Before I got the job with the Examiner, when I was as young as ten years old, around 1951, I would often go with my father to work. We got up early, before 5 a.m. He would drive his old 1939 Plymouth to the bakery and park on “A” street. He had to load his truck. For a few years I went with my father every Saturday and more in the summer.
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| Dad's truck was like this one. |
When I went with him, my father had a route that covered the Arcata Mad River Bottoms, Korbel, Blue Lake and Trinidad. He had three markets and three restaurants in the town of Blue Lake. It took about about two or more hours to deliver the bread, pies and rolls. I usually put the bread on the shelves. It was always packed in wooden boxes then. Sometimes we would get way ahead of time because of my help, and my dad let me go down to the creek that ran under the town. Sometimes I took advantage of him and played around down there too long, but he was always kind to me and was patient.
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| My father Tom Stark |
We delivered pies to restaurants and the next day Dad picked up the pie tins. Dad's truck was like the one in the picture. One summer day it was hot. We had both front doors of the truck open. The pie tins were stacked high next to where I sat on the side of the engine cover. We went around a corner going up a hill toward Trinidad. The wind blew in from the ocean and out through those open folding doors. It caught those tin pie pans and blew them right passed me out the door, and they rolled down the highway. It sounded like a tinny explosion. Dad stopped the truck, and we both ran after them. He called that place "Pie Pan Turn" from then on. It was fun.
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| From the Portsmith Herald Dec 21, 1954 |
It was December 21, 1954. We went on the route. We got to E & O Market on Highway 299. I was stacking Big Loaf on the shelves and Dad's route supervisor showed up.
He was talking to Dad, and WHAM!!!! CRASH!!! BLAMMM!!! It sounded like a freight train had hit the north end of the building. Bottles flew off the walls. Glass milk bottles crashed on to the floor. The smell of wine spread throughout the store, and that supervisor sprinted out the nearest door. Through my mind went that prediction that the world was ending today, but it was an earthquake! Dad told the story over and over the next few days and enjoyed emphasizing and comparing how that tall long legged supervisor galloped out of the building while I finished stacking the Big Loaf then wandered around the building looking at the mess. Dad never said how he felt.
Back to 1958 on my first days working, I only worked dumping hamburger buns for three or four hours per day, then I would help the same two women take the pastry out of the pans they were baked in and put them in the cardboard trays so they could be wrapped. Then I did other odd jobs.
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| This is the sifter. I did the job that this guy is doing for a while. |
At first the sifter would get ahead of me, but soon I got so I could dump it fast enough so that I would have to stop dumping so the sifter could catch up.
Flour would fly in the air and after a few minutes of working hard I would sweat and the flour would be caked on my arms.
I took it as a challenge to keep the sifter full when I worked there. Alan Koenig told me that later, they had flour delivered in bulk, and no one needed to dump it.
I worked dumping the buns and doing the odd jobs for a few months, and then Mr. Koenig told me I was going to wrap bread at Butternut Bakery which was at 4th and Commercial streets a couple of blocks away.
You can get this 8 1/2 X 11 full color book at lulu.com. Click on the button at the top right of this page.
You can get this 8 1/2 X 11 full color book at lulu.com. Click on the button at the top right of this page.
