Losing Another Part of Dad
- Jerilyn
- May 7, 2019
- 3 min read
After my grandpa got home from WWII, he and my great uncle started a bakery. Over the years, it outgrew the various buildings they rented around town so they built Oehme Bakery just outside of Lititz to house their operations. They made the most delicious pies and it has made me a bit of a pie snob. Growing up, going to the bakery at least once a week with dad was common. We spent hours there, and I remember going in my grandpa's candy drawer all the time to see what he had. I also say that I should have known I was going to grow up to be an accountant because I remember I always liked playing with my Uncle Bill's adding machine. I wonder if he ever came into work in the morning and thought "who the heck was messing around with this thing?"
The bakery's work days were Monday - Thursday and Saturday, so Friday evenings, dad almost always went down to the bakery to get set up for the next day. Sometimes he would take just one of us with him, other times 2 or all 3 of us. I liked to ride around on the fork lift and play on the giant piles that were made of the bagged flour, sugar, etc., but my FAVORITE thing to do was eat of course! The fact that I wasn't an obese child is kind of amazing. Cherry pie has always been and will always be my favorite, so that pie filling was always my first stop. I also enjoyed picking the strawberries out of the strawberry rhubarb (or "strawberry rowbar" as I wrote in a note to my dad when I was little) and eating the cinnamon apples before and after they were in the syrup. Oh, and the icing for the meringue pies! I am getting hungry now...
I have countless memories of the bakery but one that always made dad and me laugh was one time I went with him wearing a white turtleneck shirt. He was walking off to do some stuff and he turned around and said to me "Don't eat the blueberries. You'll get them on your shirt." So, since I was a kid, once he walked away, I immediately went to the blueberry pie filling. I love blueberries, but the the taste of the pie filling wasn't as good to me as just eating plain blueberries, so I rarely ate that pie filling. However, since he specifically said to not eat it, of course I had to show him that I could eat the blueberries and not make a mess. I proceeded to immediately slop blueberries right in the center of my shirt then spent the rest of the time in the bathroom trying to scrub the stain out (making it worse of course). Finally, I went and found my dad with my head hung and a dejected look on my face. Instead of getting mad, he just looked at me with a face that parents make when they know they should be mad and they're trying not to laugh.
The bakery was sold in 1999 to Specialty Bakers and shortly after, my dad retired, but the building to us was always "the bakery" and felt like part of us.
On March 13, 2018, I was driving to work on an icy day when I got a call from Flo at work. She told me to be careful because of the ice and to avoid Route 501 because of the fire. "What fire?" I asked her. She paused and said "didn't you hear? Specialty Bakers is on fire and has been since around 3 am". I immediately felt my heart race and said "that's my family's bakery!" I got on a road that runs parallel to 501 to see what was visible and I started calling my mom and sisters to tell them about it. Once I got to work, I turned on my computer to see the local news and saw flames pouring out of the front of the bakery- where the office had been. I lost it and started crying. Even though I hadn't been in the building in years, it felt like losing another part of dad since I had so many special, fun memories there with him.
The next day, I went down there with my sisters to look around and say our goodbyes to the building that held so many memories for all of us. We still felt raw since it had only been a few months since dad passed, and we had just lost my grandma on February 26th. Flo assures me that it is just a building and I'll always have those happy memories in my heart, but seeing the damage and the process of the debris being cleared and torn down was tough for my entire family.
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