RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,112
(a little bit of Avenel)
There was a time - maybe
a month and a half, at most -
when I worked a cold Jan.
and some Feb., at a place
called 'Golden Crust Bakery.'
I can't right recall when it
was exactly, and, as a job, it
sort of fell between some
other things I was doing.
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Golden Crust Bakery was down
on Rahway Avenue. There's the
'new' Post Office now, built
right across the street from it,
and I 'seem' to, I think, remember
that being there, new, back then.
(The bakery building is still there,
and still a 'bakery' of sorts, though
now it is run by Brooklyn Hasids,
and they make Jewish pastries,
with the wafting smell of chocolate
often in the air). The current name
is Pollak's Bakery, and they have
a few panel trucks with which
they run their products out, I guess
back to Jewish neighborhood
pastry shops. There is NO walk-in
or retail business done at the Rahway
Ave. location; if you see any activity,
what you see is Hasidics loading
the trucks. (I like to think that the
Hasids, if they were nice, country
fellas out in the sticks, would call
themselves Hayseeds, and make
cornpone and down-home muffins.
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Anyway, way back when I was there,
it was about as dismal a job as could
be found. I was, however, a young
guy with a head full of ideas, an
old, beat-up Jaguar car, and a hope
to do nothing but Art for the rest
of my days. (That hope eventually
fizzled). I used to walk Avenel
Street, under the underpass each
day, down to Rahway Ave., and
turn left to get to the bakery. There
used to be a hardware store there,
a few houses (all now gone), and
a gasoline station, also now gone.
Two, in fact. One was at the corner,
closed up, of Avenel Street and
Rahway Ave; that was Rhodes'
Esso. Ira Rhodes was the old man
who was mostly responsible - I
was told - for the underpass
being dug out for the trains, kind
of ruining the entire town. He had
lost a son there, in the 1940's or
something who'd gotten creamed
by a train, at grade level; so they
dug it out, and sunk the roadway,
destroying all the little business
that had once been there at town
center. You can see old town
photos of it as it was - candy stores,
grocers, barber shops, a deli, and
a haberdasher or two, plus a nifty
train station and waiting room,
in which was the town's library too.
All gone, as I said, Now a lumber
yard (for the time being anyway).
I've been told the lumber yard is
moving out too, as well as the schools
that are nearby, as - in the very
fraught (translates as 'crooked')
wisdom of the town fathers, (barf),
they can reap better returns (in
their pockets once again, probably)
by finagling the necessary deals for
hidden management corporations
and ownerships to reap the profits
of further development, subsidized
housing, health centers, new slums,
and new parking lots too.
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But, I digress. One thing I enjoyed
was the way in which, on those walks
to Rahway Avenue, if I walked on the
east side of Avenel Street (I think that
was east) - the same side as the
First Aid Squad Building - I'd get to
see the pointed top of all the duplexes
running down Avenel Street looking,
in their rows, like a small, Dutch
village. Like something out of
Breughel or one of those continental
painters of the early, old world. Of
course neither Avenel nor the scene,
had any connection nor any reality
bearing on that, but to my artist-mind
it meant a lot to be able to make that
connection. Believe me, this was
fantasy - Avenel Street bears no
connection, by romance, art, or any
other 'feature,' with any of this more
broadly cultural stuff, and no one
there anyway would ever have the
connection. More likely, First
National Bank of Bribery.
McCormac Branch now.
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Once I'd get to the bakery, all that
was over. There were a couple guys
in there who ran the ovens, packed
the stuff, and drove the truck. A large,
square, panel truck, with bread shelves
and trays everywhere. We made sub
rolls, dinner rolls, small bread loaves,
etc. I was the flour and prep guy -
lugging the 50-lb bags of flour, as
they were needed, over to the mixers,
pulling the drawstring closures to open
the bags, and dumping the flour into
the large, automated mixer vats. Adding
water, etc.; and the large mixing arm
would slowly, over time, mix it all
together to form a big, gummy, wad
of new dough. Then I'd have to take
the big wad and make smaller wads,
and we'd all begin breaking up the
dough, for sub rolls, dinner rolls,
or whatever. The small lumps, once
in the ovens, would rise and bake,
as they took their appointed shape.
I forget, but I seem to remember
brushing oil or butter on each
little lump, before they went in
the ovens, and - what I liked the
most - I'd have a cool, little dough
blade and had to make a quick slit
in the top of each dough lump. Once
it was baked, that slit would bake
out, puff up a little, and allow for the
expansion of the loaf while baking.
For a dumb kid, like me, at this job,
baking bread, handling dough, and
even putting that slit in each loaf,
represented - finally - something
really tangible for me, a job with
a meaning. Bread.
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That all began about 7:30am,
and by like 4pm the trucks would be
loaded for the next day's or that
night's deliveries, to restaurants,
sub shops, etc. There was no
wrapping or packaging, just either
on trays, or in these cool bakery
bags, for the long loaves. I don't
know what it all was. Not like today.
No one ever 'spoke' as 'French' loaf,
or 'Italian', and certainly never
'Baquette,' like any of today's
fancy-schmancy food-maven stuff.
This bakery had a little retail counter
out front too; people came in to
buy bread, or donuts and stuff too,
which we didn't bake but which I
think were brought in from
somewhere else. We never dealt
with sweets or pastries.
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It was an OK deal, but the lady there
behind the counter, known to me as
Mrs. Cummings (Marian), really
disliked me. She thought I was a
brash, snide, no-goodnik, and she
made that clear. I didn't much care,
as she was everything I disliked too.
Trouble was, in the back, her husband,
some big, rollicking, round guy, drove
the delivery truck. So he was always
around, helping us preparing the bread,
unloading the empty truck trays, and/or
refilling the truck. While the ovens
were baking, there'd be a lot of downtime.
I'd do clean-up, sweep or mop the area,
of all the flours and cut-offs, etc., and
I had to gather and trash-up all the
empty, daily, flour bags. I was young,
and these three other guys were maybe
40, or 45. They never bothered me,
but I could always tell a distance, and
it often felt I was being scrutinized. And,
the husband guy, whenever his wife
came into the back, went through his
sudden hard-ass routine with me, usually
over something or other that never made
a hill's worth of difference any other
time. I didn't care, and as far as I did
care they could have each other,
at my expense or not. Nitwits.
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Two other things really drove me nuts.
There was constant cigarette smoking;
all the time they sat around, it was with
cigarettes and cigarette smoke everywhere.
And making it worse was that, everyday,
they listened, on the radio, to the broadcast
of the Arthur Godfrey Show. You might
not know him, but he played a sort of
folksy, talk-show, guy with special
guests each day - show-biz type people,
inside gossip and such, a few reviews
of plays and shows. The fake folksiness
was enough to drive me crazy (like the
'Hayseeds' I mentioned at the start), but
what really drove it home was that
Arthur Godfrey's signature schtick was
that he played a ukulele (rare at that
time, or little-heard anyway). At all
times, even while he talked, he'd be
strumming or monkeying with the
ukulele, and he'd sometimes sing too.
It was terrible, day after day, and it
had the worst radio-commercials too,
stupid jingles and ads and all.
I finally just gave up the job. One
cold morning the walk down Avenel
Street just hit me the wrong way; I
turned around, went back home,
called Marian up, and said I was
'done,' and had 'personal business'
to take care of. She went ballistic
on me. I never went back. Never
even picked up my 'dough!' for
that week.
