Mike Burke
“We went there for everything we needed. We went there when thirsty, of course, and when hungry, and when dead tired. We went there when happy, to celebrate, and when sad, to sulk. We went there after weddings and funerals, for something to settle our nerves, and always for a shot of courage just before. We went there when we didn't know what we needed, hoping someone might tell us. We went there when looking for love, ... or trouble, or for someone who had gone missing, because sooner or later everyone turned up there. Most of all we went there when we needed to be found.”
J.R. Moehringer
“The Tender Bar”
Where everybody knows your name? Sure, but that doesn’t begin to approach it. It was where everybody needed and depended on you, and, in turn, where you needed and depended on everybody.
The food? The beer? The whiskey? The sports? Sure, they were great, but that’s not why we went to When Pigs Fly Restaurant and Lounge (okay, Bar ... we went to the bar) every day that we could. We went there to be with each other — customers and employees alike. I’ve never frequented a business where I cared for the people who worked there as much as I cared about my buddy sitting next to me or, in some cases, myself. And that care was returned to me, because an extended family began to form there nearly 20 years ago, and it continued to extend with nearly every new hire, and nearly every new customer to walk through the doors.
The first Pigs was on Bedford Road for about a year before it was relocated to Cas Taylors on Valley and North Mechanic streets on Cumberland’s West Side in 1992. On Tuesday evening owner Lisa Krampf closed those welcoming doors for the final time.
Say you had been away for two years, came back to Cumberland and stopped by Pigs. Sure, a bartender might be new, or the wait staff might be different, but you resumed just where you left off when you walked out the door two years ago.
I didn’t need a single thing from any one of those people, whom I spent so much time with over the past 17 years. I needed them. I needed to be with them, because by their mere presence, they provided something too abstract for me to understand — companionship, yes, but something quite different than companionship. It was something ... something so fulfilling it was good. And right. And perfect. And whatever it is, I will cherish it wholeheartedly, miss it terribly, and take it with me forever.
Is it like death? That’s too stark. But there is certainly an absence, a void that every single one of us is already feeling.
What are we going to do, now?
Where will we go?
How can we all still be together without really trying to be?
What’s going to happen to the Pigs employees?
What’s going to happen to us?
We will make it, of course, but will we find another place? Oh, sure, we’ll end up somewhere, but we know we won’t all be together the way we’ve been for seemingly forever. If you’re lucky for it to happen at all, lightning strikes in a bottle (pardon the pun) just once in a lifetime. This, we understand. But, wow! What a run. We just never wanted to believe it would end. In fact, that notion was never permitted to cross our minds.
Cumberland’s Mensa chapter convened there. Things were discussed. New issues were raised. Nothing was ever settled or concluded. We have nothing of any real significance to offer when we meet, we understand that. And, well ... we kind of thrive on it.
We lived and died with the Terps at Pigs, and we pretty much just died with the Orioles. But, by golly, didn’t Pigs come to the rescue with satellite television so we could watch our pal Aaron Laffey pitch?
We watched everything there, and we discussed it. We pretty much experienced everything there with each other, and we reveled in it. We laughed, we cried, we cursed, we kissed, we made up, we hugged and we raised our glasses to each and every one of us.
So many relationships ... I always said Pigs was to Cumberland what Rick’s Café Américain was to Casablanca. Everybody was safe there. Everybody was welcome there, and everybody was at home there — East Side, West Side, North End, South End.
Friendships were formed and sustained there with those whose paths we would never cross in any other circumstance.
We loved every step of it, every second of it. Wedding receptions, anniversary dinners, wakes, 49th birthday parties ... This community counted on Pigs to have it all and to host it all; to be a home to it all, as well as to all of us.
Like home, it gave us security, trust, consolation and love — all the intangibles.
“We went there for everything we needed ... Most of all we went there when we needed to be found.”
Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.
