position at a local community college to teach and also study toward a doctorate at Virginia Tech. Sue would work toward her degree at Radford College, which at the time, was making the transition from an all-women’s teacher college to a university. 

So, there we were; a freshly married, shiny couple with basically just our enthusiasm and optimism to carry us into the future. We drove south from Ohio to our many new opportunities in the southwest mountains of Virginia. Sue and I both grew up in Northeast Ohio, so we were in for a host of new experiences. As we drove along, the car got quieter and quieter. I was beginning to wonder why it was so quiet and what happened to our excitement and enthusiasm. 

I’d had a few experiences trucking around the South during college and held onto this idea that a lot of good dining places could look pretty ugly from the outside but be super on the inside. So, down we went to the center of Radford to have some breakfast the day after arriving at the Governor Tyler Hotel,  which was a premier place at one time; a reasonably nice place when we were there with a wonderful view of the New River (the property is now a small plaza).

So, it’s about 8 a.m. and I’m looking around for a nice downtown place for me and my bride to have a good, hearty, country breakfast together. We stroll down the main drag of Radford and the only place that even seems to be close to open is this one place. I say, “Let’s try this place.” Sue (who has been getting quieter since the day after the wedding) says something like, “Really…it looks kind of dirty.” I retort with, “Well … you know these country places often look kind of crummy from the outside but usually have really good food.” “Really,” she says again, with doubt only a new bride might respond to anything her groom would say. I guess, given everything that had happened up to that point (silence for one), I probably should have tuned in to the fact that we should just skip breakfast. Did we? Hardly.

In we go and park ourselves at a table. It seemed things were kind of slow that morning as we may have been the only guests dining at that particular time. We placed our order, tea for the bride, coffee for the groom.

Soon our server arrived with coffee for me and an iced tea for the new bride. Bride says, “This is iced tea. It’s 8 in the morning. I’d really prefer hot tea.” “Oh, okay” says our server. Hard to believe a bride could get any quieter but I think she did.

A few minutes later, the server returns with hot tea and to take our order. I order pancakes and Sue orders French toast. At this point in my three-day-old marriage, I’m trying to think what I might do differently, realizing that a whole lot of stuff was really going downhill fast…and it’s only about 8:15 a.m.!

I was adding milk to my coffee, but it didn’t seem to change color… it just stayed the same color as the junk the highway people put on the roads to patch up the cracks. Sue’s French toast was actually cooked in lard, I think, and as such was kind of a mix of fried and burned …. smelled really funky. My pancakes kind of crumbled on each other when I tried to cut them …. actually fell off the fork, for some reason.

So, as things were going along so well, we suddenly were surprised when this gush of smoke came roaring out of the kitchen, apparently from a grease fire. The server came running out, hollering something we didn’t understand and we kind of figured it was time to go. We headed to the door to pay our bill (which I think we did) and to be sure we didn’t become casualties on our honeymoon. I think it was sometime on the way out that Sue screamed, “I don’t want to be married anymore!” 

We’ve been married close to 48 years now and ever since this event, whenever we are anywhere out for food…anywhere, Sue always says, “Hot tea, please.”

Photo courtesy of Pat O’Connor