Bert’s Chuckwagon…The place I grew up.

Just a few minutes ago, I watched as the building I grew up in was torn down. The original Bert’s Chuckwagon, my family’s restaurant, was demolished to make way for a road expansion. While I did not technically live in the building, I spent enough time there over the course of my life that I almost could have. I, along with with my sister and two brothers, have been raised in and around the Chuckwagon. In fact, our family has its roots in this building, because it was in this place that my parents met for the very first time. I remember growing up hearing my mom tell the story of how her and my aunt’s car broke down and they needed to use a phone. So, they stopped in, and my parents saw each other. Even though the place had changed a lot from the time they met until the time when I knew the place, I still have carried the exact same mental image of their meeting since was very young…it’s something straight out of a movie, I can promise you.

My father purchased the restaurant in 1980…the year I was born. Literally, every single day of my life that I can remember has in one way or another be affected by the place. I remember that it was the first phone number I ever learned…even before our house number. That way, if I was ever lost, I could at least call him there to tell him where I was (and to ask him to bring me home a Coke). I remember being so small and still feeling like a king because I could eat anything I wanted. I remember the place by the swinging gate where my dad kept the candy. Eventually he sold so little of it that it was not worth keeping it anymore, but he still ordered some jolly rancher sticks for me because I loved them so much. I remember during the winter how my sister and I would huddle underneath the booth in the front room where the furnace was. I remember drinking hot chocolate and eating cereal out of small styrofoam bowls while the furnace heat just rolled over us. I remember when, on my first day working there at the age of 13, a female customer who was with her husband remarked on how cute it was that someone so small was working there. Even at 13, I was still pretty tiny. I remember how working there one day at the age of 14 or so was the first time a girl had ever given me her phone number…even though being as shy as I was I never had the nerve to call her. I remember all the great friendships I have made and maintained in that building. I remember all the times working with my dad and my brothers and my sister. I remember several times when I realized that I was actually tall enough to reach something that was previously too high up for me.

So many memories in that place that I could never begin to list them all. Before we closed, I tried to shoot as many photographs of the small little details of things that I knew I would want to remember, even if most people had never noticed them before. Right after we closed, though, I thought of a handful of things that I had forgotten. It’s hard sometimes to realize what little things you will miss when something is so ingrained in who you have always been that it is hard to recognize that it actually is a separate entity. And I know that I am not alone in this. So many people have expressed their love of the place that it has been very humbling for us. Just as the restaurant and the building itself are a part of me, it is a part of this city and many thousands of others who live near hear…and many who no longer live close by.

I will miss the place greatly. Even though our new location is amazing and much more along the style of what we as a family like, it still will never be the same as it was before. For the first time in my life, I am wholly and completely physically separated from where I was when I was very young. I don’t live in the same house I grew up in. I don’t even live in the same town as I did as a child. I don’t go to the same school, and our church moved to a different building when I was young. My grandparents are no longer here. There are a few small remaining vestiges tied to more fringe places of my youth, but the only major one that still was a part of me was that building. And now, it too is gone. I am only 30 and still fairly young, as many insist, but it is days like that I feel more closely the weight of passing years bearing down. All things must pass, and today that is more keenly felt than most. It is sad to see it go, yet at the same time, it reminds me to treasure what I do have and what I have been given. And above all, that makes me think of my family, and more so in this case, my father.

My dad has been such a steady and strong presence in my entire life. He has always been an incredibly hard worker, and yet even with the long hours he has usually worked, he was always willing to spend time playing soccer or baseball with me in the back yard. He was always there to help me in whatever way I asked…and even in many ways that I did not know to ask. True, he made mistakes with us as we grew up, and he would be the first to admit that. But, I have never once doubted his love for us, and I have known my entire life that there is nothing he would not do for my mom and us kids. Even though there were those times when I wished that he did not have to work as much as sometimes did, I knew that he was doing it for us…to take care of us. Now, as a husband and business owner myself, I understand even more how difficult of a line that is to walk –  between providing for those you love and providing your own self to them as much as you can possibly can. I remember when some years ago I began to see my father in a new light…view him from the perspective of someone other than this kid who lived with him for 25 years, and when I did this, I was overwhelmed with a new love and respect for him that I had not known before. I began to realize that it is more important to be thankful for what he has done for me than to judge him for what he has not done. Our mistakes and failures do not show who we really are…how we move on and rebuild after we have fallen is truly what shows the measure of a person. Even though I never had major problems with my parents as a teenager, there was always that teenage tainted view of parents as unneeded wardens who simply restrict and hold back. When that truly left, though, it was such an amazing revelation. It even changed the way I viewed my dad’s sense of humor. I remember being at that point where I felt like I could not one more time hear some of those cheesy jokes I had heard 1,000 times all ready, but then suddenly, I saw his humor in a different light. I laughed more than I had in years, because it was not about the funny originality of the joke; it was the joy of seeing my father being himself, and appreciating every single moment I have left on this earth with him. This became even more pronounced when my grandfather died a few years ago…every moment with my dad and everyone I love became all the more precious to me. I just see now more than ever how much God has blessed me in this life…far more than I could ever have deserved.

I am so proud of what my father has accomplished. He has taken an old, beat up restaurant, that was losing so much money that the previous owner had to get out, and transformed it, year after year, into an icon in this city and in the hearts of thousands of people. I know, in the deepest parts of who I am, that very, very few people could have done what he did. He is a treasure to me, my family, and so many others, and there is no man on this earth that I love and respect more than him.

Dad, I am so proud to have you as my father, and I would not change that for anything in this world. Thank you for everything and all the things I will never even realize you did for us. You are one in a million, and I hope and pray that I can become even a fraction of what you have.

Here are some photographs of the building from various times…mostly during the final few days of the old Bert’s being open until the demolition this morning.  Hope you enjoy them.

Joel