Where The Lights Came On

When we heard Tyler’s Taproom was closing, we weren’t all that surprised. It had fallen out of our regular rotation of Friday-night restaurants--so it was logical to assume that was true for the other Apex residents who comprise our town’s most significant consumer demographic: the casual-dining family with reasonably young children.

With its friendly, knowledgeable bartenders, who could answer all your craft beer questions and gracefully fade in and out of conversation with you as you hungout--Tyler’s had always been a great place to sit at the bar. That mystique was kind of lost if you were relegated to the dining room--with the strollers and straw cups and non-beerdrinkers for whom “water will be fine, thanks”. Even with kids, though, we still made it work. About the time we’d start to contemplate a second pint was usually the moment one of the kids would announce they needed to poop or the wheels would just generally fall off in terms of our sons’ attention span for sitting...but still. It was usually worth the extra effort for a fun beer on a Friday night so close to home. Was it as satisfying as a nice long perch at the bar, where you could chat, watch the game, eat appetizers, and get beer samples before committing to your next drink order? Of course not. As parents of young kids, you take what you can get. And sometimes just the memory of fun times past is enough to keep you coming back.

Although we met years before moving to Apex, Ray and I have spent most of our married life walking distance from this bar.

We stopped in for beers after making an offer on the house we now own, dumbfounded, shell shocked, and giddy with the excitement and anxiety of our first major purchase as married adults.

We walked to it in the snow the first winter we lived here, trudging happily down the greenway into the quiet shopping center where nothing was open but Tyler's, where we chatted with the staff and clinked glasses with the handful of other Apex residents brave enough to venture out.

We met there after a long day at work to unwind with a beer and then take the glass home, whenever their rotating give-aways offered a unique addition to our extensive collection of pint glasses.

We camped out there on Sunday afternoons during football season, buying cheap buckets of Coors Light and learning the hard way that I was too old to eat things like Carolina Nachos (that tasted SO GOOD, but kept my stomach wrecked til Tuesday).

We celebrated New Year’s at Tyler's more than once, leading a big group of friends there and back along a path punctuated by street lights, then moonlight, followed by the muffled drunken guffaws of old friends acting younger than our years.

Ray and his brothers even established their own family holiday at Tyler’s, walking up there once a year during March Madness to watch basketball all day, then wandering back home after dark in a state ranging from ridiculous to responsible as the years progressed.

When I was pregnant with my first son, I found new reasons to appreciate Tyler’s--like not charging for club soda, serving Kaliber (the only non-alcoholic beer that was more tasty than depressing), and having the most pristine women’s bathroom in town just around the corner from the back bar. Back then, it always smelled like bleach, which was a welcome scent to a pregnant lady who was peeing every 15 minutes! And after we’d had our first son, that go-to place from our childless days became a place to get back to. Somewhere familiar--and family-friendly--that reminded us of who we’d been just a few months before.

Six years ago at this time, we’d been holed up in the house for most of the summer with our first newborn, due to record heat and a persistent case of mastitis that had left no one in the mood for much. But by our first son’s first Labor Day weekend, the oppressive fog of my illness and summer's heat had finally lifted. For the first time in months, we walked up to Tyler’s for lunch, sat outside, drank a day-beer like the old days, and actually enjoyed ourselves as a family for the first time since becoming parents. One of our favorite pictures of our son was taken that day as he peered over my shoulder on the patio at Tyler’s. His previously blank newborn face had given way to the most genuine, intentional smile. We still refer to that lunch and that picture as the moment he became a person, the day “the lights came on”.

That little person is 6 years old now, with a little brother who’s 4. They both do tons of things intentionally at this point and keep us plenty busy with their mixed bag of genuine emotions!

This past Sunday morning, Ray and I scrolled across a Facebook memory with that iconic photo of our oldest son from that gorgeous day at Tyler’s 6 years ago. We’d heard Tyler’s would soon be closing it’s doors, so Ray suggested we walk up there with the boys and have lunch one last time. We rode bikes along the greenway first, because our 6-year-old recently shed his training wheels and was eager for the practice--but opted to park the bikes and walk to our ultimate destination, knowing that not even the adults could handle that last incline past the Kohl’s on a bike without dissolving into cardiac arrest. Plus, the 4-year-old was already getting whiny on his Big Wheel, so we knew that simply walking might prove to be overly ambitious on its own.

Luckily, we made it--without a single request to ride piggy-back or “Come-To-Jesus” speech through gritted teeth as motivation. We arrived in a celebratory mood, having conquered this latest milestone of walking our kids to a restaurant, unassisted by strollers or good old-fashioned fear.

As we wrapped up our lunch and the kids started getting restless, timed perfectly as usual with the arrival of our second beers--we became acutely aware that the music playing in the restaurant was eerily personal, like “Amsterdam” from the slideshow Ray made of our big Europe trip the year we bought the house and “Sweet Disposition”, which we’d danced to in the kitchen with our first son on his first Christmas morning. When “This House Is Not For Sale” came on as I walked my youngest son to the bathroom before we left, the naked nails where wall-hangings had already been removed made me feel like I was trapped in a bad Lifetime movie that was daring me not to cry. So when “Chasing Cars” came on (from the playlist Ray made for our wedding), we knew it was time to sign the check and get the hell out of there before both of us had to explain to the kids why Mommy and Daddy were balling in the middle of the restaurant.

As we exited Tyler's for the last time, Ray gave me a quick hug in recognition of our shared, unexpected wave of emotion. As we walked away with our kids in tow, a woman about our age was walking towards it from the opposite direction on the sidewalk. “Y’all just came from Tyler’s, didn’t you,” she said knowingly, adding “I love the glasses!” as she passed us and continued on. Ray and I automatically assumed she meant the sunglasses he and I had hastily put on to hide the hot, sentimental tears that were now streaming down our cheeks from behind them. But then we looked at our kids and realized she meant the glasses our kids had made out of Wikisticks from the little packet of diversions that came with Tyler’s kids’ meal and were still wearing as we walked down the sidewalk. Anyone who’s ever been to Tyler’s with kids has helped make Wikistick glasses just like those. And that lady’s instant recognition of where we’d  been was a fitting testament to the fact that Tyler’s was part of the landscape for many of us in this town. Even if we ultimately didn’t go often enough to keep it open, we knew it well and made our share of memories there.

Tyler’s had a great run, but its fate is a grim reminder of what happens to local businesses when you forget to support them. I guess that’s how we’ve ended up with a mattress store in every vacancy and a public storage complex every quarter mile along the highways in and out of town. I prefer to think something cool will end up in that spacious end-cap, with its breezy outdoor seating and two wood-paneled bars…Lately, that seems unlikely, but I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Most often, change comes so gradually that we barely notice unless memorable circumstances draw attention to the ending of an era--like the start of a new school year, the changing of the seasons, or the closing of the neighborhood bar that lubricated our path from adulthood to parenthood. Our nostalgia over the closing of Tyler’s took us a bit by surprise, but I realize that’s mostly because it illuminates the gradual and yet startling changes in ourselves and the little family we’ve found ourselves raising. Because the childish, childless, young professionals we were when we first walked into this bar were almost unrecognizable in the couple walking out: 11 years married, twice parents of sons, worn out and weary in many ways, but wonderfully aware that these years are the best years--filled with hard work and hardship and heart-strings plucked raw from the barrage of emotion parenthood compels. There are--and there will be--other places of significance in the grand arc of our family’s story. But we’ll always remember Tyler’s as our first go-to place...our first place to get back to...the place the lights came on in this little family we made together.

In the meantime, we know change is bittersweet--in our careers, in our kids, in our neighborhood shopping center…and we’re grateful to the Tyler’s staff for making it a special place for our family. We wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors and look forward to whatever eventually fills that magical space on the corner. Unless, of course, it’s mattresses. Because really, Apex. We can do better than that.