Everyone has their favorite place to eat, a spot that they know shelling out $20 or $30 for a meal for two is worth it because of good service, impressive décor and a sense of being a home away from home. Even when they travel away from where they live, there are some places that make you glad you opted not to cook dinner or throw together a sandwich for lunch.

For my sweetheart, Todd, and I, there was a place in Eagle River, Wisconsin, that we loved to go to for a meal called Soda Pops. Of course, I had discovered the tiny community near the Wisconsin-Michigan border several years earlier, and when Todd and I first started seeing each other, I knew I wanted him to experience the joy I felt when I found a community that inspired several romance novels.

The place was decked out 1950s-style, with your jukebox in one spot and other icons like classic-looking gas pumps spread throughout the rest of the restaurant, all connected by a black checkerboard motif. While we definitely enjoyed the food, what we really loved were the variety of specialty sodas in the glass bottles, sodas that still used real cane sugar instead of the funky sweeteners you find in most sodas today. There was something almost patriotic about the place.

However, Soda Pops also stood out for Todd because near the restaurant was a second storefront that sold soda-brand memorabilia. Todd has a thing for all things Coca-Cola, and being someone who loves shopping more than any housewife, he loved perusing the merchandise after a good meal and coming home with something that bore the red logo on it, whether it was the modern one or something retro—like the restaurant itself.

Over this past weekend, Todd and I were talking about how we were long overdue for a trip back to Eagle River. Todd was talking about stopping at Soda Pops, and I could already see his eyes glaze over as he looked at all the pretties. I could almost hear him singing “These are a few of my favorite things.”

We’re both off the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and he thought that might be an interesting time to visit the community. It would definitely be interesting to see the place in person in the midst of winter, but I questioned how many businesses in Eagle River would be open during that period because it was the tail-end of the holiday season, with Christmas shopping long since completed.

Todd decided to look, and I eagerly waited to see if he was going to win this debate, or if I would be able to regale him with a “Told you so.”

He came back with the news that it seemed like Soda Pops was closed—permanently. He told me he checked out the website for the local chamber of commerce, and there was no listing for the business.

Knowing from experience that not every business in a community embraces its chamber, I decided to take a peek online for myself and did a search for Soda Pops in Eagle River. It turned out that Todd was correct—our favorite joint in Eagle River had gone the way of the dodo and died off, robbing us of future opportunities to bask in some Americana and enjoying some truly sweet sodas.

When Todd first told me of Soda Pops’ demise, my first thought went to the pandemic, with thoughts of “Cursed coronavirus!” and “Crappy COVID-19!” whirling in my head. Well, my research indicates that Soda Pops’ swan song came in 2019, the year before the dreaded disease we’ve all come to know and despise shut down many of our small businesses, some of them for good.

It’s been easy to blame the loss of local businesses on a disease that caused us to hide in our homes and turn them into offices, schools and fortresses of solitude. However, to learn that our hopping haven in Eagle River closed for some other reason was like finding out a beloved distant relative that you’d been sending Christmas cards to had been dead for years, and nobody had bothered to tell you.

At this point, a trip to Eagle River after Christmas isn’t set in stone. After all, there are plenty of other things to check out in the community’s beautiful downtown. However, it looks like my sweetheart and I will have to make alternative dining plans, as the fizz has gone out of our relationship with Soda Pops.