52/435: Not Baked

[rejectomorph]

It was a bit cooler Thursday and the apartment peaked at 78 degrees this evening. I just got the windows open and the fan on and expect it will cool of quickly. Outdoors it's already down to 73, heading for a low of 59. More like June than May, but I can live with it.

Last night I only got about four hours of sleep, and had hamster wheel brain for quite a while. I'll be headed bedward earlier tonight, and hope to catch up with the loss. A sandwich might be devoured first, though I downed a large malted a couple of hours ago and might be able to get by with some cheese and crackers.

Down to my last two donuts and I still haven't arranged any new substitutions. I'll probably just try to make do with cookies. I have a lot of those on hand, though few are of the highest quality. I miss the convenience I enjoyed in childhood of bakery trucks plying the suburban streets. Helms Bakery had some great donuts, and cream puffs of a quality that is simply unavailable in our fallen world. I'd gladly sacrifice half of Congress to a white whale for one of those.

Comments

[rafqa]

Bakery trucks???

I've never heard of such a thing. Clearly I grew up in the wrong place.

[rejectomorph]

I believe there were other cities with bakery trucks, but they might have been more widely patronized in Los Angeles. In fact Helms had a local rival called Golden Krust, but my mom never bought from them. I suspect that, like many of the housewives in our neighborhood, she had a crush on Phil, the guy who had the local Helms route. There used to be jokes about kids resembling the milkman, but in our neighborhood guys would wish they resembled Phil. Sadly, none of us did.

Actually a lot of stuff was still home delivered when I was a kid. Our neighborhood had the two bakery trucks, three milk trucks, two companies that delivered bottled water, an outfit called Jewel Tea Company that delivered a variety of things (I had a friend whose mom was an English war bride and she bought things from Jewel Tea, as they stocked a lot of British products) and of course the ubiquitous Good Humor Ice Cream truck and a couple of independent rivals. When I was very young there was still an ice man delivering in our neighborhood, as there were some old houses with ice boxes (we had one, but only used it for dry storage.) All of these things vanished as more women got cars and could shop in stores at their convenience, and then more and more women joined the workforce, leaving too few houses with customers who were home all day.

Here is a short YouTube video with a few shots of Helms bakery trucks. (Link is not showing for some reason, but you can google "Helms Bakery Trucks" at YouTube if you want to se one.)