Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Memories: It Smelled So Good!
I Grew up next to Culver City at the corner of La Cienega and Venice Boulevards. It was a small house, but it was filled with love. In high school, I was an avid ham radio operator, and I would go to bed early and get up even earlier, around 3:00 am, so I could attempt to communicate with people overseas; we called it DX-ing. Why so early? The noise of cars and machines was at a minimum.
By 3:30 am, my room at the back of the house was warmed up due to the equipment being one, so the windows would be raised and allow fresh air to come in. However, down Venice Boulevard, about four very long blocks, was the Helms Bakery, and by 3:30 am, the ovens were going full blast, and the aromatic scents of donuts and bread wafted their way northward directly into my bedroom window.
The building was huge!
At 6:00 am, the driveways around the bakery would erupt with the Helms trucks delivering their ware all over Los Angeles. Being so close, we would get the truck around 6:30 am, and with their familiar toot, I was out front with my nickel and got a jelly donut almost every morning. Mom would come out in her finest robe and buy fresh bread and other goodies!
There were hundreds of these trucks!
Our high school had one of the older trucks, circa 1931, on the campus, and it was used to sell pastries at recess and lunch. It was called “The Yankee Clipper”; our school was Hamilton High, and their name was “The Yankees.” Does it make sense? No! But in 1960, it did!
To this very day, I can close my eyes and smell the Helms Bakery as if it were still in operation pumping out those delicious calories!
Although popular, the Helms method of neighborhood delivery was doomed both by the expense of sending their coaches hundreds of miles each week and by the advent of the supermarket, which stocked products from other (less expensive) bakeries and delivered once or twice each week. The Helms company ceased operations in 1969.
We piddled around the house today, meaning no big jobs but a lot of little ones! Mary and I worked in the office for two hours, taking care of bits and pieces plus some bills. Mary did another hour’s work on the flower puzzle.
I remembered back when I was working. My annual performance review said I lack “passion and intensity.” I guess management did not see me alone with a Big Mac.
Working on a Lego Flower Puzzle
I worked outside doing little jobs like Scotchguarding the new patio furniture, putting up a new hanging basket and routing the drip system, trimming the purple flowers, and other little things. Mary worked in the kitchen cleaning out the science projects from the frig.
We did walk into the garden and spotted the dew from last night’s drizzle.
Beautiful!
I heard Mary run out the front door, and I was curious, so I asked. She saw a Snowy White Egret walking around the hood.
Did You Know? The snowy egret (Egretta thula) is a small white heron. The genus name comes from Provençal French for the little egret, aigrette, which is a diminutive of aigron, ‘heron’. The species name thula is the Araucano term for the black-necked swan, applied to this species in error by Chilean naturalist Juan Ignacio Molina in 1782.
The snowy egret is the American counterpart to the very similar Old World little egret, which has become established in the Bahamas. At one time, the plumes of the snowy egret were in great demand as decorations for women’s hats.[4] They were hunted for these plumes and this reduced the population of the species to dangerously low levels. Now protected in the United States by law, under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, this bird’s population has rebounded.
Strolling down the street!
We love the vineyard and go out several times a day to visit the grapes. We overheard them talking today.
Silly grapes!
It took all day, and finally, we have dinner at about 5:00 pm with Mary making a wonderful pasta/meatball dish with veggies for the garden. We even had a salad 100% from the garden, and it was wonderful; I forgot what crisp greens tasted like.
We get a lot of exercise working in the garden, and it is cheaper than therapy. Personally, I get plenty of exercises – jumping to conclusions, pushing my luck, and dodging deadlines.
We began a new series called The Lincoln Lawyer” and watched the first six episodes. Summary: An iconoclastic idealist runs his law practice out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car in this series based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling novels.
After episode five, we went to bed and did six before crashing. Tomorrow we go to the endodontist to see what it takes to remove a tooth and then to dinner with our neighbor, Jeff.
Indeed!
