Almost Brained By A Crashing Chandelier

This is a combo: dinner AND holiday from hell story. When I was 11 years old we went to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner. This was in New Jersey and we went to a famous inn with roots back to the revolutionary war. My parents, grandmother, and three siblings were seated in the “ballroom” at a round table for 8 (like the kind at a wedding). We ordered and soon enough our food arrived. About 2 minutes after the food was served, I heard screams from a nearby table. Almost instantly, a giant iron chandelier crashed onto our table! The amazing thing was that the huge arms of the chandelier landed between all the people at our table. It had fallen from a 20-25 foot high ceiling and landed just right on the table so that none of us were hit. People all around us were taking pictures and the management hustled us out to the lobby to see if we were alright. Then they actually asked us if we wanted to be reseated! Needless to say, we went home. Scrambled eggs and toast was the entree that year. We never went back to that “historic inn.”  This was back in the day when lawsuits were not as prevalent as they are today, and we just considered ourselves lucky not to have been brained by the chandelier!

Tagged as: accident, holiday, owner/manager