The Sign in Front of the Shoney’s That Closed During COVID Still Reads WE HOPE TO REOPEN SOO – Dan Leach

January 18, 2026

And given the year we’ve had–I am hoping we can all reopen soo. I am hoping, stuck at the worst red light in the city of Summerville, surrounded by husks that couldn’t cut the new normal, that I can still use a word like ‘hoping’ and not feel naive as the boarded-up windows and graffitied doors tell me these are my options, and there’ll be no off menu ordering today: (1) love the Shoneys that is, (2) love the Shoneys that might be, (3) shut the fuck up about the Shoneys that was, the one I actually love, as that place has the same odds of being resurrected as the faded red awning swinging tattered from its brackets. I am hoping (despite my options) that SOO’s lost N is not actually lost at all. That somewhere back in that really bad year, after holding on for as long as it could, it slipped (as consonants sometimes do) down into the grass at the base of the sign, to sleep for a season alongside the scrapped tread and smashed cans. I am, as the light turns green and the driver behind me leans on his horn, reminding myself that, on occasion, history can hope its way into a liveable revision. If this is true–and as I wave at the angry driver and ease forward, I choose to believe that it is–then all I need to do is turn around and park my car and ignore the mess and also ignore my feeling stupid and get down on my knees and search for the N until I find it or it’s too dark to continue. I can still manage that–I can still search for something in light that is failing.