By Elisabeth Strillacci

SALISBURY — Sometimes things have to circle around to the start before we realize it was where we were meant to be all along.

Such is the case for Tranise Brown and Food Truck Tuesdays. This is the fourth year for the popular Tuesday night attraction that is returning to where it started — at the Reach Church on Horah Street.

“We’ve participated in a lot of different events at the church, but there was a mixup in the paperwork at the start years ago,” said Brown. So for the first year, Food Truck Tuesdays was in Spencer.

The next year, the trucks found a home at the Rowan County Fairgrounds, where for two years, three seasons of the year families and friends could gather on Tuesday nights for a wide variety of food and typically some entertainment.

And then tragedy came knocking unexpectedly. Brown and her husband, Travis TJ Fennel, had created the Food Truck Tuesday event together. The two were a matched set, where you saw one, you saw the other. They thrived on community involvement, and the events and activities they planned and executed is endless. But this was truly their pride.

But in early March of 2024, Fennel suffered a heart attack and died.

Brown didn’t stop, but the loss of her other half, she said, rocked her to her core.

“After losing Travis, I questioned if I should go on,” said Brown. “Yes we did it together, but when you came out, Travis was the one you saw at the gate, he parked people, he greeted people, he was the face of the event. I was in the background, in the car or walking around, but quiet. He was the one everyone saw and knew. And I thought for a second, maybe I should bury Food Truck Tuesdays with Travis and let it end with him.”

At the same time she was learning that she was no longer going to be welcome at the fair grounds because they were going to start their own food truck event, she was realizing that in her journey through her loss, she had grown closer to God, and that also affected how she wanted to go forward.

“I decided that I didn’t want to do anything in the city again if it didn’t have a connection to God,” said Brown. She explored having the event at the Salisbury Civic Center, but the city said the facility had never held such a large event on an ongoing basis, and wasn’t sure it could handle it.

“And then I heard this voice that said if you put it back where it belongs, it will prosper,” said Brown. “I think losing Travis made me see that God is real. I was living with an angel all this time and I didn’t know it. You cannot live with two heart valves, you need four, and Travis only had two. And yet all these years, he was here. An angel right here with me.”

And the reason they created Food Truck Tuesdays remains, she said. Families are more fragmented than ever these days, and they wanted to give back some quality family time, one day a week families could come together for dinner and fun.

Food Truck Tuesdays will restart this coming Tuesday, March 18, at the Reach Church from 4-8 p.m., with an open house Saturday, March 14 from 1-4,

“There will be slightly fewer trucks, but there will be enough,” said Brown, who said she couldn’t thank the truck operators enough for their loyalty, saying almost all have been with her from the start.

She also offered her thanks to Pastor Bradley Taylor “for his yes. He has always been the silent support and voice behind everything I do. Reach is more than a church, it’s a support system. They support everything you do, and I am so excited to share this vision with my church.”

And her desire to have an event at the Civic Center panned out in a different way. Brown holds line dancing classes at the center on Monday nights. The classes are free, open to the public and any age is welcome. The classes have only been in place for two weeks but is rapidly growing. More than 50 came the first night and more than 75 the second.

Brown said she bought the name Food Truck Tuesdays because once again, she got the message that it was important.

“Now that food trucks have become so popular, I see that was a good thing to do,” she said. “I wish everyone success, of course, but Travis and I built Food Truck Tuesdays up from nothing, and I think people know us. So that name belongs to us, legally.”

There will be be parking available at the church for the event on Tuesdays, but Brown said accessibility is also going to be easier in this location.

“We heard from college students when we were at the fair grounds that it could be hard for them to get there,” she said. “Now we are right in their back yard (of Livingston) and in a busy Salisbury neighborhood that I hope will be much easier for a lot of people to get to. I’m just looking forward to seeing a lot of familiar faces and a lot of new faces Tuesday night.”