CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Time may never stand still, but at Rudeans, it comes mighty close.
“In here, everybody's family,” Rudean Harris, who has been serving up meals and memories in Charlotte for almost 60 years, said.
She opened the diner on Beatties Ford Road when she was a teenager.
“I started when I was 16, right here,” Harris said Thursday.
When she opened in 1957, Harris said the rent was $15 a week. It is a whole lot more now, and when her landlord told her the rent was going up again, she decided it was finally time to move on.
“They want more out of me, so I'm going. I can't stand no more. It's time for me to go,” she said as she sat in a back room of her restaurant, where the specialty is chicken wings.
Customers said it’s not just about the food.
“We don't come here for the menu, or we don't come here for the food. We come here for the camaraderie of the place,” Tommy Robinson said.
“This has been the watering, gathering hole for a whole lot of different people. That's why we love it,” added Vic Wilson, who’s been a regular for 40 years.
Now that Rudeans will be closing in a little more than a week, they don't know where they'll go next, but they do know it won't be the same.
"I don't know what I'm going to do when she closes. I reckon I'll just go home and cry," Randall Neal said.
"When this place closes, we're going to miss that lady. And when I say, that lady," added Wilson.
"It hurts to leave them. It really is hard," Harris said.
She will be serving her last meal on Sept. 17, and she's planning a party to celebrate.
Another small corner of Charlotte's history may be gone, but its heart and its soul will always be there.
"I'll be 76 years old in a couple of months, so it's time to do something else, or do nothing," Harris said.
Cox Media Group
