— Just as the Limestone County Commission voted to buy the mostly empty L&S Foodland shopping center on North Jefferson Street, the origin of the amusing “1-Hour Seafood” sign that stands there was solved.

In the aged shopping center stands a sign with a Dutch maid standing above the words “Bon Secour,” which means safe harbor in French. Below that are the words ‘1-Hour” and below that is the word “Seafood.” The effect is a Dutch maid standing above a sign that reads: “Bon Secour 1-hour Seafood.”

Perplexed by the sign, The News Courier ran a photograph and asked readers to explain its origin.

Danny Johnson told us the sign was erected in the 1960s for a 1-hour dry-cleaning business named “Dutch Maid.” Later, he said, the seafood sign was added.

If you look closely at the sign, you can see the owner had painted over the words “Dutch Maid,” turned that section of the sign upside down and repainted it with the words “Bon Secour.” However, the phrase “1-Hour” remained along with the icon of the maid.

Joe Crawford, a former Limestone County resident living in Prospect, Tenn., confirmed the same and said the restaurant went out of business in a short time.

“The sign has been an enigma for years, but, to the best of my knowledge, the cleaners was first,” he said.

Bill Looney fully unraveled the mystery. He told us his father and mother, Lewell and Audrey Looney, opened the restaurant in 1968.

“They sold fresh seafood, that was all,” Looney said. “Then, in 1969, they opened a fresh seafood restaurant on Browns Ferry Road, there is a church there now. One side sold fresh seafood and the other side was a cute little restaurant with red checkered table cloths and candles on each table.”

Looney wasn’t home for the opening of Bon Secour in the L&S shopping center because he was serving in the Air Force until 1969, he said. But, when he returned home, they put him to work.

“My brother Larry, who is now deceased, and I shucked oysters until we couldn’t shuck

anymore,” Looney said. “My sister, Sue, helped my mother cook and serve in the restaurant.  Everyone dearly loved the place but my mother worried more about her customers’ pocketbooks more than her own. She refused to raise prices in the restaurant, and that proved to be the downfall of the Bon Secour Restaurant.” 

Longtime Athens High School band director and current Athens State University Community Band director Dan Havely remembers eating at Bon Secour.

“We weren’t able to get raw oysters and things like that up here in Athens, so it was kind of a revelation at the time to go out and get fresh seafood,” Havely said. “It was the only place without going to Huntsville to get Gulf seafood.”