Susan and I are sticklers for eating at local restaurants while away from home. McDonald’s is McDonald’s no matter where you go, but local restaurants are where you find the local food and local flavor. Most often, it’s where you’ll find the local people, too.

This past summer while vacationing in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, we ate breakfast at the Mountain Lodge Restaurant. We were driving south down Parkway (the main road that runs through the center of Gatlinburg) in search of breakfast when we passed a sign welcoming us to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We quickly did a u-turn, and discovered the Mountain Lodge Restaurant just outside the entrance to the park.

The restaurant’s name fit. The building was made of wood that smelled like it had been cut the day before. It had a green metal roof, rocking chairs on the porch, and a view of the Smoky Mountains off to the south. The sign out front said “MOUNTAIN LODGE RESTAURANT” and had a picture of a lodge at the base of a mountain range. That kind of summed the place up.

Inside, a dozen middle-aged waitresses were in charge. Every one of them had long, straight hair, homemade dresses that looked like patchwork quilts, and accents as thick as the coffee. They were the opposite of the cookie-cutter waitresses I often encounter, the ones that are trained to touch customers 2.6 times per meal and sign checks with a heart over the letter “i” to increase their tip. These women were real. It wouldn’t surprise me if every waitress there went by two names, like Peggy Sue, or Mary Jo.

Susan had the blueberry pancakes topped with powdered sugar. Morgan ordered a cinnamon roll, a Mountain Lodge specialty. I’m an egg, meat and potato guy, and orderd a plate that arrived with too much of all three.

We have favorite restaurants all over the country. In Chicago, we get our Italian beef sandwiches from a place called the Oasis Beef Hut. Every time we’re in Denver, no matter how dirty the place gets, we still go to Casa Bonita. We stop at the same White Castle every time we drive through St. Louis. There’s a 50’s diner somewhere right off I-44 in Missouri — I couldn’t tell you the name, but we’ve eaten there at least three times.

As I sipped my coffee and Morgan licked the last drops of icing from her plate, Susan said, “We’ll have to come back to this place.” The place felt timeless, like it hadn’t changed in fifty years, and that fifty years from now it would still be exactly the same.

On November 28, 2016, the raging wildfires in Tennessee moved into the southern tip of Gatlinburg and burned the Mountain Lodge Restaurant to the ground.

Occasionally, at night, I dream about Magic World, a theme park my family visited on our way to the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. Magic World was located in Pigeon Forge, ten miles north of the Mountain Lodge Restaurant in Gatlinburg. Magic World was a theme park that had been built on a budget. The animatronics weren’t quite as good as the ones at Showbiz Pizza and the dinosaurs scattered around the park didn’t seem to match the overall theme, but my memories of the place, even though I was only eight years old at the time, are very fond. I always dreamed of taking my kids there someday, but when local real estate prices boomed, the park was priced out of business and closed its doors in 1996. When, on occasion, I drive past the Pigeon Forge exit on I-40, I can see in my mind’s eye where the park used to stand. When I dream about it, I remember the dinosaurs, the diving show, the UFO and the magic carpet ride. I remember it all, and when I wake up and remember its gone it bums me out every single time. It’s the places that are gone that haunt me the most.

RIP, Mountain Lodge Restaurant. I’ll see you in my dreams.