Erie Times-News Weekender
February 6, 1993
As much a neighborhood institution as East High School
Remembering the Hess Avenue Bakery /// Flashback
By Ann M. (Rocky) Badach
I think that in everyone’s life, if one were to dig down deep enough, we would find a memory that we held so close, so intimate, that the thought of it ever leaving would threaten us with losing a part of our truest selves.
The day the Boston Store closed was one of those moments. It was almost as a rite of passage as I look back onto it today.
However, recently I became aware of something even more personal that will soon come to a close – and I thought that perhaps by sharing some of my fondest memories of this place, it would help to ease the sadness we all will feel when the time comes to finally say goodbye.
I am writing, in particular, to those persons of the lower east side of Erie who grew up and have grown old visiting the Hess Avenue Bakery on the corner of E. 7th and Hess Avenue. NO, it has no majestic doorway, no rising escalator or fifth floor wonderland for children, but to those who traveled through those familiar green wooden doors, who will ever forget the fragrance of Sunday morning glazed doughnut, or the spectacular candy counter which beckoned your last nickel each time you stopped for that quart of milk for mom?
You knew you were growing up when you were finally able to pull those all-too-familiar barricades open with a “squeak” that alerted the clerks that customers were “a-callin’.” And to Ted and Sally Rocky (Rzodkiewicz), each and every customer was MORE than just a customer. They were friends, young and old alike, just waiting to be found.
Not only were those doors heavy to open, they took forever to close! Standing in the little vestibule between the inside of the aromatic baker/grocery/meat market and the bitter cold outdoors, many a person waited for the bus, for their mother, their boy/girlfriend, or just waiting. The cement ledges holding up the six-foot windowpanes were a perfect seat while passing the time with a school friend.
Nobody seemed to mind much, either, that the little space was occupied, except when it got too crowded for customers to pass through. It was then that Bubbles (did anyone ever know her real name is Helen?) would come out and in her sternest smile, say, “Do you kids have to be somewhere – like in school?” And more often than not, she would engage in some sort of friendly conversation about school, or home or whatever was on our minds. Bubbles probably knew more about the youth of the lower east side than many of our parents or teachers ever dreamed.
Nobody would think to try to “lift” anything from that store. It’d be like stealing from home, or a church.
Did you ever visit “The Bakery,” as everyone fondly calls it, during East High’s lunch break?
What a lunch!
Chocolate chip cookies, glazed doughnuts and the ever-popular cream-filled chocolate-covered eclairs were always displayed just waiting to be eaten. I’m told that years ago, perhaps in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, Ted, Sally, Bubbles and “The Girls” – Audrey, Barbara and Diane – would actually cook French fries during the lunch hour and the kids would wait in line outside just to get a waxed-paper bag full of them! That’s loyalty (okay, perhaps a little hunger, too).
Even the day-old pastries never lasted too long. What a bargain – two for one, sometimes three for one.
It used to amaze me, watching those “girls” behind the counter. They’d be slicing (the absolute best) rye bread, running the cash register, wrapping a pound of baloney and taking a phone order for a wedding or birthday cake, all without batting an eyelash. I used to admire their proficiency at such glamorous tasks.
A dream I’d always had as a kid was to be “one of the girls” who worked at The Bakery. Everyone knew them, they had tons of friends, and the samples had to be terrific! Well, this dream continued well throughout my grade school years at St. Casimir’s. One day when I was nearing my 9th year of school, I asked my dad if he thought I’d have a chance to be one of “the girls” at The Bakery. I promised him I’d work hard, and the extra money would help everyone out.
How tough could working in a bakery be? I’d often ask myself. Slice a few loaves of bread, sell a little penny candy, wrap a coffee cake or two…
Boy, did I have a lot to learn!
Well, my dad just happened to have a “little” pull with the management of the Bakery. You see, it was his brother and sister-in-law who owned this special place.
Soon, found out what it was like to be a “Bakery Girl.”
We stocked shelves, priced items, waited on customer – “You always drop whatever you’re doing when a customer comes in “NO MATTER WHAT,” Uncle Teddy would say.
I sure felt proud to be behind the counter, and, believe me, I learned enough in those four years of store-tending to last me a lifetime. Uncle Ted and Aunt Sally taught me the value of hard work – and honesty.
I learned that no matter how young or how old someone is, you treat them with respect, not only because they are customers, but first and foremost because they are people, with feelings and dignity. And boy, did I learn about work!
Being employed at The Bakery was much, much more than looking pretty behind the glass-encased counters.
There were windows to be washed, counters to be wiped, boxes to be folded (usually 50 or so at a time), refrigerators to be cleaned. I remember my first encounter with one of three walk-in coolers. When told to get more eggs for the display case, I opened the eight-foot door to find myself face-to-face with a side of beef hanging from a hook! However, that meat cooler became a welcome friend on many a hot summer day.
I soon found out the The Bakery was indeed more than a little corner store. It provided a bit of everything for the weekly neighborhood shopper of any ethnic variety. Sure, the usual milk, bread, eggs, soup---beef, pork, poultry and by far the best home-made fresh and smoked this side of Warsaw.
Now perhaps I appear biased, but I KNOW they only provided the best for their customers. Many a pork butt was returned or exchanged for a meatier variety.
And if their store didn’t stock something you needed or craved (like DanDee potato chips or DeMichael’s Pizza) you could rest assured it’d be on the shelf the very next week.
Those 1960s and 1970s were splendid times for me. I’d often stand in awe as I watched Aunt Sally cutting steaks, roasts or chops using a huge blade saw with precision and accuracy of a surgeon. My job was to keep clean – always. I learned quickly to respect those blades.
Saturday mornings at The Bakery were always the toughest. “Never dress nice for Saturday,” they’d say.
“The Girls,” my cousins Audrey, Barbara and Diane, and my inherited Aunty Bubbles, worked the front counters on Saturdays. People did their weekly shopping on those days, buying their staples, meats and breads. And we younger girls were to manage the back area of the store by “spring cleaning” every Saturday morning.
My day began at 7:30 a.m. and never stopped until lunchtime.
I learned the art of scrubbing a wooden bakery floor (barefoot) with a broom a scrub brush and lots of soap and bleach! To this day I use bleach ever so sparingly in my own house.
I never thought bakers could be so messy!
What with their white hats, crisp started aprons and squeaky-clean hands, you’d think their mothers would have taught them to clean up after themselves. Ah, but when you’re a professional (and boy could these guys toss the dough), someone else HAD to do it.
Those of us who shopped regularly at the Hess Avenue Bakery, or who had the privilege of working there, will never forget some things; things like that little gray file box with the last names, first names and dollar amounts written on 3x5 cards during “hard times” in their families when the dollar didn’t quite stretch to the end of the week, or even the month. Never a phone call was made, nor an inquiry. It was just a quiet trust that when they could, these folks names wouldn’t be on those cards as the money amount went down, dollar-by-dollar.
How many of us got bakers’ dozens, or an extra slice of ham – oops! Sliced one too many, here, take it for the baby? Cooked sausage samples during the holidays were not unusual, either – fresh out of those strong brick ovens, the aroma made your mouth water.
And remember Christmas at The Bakery? My absolute favorite time of the year!
People would line up outside waiting to get in for Aunt Sally’s own mother’s recipe sweetbread and nut logs. And as busy as we were during those days, Uncle Teddy and Aunt Sally would always find time to celebrate with us when the busiest of days came to a close.
One thing about Uncle Teddy is that nobody can remember ever having to walk through the snow to get inside his store. That sidewalk was probably the clearest sidewalk this side of the southern border. If only the streets department cooperated as well! I remember my dear uncle even shoveling the streets on either side of the store so no one would ever get stuck.
I’ve often wondered if Aunt Sally ever “slept in” during the decades they’ve owned their store. I think if she ever slept in past 4 a.m. she’d consider it a luxury. The ovens there were not the automated ones you find at today’s grocery stores. They needed to be lit and heated long before the bakers arrived at 5 a.m.
The stored opened at 6 a.m. for many years and the side door was ALWAYS open for that mom who needed a bottle of aspirin for a feverish child, or the shop worker who promised his co-workers that he’d bring the pastries to work this day.
As we approach the 21st century, we see in many businesses the emphasis on being a team player. Well, I was a team player long before the the term became a fashionable symbol of the 90s. I was a part of the “Bakery Team.” They trusted that young girl, and I’m grateful for that, never ever breaking that trust. Any they ingrained in me as well that some things in life take priority even over a business.
Good Friday was one of those times. From noon to 3 o’clock, ever year on Good Friday the store would close. The lights were shut off, and Aunt Sally would send me off the church to pay a visit and remember them in my prayers. I still pay a visit every Good Friday, and still say a special prayer for my Aunt Sally and Uncle Teddy.
And now, after all these years and after all these memories, I drive by E. 7th and Hess Avenue and see a “For Sale” sign in the front window.
Yes, it is time. You deserve to relax, to “sleep in.” Your “girls” are grown, even your grandchildren are grown and, because of you, and your patience with me, I have grown.
If I never said thank – you, I do now.
And Bubbles, Audrey, Barb and Diane, thanks to you, too!
You know, the Boston Store may have its clock. But The Bakery has a whole lot more. It’s wrapped with live within those heavy, squeaky, cumbersome dark green doors – not to mention the best darn glazed doughnuts and homemade sausage in all the U.S.A.
For those of you who frequented The Bakery, or made it your second home – as I did – perhaps now is the time to stop by and say “Hi!” and remember when – with them – as I do now as a niece with much lover for her Aunt Sally and Uncle Teddy.
Editor’s Note: Sally and Ted will close those big green doors of the Hess Avenue Bakery on April 2. When Sally learned about this Flashback, she told us to make sure folks know the store will be open for business as usual through Friday, April 2.
February 6, 1993
As much a neighborhood institution as East High School
Remembering the Hess Avenue Bakery /// Flashback
By Ann M. (Rocky) Badach
I think that in everyone’s life, if one were to dig down deep enough, we would find a memory that we held so close, so intimate, that the thought of it ever leaving would threaten us with losing a part of our truest selves.
The day the Boston Store closed was one of those moments. It was almost as a rite of passage as I look back onto it today.
However, recently I became aware of something even more personal that will soon come to a close – and I thought that perhaps by sharing some of my fondest memories of this place, it would help to ease the sadness we all will feel when the time comes to finally say goodbye.
I am writing, in particular, to those persons of the lower east side of Erie who grew up and have grown old visiting the Hess Avenue Bakery on the corner of E. 7th and Hess Avenue. NO, it has no majestic doorway, no rising escalator or fifth floor wonderland for children, but to those who traveled through those familiar green wooden doors, who will ever forget the fragrance of Sunday morning glazed doughnut, or the spectacular candy counter which beckoned your last nickel each time you stopped for that quart of milk for mom?
You knew you were growing up when you were finally able to pull those all-too-familiar barricades open with a “squeak” that alerted the clerks that customers were “a-callin’.” And to Ted and Sally Rocky (Rzodkiewicz), each and every customer was MORE than just a customer. They were friends, young and old alike, just waiting to be found.
Not only were those doors heavy to open, they took forever to close! Standing in the little vestibule between the inside of the aromatic baker/grocery/meat market and the bitter cold outdoors, many a person waited for the bus, for their mother, their boy/girlfriend, or just waiting. The cement ledges holding up the six-foot windowpanes were a perfect seat while passing the time with a school friend.
Nobody seemed to mind much, either, that the little space was occupied, except when it got too crowded for customers to pass through. It was then that Bubbles (did anyone ever know her real name is Helen?) would come out and in her sternest smile, say, “Do you kids have to be somewhere – like in school?” And more often than not, she would engage in some sort of friendly conversation about school, or home or whatever was on our minds. Bubbles probably knew more about the youth of the lower east side than many of our parents or teachers ever dreamed.
Nobody would think to try to “lift” anything from that store. It’d be like stealing from home, or a church.
Did you ever visit “The Bakery,” as everyone fondly calls it, during East High’s lunch break?
What a lunch!
Chocolate chip cookies, glazed doughnuts and the ever-popular cream-filled chocolate-covered eclairs were always displayed just waiting to be eaten. I’m told that years ago, perhaps in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, Ted, Sally, Bubbles and “The Girls” – Audrey, Barbara and Diane – would actually cook French fries during the lunch hour and the kids would wait in line outside just to get a waxed-paper bag full of them! That’s loyalty (okay, perhaps a little hunger, too).
Even the day-old pastries never lasted too long. What a bargain – two for one, sometimes three for one.
It used to amaze me, watching those “girls” behind the counter. They’d be slicing (the absolute best) rye bread, running the cash register, wrapping a pound of baloney and taking a phone order for a wedding or birthday cake, all without batting an eyelash. I used to admire their proficiency at such glamorous tasks.
A dream I’d always had as a kid was to be “one of the girls” who worked at The Bakery. Everyone knew them, they had tons of friends, and the samples had to be terrific! Well, this dream continued well throughout my grade school years at St. Casimir’s. One day when I was nearing my 9th year of school, I asked my dad if he thought I’d have a chance to be one of “the girls” at The Bakery. I promised him I’d work hard, and the extra money would help everyone out.
How tough could working in a bakery be? I’d often ask myself. Slice a few loaves of bread, sell a little penny candy, wrap a coffee cake or two…
Boy, did I have a lot to learn!
Well, my dad just happened to have a “little” pull with the management of the Bakery. You see, it was his brother and sister-in-law who owned this special place.
Soon, found out what it was like to be a “Bakery Girl.”
We stocked shelves, priced items, waited on customer – “You always drop whatever you’re doing when a customer comes in “NO MATTER WHAT,” Uncle Teddy would say.
I sure felt proud to be behind the counter, and, believe me, I learned enough in those four years of store-tending to last me a lifetime. Uncle Ted and Aunt Sally taught me the value of hard work – and honesty.
I learned that no matter how young or how old someone is, you treat them with respect, not only because they are customers, but first and foremost because they are people, with feelings and dignity. And boy, did I learn about work!
Being employed at The Bakery was much, much more than looking pretty behind the glass-encased counters.
There were windows to be washed, counters to be wiped, boxes to be folded (usually 50 or so at a time), refrigerators to be cleaned. I remember my first encounter with one of three walk-in coolers. When told to get more eggs for the display case, I opened the eight-foot door to find myself face-to-face with a side of beef hanging from a hook! However, that meat cooler became a welcome friend on many a hot summer day.
I soon found out the The Bakery was indeed more than a little corner store. It provided a bit of everything for the weekly neighborhood shopper of any ethnic variety. Sure, the usual milk, bread, eggs, soup---beef, pork, poultry and by far the best home-made fresh and smoked this side of Warsaw.
Now perhaps I appear biased, but I KNOW they only provided the best for their customers. Many a pork butt was returned or exchanged for a meatier variety.
And if their store didn’t stock something you needed or craved (like DanDee potato chips or DeMichael’s Pizza) you could rest assured it’d be on the shelf the very next week.
Those 1960s and 1970s were splendid times for me. I’d often stand in awe as I watched Aunt Sally cutting steaks, roasts or chops using a huge blade saw with precision and accuracy of a surgeon. My job was to keep clean – always. I learned quickly to respect those blades.
Saturday mornings at The Bakery were always the toughest. “Never dress nice for Saturday,” they’d say.
“The Girls,” my cousins Audrey, Barbara and Diane, and my inherited Aunty Bubbles, worked the front counters on Saturdays. People did their weekly shopping on those days, buying their staples, meats and breads. And we younger girls were to manage the back area of the store by “spring cleaning” every Saturday morning.
My day began at 7:30 a.m. and never stopped until lunchtime.
I learned the art of scrubbing a wooden bakery floor (barefoot) with a broom a scrub brush and lots of soap and bleach! To this day I use bleach ever so sparingly in my own house.
I never thought bakers could be so messy!
What with their white hats, crisp started aprons and squeaky-clean hands, you’d think their mothers would have taught them to clean up after themselves. Ah, but when you’re a professional (and boy could these guys toss the dough), someone else HAD to do it.
Those of us who shopped regularly at the Hess Avenue Bakery, or who had the privilege of working there, will never forget some things; things like that little gray file box with the last names, first names and dollar amounts written on 3x5 cards during “hard times” in their families when the dollar didn’t quite stretch to the end of the week, or even the month. Never a phone call was made, nor an inquiry. It was just a quiet trust that when they could, these folks names wouldn’t be on those cards as the money amount went down, dollar-by-dollar.
How many of us got bakers’ dozens, or an extra slice of ham – oops! Sliced one too many, here, take it for the baby? Cooked sausage samples during the holidays were not unusual, either – fresh out of those strong brick ovens, the aroma made your mouth water.
And remember Christmas at The Bakery? My absolute favorite time of the year!
People would line up outside waiting to get in for Aunt Sally’s own mother’s recipe sweetbread and nut logs. And as busy as we were during those days, Uncle Teddy and Aunt Sally would always find time to celebrate with us when the busiest of days came to a close.
One thing about Uncle Teddy is that nobody can remember ever having to walk through the snow to get inside his store. That sidewalk was probably the clearest sidewalk this side of the southern border. If only the streets department cooperated as well! I remember my dear uncle even shoveling the streets on either side of the store so no one would ever get stuck.
I’ve often wondered if Aunt Sally ever “slept in” during the decades they’ve owned their store. I think if she ever slept in past 4 a.m. she’d consider it a luxury. The ovens there were not the automated ones you find at today’s grocery stores. They needed to be lit and heated long before the bakers arrived at 5 a.m.
The stored opened at 6 a.m. for many years and the side door was ALWAYS open for that mom who needed a bottle of aspirin for a feverish child, or the shop worker who promised his co-workers that he’d bring the pastries to work this day.
As we approach the 21st century, we see in many businesses the emphasis on being a team player. Well, I was a team player long before the the term became a fashionable symbol of the 90s. I was a part of the “Bakery Team.” They trusted that young girl, and I’m grateful for that, never ever breaking that trust. Any they ingrained in me as well that some things in life take priority even over a business.
Good Friday was one of those times. From noon to 3 o’clock, ever year on Good Friday the store would close. The lights were shut off, and Aunt Sally would send me off the church to pay a visit and remember them in my prayers. I still pay a visit every Good Friday, and still say a special prayer for my Aunt Sally and Uncle Teddy.
And now, after all these years and after all these memories, I drive by E. 7th and Hess Avenue and see a “For Sale” sign in the front window.
Yes, it is time. You deserve to relax, to “sleep in.” Your “girls” are grown, even your grandchildren are grown and, because of you, and your patience with me, I have grown.
If I never said thank – you, I do now.
And Bubbles, Audrey, Barb and Diane, thanks to you, too!
You know, the Boston Store may have its clock. But The Bakery has a whole lot more. It’s wrapped with live within those heavy, squeaky, cumbersome dark green doors – not to mention the best darn glazed doughnuts and homemade sausage in all the U.S.A.
For those of you who frequented The Bakery, or made it your second home – as I did – perhaps now is the time to stop by and say “Hi!” and remember when – with them – as I do now as a niece with much lover for her Aunt Sally and Uncle Teddy.
Editor’s Note: Sally and Ted will close those big green doors of the Hess Avenue Bakery on April 2. When Sally learned about this Flashback, she told us to make sure folks know the store will be open for business as usual through Friday, April 2.
