Category: MEMORIES

WAY BACK MACHINE

My friend Sandra recently told us about a WONDERFUL site called the WAY BACK MACHINE.

Many years ago I “LOST” my original blog, 3 Sides of Crazy to hijackers and GOOGLE said I couldn’t provide enough “PROOF” that it was mine to get it back. LOL I purchased the domain from them directly, but that didn’t matter to them so I moved my whole platform to WordPress and moved on with my life. That was how I became “CHASING MY LIFE”.

So I was interested enough to see if I could see something from my original blog and I put in a random date. I was rewarded with this sweet memory.

January 26, 2013 from the WAY BACK MACHINE

“Happy times!  This is my aunt who recently passed with me and her daughter Jenn at one of our favorite places, Galveston Island.  All our lives Jenn and I would go down there and collect shells off the beach.  It isn’t that easy these days with the weird growth along the shore line, but back then we walk on the sea wall, collect shells from the water’s edge and just basque in the winter water. You can’t see it in this pictures, but we’re barefoot LOL I’m holding my socks. I also still have every shell that I keep in a crystal bowl. Sharon had Parkinsons disease. Her mobility continued to go downhill from here so this is the last picture I have of us “having fun” like this. Thank goodness for tripods and timers so we could all be in the picture together.”

Anyone remember the HELM’S BAKERY?




Photos from the This Site
Barbara and I were chatting about cream puffs and eclairs and maple bars tonight and the whole topic evoked a childhood food memory for me of the Helm’s Bakery. As a young child growing up in southern California, the Helm’s Bakery truck and his ‘toot toot’ horn were as familiar as the ice cream man and his music. He was the pied piper of pastries, we would follow him anywhere and sometimes did. He had long pull out drawers full of eclairs, maple bars – real pastries, donuts, cakes, pies, cookies, brownies, fresh baked breads sometimes still warm from the oven… He catered to the SAHMs or ‘housewives’ of yesteryear before supermarkets at a time when the family car had been driven to work by dad. Shortly after I remember him appearing in our neighborhood he was gone.

I decided to do a little research and was surprised to find they had gone out of business just shortly after I discovered them as a young girl, but more importantly had been the bread supplier to the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, created an athletic hall of fame in 1936 that became a model for many of today’s hall of fames and even supplied bread to the Apollo 11 mission to the moon.

I went on about their maple bars for so long Barbara has now challenged me to recreate their recipe. I’m no pastry chef, but welcome the challenge. I can taste them and smell them already.