The Smell Of Bread

We had a bread man back then. Just like the milk man. Bread actually delivered to your house! You could get donuts too. It was convenient, but the best bread, real bread was made by hand in a bakery. We were lucky. We could go to my Uncle Bill's bakery in Camden.
Uncle Bill Gardner was the oldest child in my mother's family, 18 years her senior. He married Anna Worrel and they had five children; Billy, Joan, Jean, Bobby and Linda. A large family like Aunt Sis and Uncle Dan, but a lot less hectic than them. Their youngest, Linda, was five years older than me, so to them all I was just a little kid.
Uncle Bill was a man who liked history and nature. He especially loved to read books about New Jersey and to photograph its natural beauty. He was a Freemason and a man of many opinions, and he wasn't reluctant to share them. He had a place he liked to go to with his family out in the woods along the Mullica River. I remember going there and being under constant attack by flies and mosquitoes. It was a little too rugged for me, not as hospitable as the woods back home in the Heights. As Mom would say, "It's not my cup of tea."
Aunt Anna was always a kind and gentle person who had her hands full raising five children and helping to run the bakery. She's always been fond of dancing; especially the Mummer's Strut. Her father was a Mummer; one of those guys who parades down Broad Street in Philadelphia every New Year's Day dressed in grandiose costumes of sequins and feathers and mirrors; dancing to the music of the string bands. She still struts her stuff today, well into her nineties.
Uncle Bill's bakery was in the Cramer Hill section of Camden, around 26th and Wayne. Mom worked there on and off from 1944 until 1951.

Mom working at Uncle Bill's bakery

It was a place of glass counters and great underground brick ovens and the glorious and wonderful smells of baking. Donuts and crullers, cheese pies and cakes, and sticky buns all covered in that syrupy cinnamon goodness. But no one, and I mean no one could bake bread and rolls like Uncle Bill. The sweet smell of yeast and dough would permeate the shop, and you couldn't wait to taste a hot roll fresh from the oven. His bread and rolls would be a highlight at many a family picnic, and his sticky buns were outta this world and sinfully good. A trip to Uncle Bill's was a sugar high and a sensory overload, and we stood in awe of his mighty brick ovens.
Uncle Bill is gone now, and Aunt Anna is in the Masonic Home and the bakery is no more.
But the smell of his bread will linger forever.



Author's note: Aunt Anna passed away in 2009. Here's Aunt Anna and Uncle Bill as I remember them.