There are more things than I can count that I miss about growing up in the Southern Piedmont of North Carolina: catching fireflies at dusk, the excitement of a once-every-couple-of-years snowfall that closed down school, riding my bike to Puckett Brothers Store for an ice cold glass bottle of Coca-Cola and a cellophane sleeve full of salty peanuts to drown in it, and, perhaps most of all, Laney’s Fish Camp’s perfectly breaded popcorn shrimp, tarter sauce, onion rings, hushpuppies and sour slaw on a Friday or Saturday night.
We had a local fish camp in our Long Creek community, but it never compared to Laney’s, which was a twenty to thirty minute drive away in Mooresville. The Laney brothers had been frying up catfish, flounder, and shrimp almost as long as I had been alive. The restaurant opened in 1966, when I was one year old. If Mom and Dad weren’t too tired to make the drive after working all day on Friday, we would head north on Interstate 77 as early as humanly possible to avoid the line. Often, we had to wait half an hour to an hour just to get in the door, but it was so worth it.
As soon as we were lucky enough to get seated, our family of four would order two orders of onion rings. To this day, five decades later, I have never had onion rings anywhere that were better than Laney’s. They cut the slices very thin and coated them with the most delicious batter that came out of the oil bath golden brown and crispy. The last step was a generous shake of salt. The two bowls piled high with rings would barely hit the table before we were devouring them. I often got my tongue burned because I could not wait long enough for them to cool down before diving in.
When I was very young my meal was made up of the onion rings, hushpuppies, and the deviled crab from Mom’s and Dad’s seafood platters. When I got older, I most often got the popcorn or “Calabash” shrimp. Laney’s used a batter for their shrimp that featured a good amount of cornmeal. Their batter was unlike any I have ever had anywhere else. I loved dunking my crunchy shrimp and hushpuppies in their equally unique tartar sauce which was a mayonnaise/dill pickle/onion mixture that was to die for!
It was at Laney’s that I first learned to munch on the tails of my catfish (the smaller the fish, the better they tasted) and to appreciate the yummy moist meat on a whole flounder, fried or broiled to perfection. Laney’s also cornered the market on slaw as far as I was concerned. Theirs was a vinegar and oil, salt and pepper, shredded cabbage masterpiece with just the right amount of sour to it to offset the little bit of sweet in their poofy round hushpuppies. (One of the Laney brothers, Mickey, was the person who first told me the story of how hushpuppies got their name. He said that Confederate soldiers fried up the concoction to toss to their dogs when the Union army approached … thus “hushing the puppies” with that delectably simple food. Prior to that, I assumed the name came from the fact that the hushpuppies they served as an appetizer as soon as we sat down hushed the growling of my stomach!)
In addition to the wonderful food, Laney’s was a place to bump into neighbors, friends and family. I will never, ever, forget one such encounter that took place there. My maternal grandfather died five years before I was born. I had often looked at a picture of him that my mom had in a frame on the bookshelf and thought him so handsome in his suit and debonair hat. He looked like the g-men I saw in movies from the forties and fifties. Since Mom was estranged from her mother my whole life, I knew little of him or his family that I couldn’t learn from that one picture. One Saturday night as we sat in a booth at Laney’s I glanced over my Mom’s shoulder and could not believe my eyes. I could have sworn my late grandfather was sitting in the booth behind her. I leaned in and whispered, “Mama … there is a man behind you that looks EXACTLY like your father.” I must’ve looked as freaked out as I felt, for she turned around immediately and looked at the man behind her. Suddenly, she jumped from her seat and turned to their table and said, “Hello, Uncle Virgil!” The man seated directly behind her was her father’s brother, my great uncle, who I met for the first time that night. Mom hadn’t seen him in decades. After that chance meeting in Laney’s we began visiting him and his wife, Lura, at their turkey farm in Statesville. This was the closest I ever came to seeing a ghost!
If we didn’t make it to Laney’s on Friday for one reason or another we often went on Saturday nights. I loved the times we met my Grandma Cartner and various aunts and uncles there for a delicious meal and an hour or so of family time around the table. Laney’s was pretty much halfway for us from Huntersville and them from Harmony, NC, so it was the perfect place to meet. Into her eighties Grandma loved seafood and once she stopped driving at night we would go pick her up and take her to King of the Sea in Statesville because it was too far to go all the way to Harmony, then back to Mooresville to Laney’s, then back to Harmony, then home. King of the Sea was a good fish camp, but it wasn’t Laney’s. Our visits to Laney’s dwindled, though, because it was more important to spend the time with Grandma. By the time she passed away in 1999, I was long married and living in Coulwood, another twenty minutes farther away from Mooresville and Laney’s. We went, but not as often as I would have liked. When we made it up there, we couldn’t help but notice that the crowd had dwindled some. There was no line at the door at six o’clock like we were used to seeing. Most of the patrons were at least our age and most were older. There didn’t seem to be all the families with small children that had patronized the restaurant when I was growing up.
I was so sad to learn that Laney’s would be closing in March 2013. During that month we made the trek to Mooresville at least once a week. We were there on their last night, Saturday, March 30th, 2013. For that last month, the restaurant was packed every time we went. So many locals were as sad as we were to see it go after 47 years! Lamar, Mickey and Larry Laney and their various family members and employees who had worked as cooks, bus boys, waitresses, and food runners stayed until the last customer had been served that last night. I hope they knew how much joy their food and great service brought all of us who were fortunate to be regulars over the years.
It has now been over a decade since they closed and my mouth is still watering thinking about their onion rings, hushpuppies, tartar sauce, sour slaw and savory seafood. Equally, I miss the atmosphere, the family time and the York Peppermint Patty mom and I always had to have on the way out the door.
Robin's Eggs 