Yesterday, I promised to post my essay about things I'd learned as a very little girl in my grandmother's bakery. That's my grandam in the picture above. Her name was Elizabeth Doonan Studham, and stern as she was, I loved her very much.
Lessons In Grandma’s Bakery
By Nancy Julien Kopp
My mother and I spent
our mornings in the working area of my grandmother’s bakery during my early
years, from 1939 to 1943. I picked up some good habits and learned a few things
in a painless way. I watched and I listened. There was no need for a formal
lecture.
One of those good habits concerned drinking tea. A long,
narrow table, covered with a soft-green oilcloth sat parallel to the north wall
in the workroom of the small neighborhood bakery. The table offered a resting
place when Grandma, my mother and my Uncle Paul took breaks from the hours
spent on their feet. Thick white cups on matching saucers were set before each
of us and a plate of some fresh-baked delicacy graced the center of the table.
Grandma brewed the tea in a large brown pot. “You can only
make good tea in a brown pot,” she often said as she tipped it enough to pour
the steaming brown liquid into our cups. She filled my cup half-full, then
added milk and a bit of sugar. “English tea for you,” she’d say before she sank
onto the bench that ran the length of the table. She added some sugar to her
tea and passed the plate of sweet rolls or cookies or whatever it happened to
be that day. She conditioned me to crave a little something sweet when having a
cup of tea.
Our tea breaks weren’t long for there was always a new task
waiting for these three members of my family. When we’d eaten every crumb on
the treat plate and drained our cups, Grandma and Uncle Paul went back to the
baking, and my mother relieved the girl who worked in the front room serving
customers. I’d kneel on the bench and wait for Adeline to come to the table and
pour her own cup of tea. Grandma brought her a small plate with a treat on it,
and I chattered while Adeline savored both her tea and a rest.. She was young
and pretty with golden curls and always smiling or laughing.
I heard Grandma say one day that Adeline was a good worker
despite being so young. “Those Czech girls know how to work. I’d hire another
one to help her if I could afford it.” The bakery served as Grandma’s only
income, and she watched her pennies carefully. Adeline never complained about
low pay. When she finished her tea, she’d give me a hug and hurry back to the
front room to continue selling bakery goods from the case and taking orders for
later. I peeked around the edge of the doorway and watched as she wrapped the
purchases carefully and handed them to the customers along with her warm smile.
“There you go,” she’d say. “Come back soon.”
I wanted to go into that front room and spend my time with
Adeline. I wanted to talk to the customers, too, but it was forbidden
territory. My grandmother told me I must never go through that doorway. My
mother told me. My Uncle Paul told me. The lure of that front room with people
coming and going proved to be my undoing now and then. Once I started peeking
around the doorway, I inched my way through it, quiet as the proverbial church mouse.
I tried to stand behind the bakery cases and watch, but it never lasted long.
I’d feel a strong hand grasp my skinny upper arm, and I got pulled, none too
gently, into the work room. Two things happened next. First came the scolding
followed by me being marched to the side of a large refrigerator. “Now you
stand there and think about what you did,” Uncle Paul said. He turned me so
that my back was against the fridge, and my face far away from that doorway
that lured me like a siren of the sea so many times.
Years later, when he had his own children, I overheard him
tell my mother how sorry he was that he’d made me stand by myself as punishment
for so long. “She was just a little girl,” he said, “and the time must have
been an eternity for her.” I spent the
half-hour watching all the activity around me--Grandma and my mother rolling
dough or slicing apples for pies, and Uncle Paul hoisting huge tins of flour
and sugar for them, and then he’d punch down the bread dough and begin shaping
it into loaves. I loved the yeasty aroma that drifted into every corner of that
big workroom. Sometimes I’d be able to see deliverymen come through the back
door toting everything from lard to flour to butter to sugar, milk and eggs.
Grandma got extra rations for her business during those WWII years. I learned
that making a business successful meant hard work and being careful with money.
Occasionally, Adeline came to the workroom to get more baked
goods for the cases. She didn’t dare talk to me during punishment time, nor
could I speak to her. But as she walked by, arms loaded with bread and cinnamon
rolls, she’d make a funny face and wink at me. I clapped my hands over my mouth
so I wouldn’t giggle. I learned that punishment was serious business, but it
didn’t mean the end of the world. Life would go on when I’d served my sentence.
When Uncle Paul gave me the signal, I dragged a flour tin
close to Grandma and climbed onto it so I could watch at the high table where
she worked. If she had nuts ready to use, I asked her, “Just one nut for me,
Grandma?” and she’d hand me one beautiful, big pecan. I had my one pecan every
day of the week. If she was making fancy tea sandwiches for a catering order,
I’d ask, “Just one for me, Grandma?” and she’d hand me one without a word. I
learned that even a little bit of something you crave is satisfying.
The mornings in Grandma’s bakery during the early 1940’s
remain a clear memory. I can see my grandma in her Mother Hubbard apron, hair
braided and wrapped atop her head like a crown. Her rimless glasses steamed
often from the heat of the ovens and hot water in the deep sink. I can see my
mother, young with a colored ribbon woven into her curls, apron wrapped around
her cotton dress darting me warning looks if I ventured near the doorway to the
front room. I see my Uncle Paul with his thick, blond hair swept straight back
from his forehead, a large flour sack towel tied around his waist for an apron.
At night, he performed as a magician wearing a tuxedo, but I never got see him
except in photos. I see Adeline running back and forth from the front to the
workroom, curls bouncing, with always a word or a pat for me.
It’s when I have a cup of tea now that these memories come
floating back to me. Once again, I am at the oil-cloth covered table with
Grandma pouring my English tea and handing me a sweet roll which smells of
yeast and cinnamon.
