A Family Bids Farewell to Their Cheers and the Past

Just like the theme song from the sitcom Cheers, “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name,” Baumgarts was one of those places.

Baumgarts opened in 1987 and became a dining sensation in the neighboring town. It was a cross between a 1950’s soda shop and a Chinese/Japanese restaurant with offerings as vastly different as a milkshake and burger to chicken lo mein and sushi. And they did it all incredibly well. At the front of this eating establishment there was a large imposing counter with soda pop shop turquoise vinyl stools, the kind that swivel.

Behind this counter were Baumgarts’ employees looking busier than traders at the opening bell of the stock exchange. Not only were they fulfilling countless orders of house steamed dumplings with just the perfect ratio of noodle pocket and pork, but dishing out their homemade ice cream that put them on the map. The chocolate chips dotting the vanilla and mint ice creams were the size of a penny, the vanilla tasted as if the beans were just cracked inside and the fudge and toppings dripped off into those fluted metal ice cream bowls.

It was our place, my family and my place. It was where we went when we first moved to NJ from the city, trying to put down roots. It was where my daughter lost her first tooth in a dumpling as she sat across from my mom. It is where my daughter found out she had a baby brother, and screamed into the phone, “Did he come out of your vagina?” Her horrified and blushing grandparents grabbed the phone and quickly cast their eyes downward to avoid the stares of other patrons.

It was the place we celebrated, shared, loved and gathered with our family and friends. Once my son threw up in his new clean as a whistle white basketball sneakers after scarfing down too much of the ice cream special, the “strongman.” I guess his stomach wasn’t that strong. The best part of the strongman is that we all took part in this guilty pleasure and my kids learned to share, swooping our spoons into the perfectly chocolate dusted bowl.

So when word spread that Baumgarts was going to close down after 34 years, we gasped, with memories flooding us all and quickly made our plan to go as a family to bid our place farewell. It made me think about how songs create that type of relationship, feeling as if they solely belong to the listener. Over the weekend I overheard women at the nail salon talking about Baumgarts closing, and even that night people dining nearby were making their plans to have their final meal at this extraordinary food anomaly.

The food, a hodgepodge of the intersection of cultures and place in time, was beloved, not just by us but by so many. We took a friend from Long Island there every time they visited and during one visit our friend looked us straight in the face and admitted that he “hated” Baumgarts. We gasped, shocked and considered this blasphemy. This spot after all was our home away from home.

My kids, now adults and living on their own in the city, took an Uber after work just to meet us there to eat their favorites and say goodbye to a place that held a lifetime of happy memories, including meals spent with grandparents who are no longer alive. They insisted on a booth, just like Archie Bunker insisted on sitting in his chair. The four of us sat squished together and I thought about the passage of time and how when they were little the booth was more spacious. Those days they would argue about who would get to eat the last noodle, now they split it in two and marveled together at the taste. This meal was one of the most meaningful ones I have ever had, as it brought us full circle from then until now.

My kids are adults now and they have the capacity to love and cherish, even if it’s just a physical space or place in time. They savored and oohed and ahhed at every morsel, even to the strongman finale. But the real finale was them reenacting a photo they have continuously taken over the years. They sat side by side studying the original photo taken over a decade ago, posed themselves and asked me to capture what I believe is the most precious of all, their relationship that developed over house steamed dumplings and strongmen.