THERE'S A QUALITY of morning light in Southern California where you can almost feel the increasing intensity of brightness in the mornings. It is the sibling of that late afternoon time known by photographers and filmmakers as The Magic Hour, the hang time between sunset and dusk where the quality of light is both bright and indirect, often orange and blue bleeding its last ember of watercolor brightness into evening. But it's morning sister is more ephemeral, fluid, a flash-paper of heat and light that lasts only long enough to evaporate the dew and charge the cool morning air. It's the first tickle of a warm day getting itself up to speed. This is the Mid-Morning Snap.Two blasts of a horn, two or three metallic reeds bleating out of tin cones atop the van, and the Helms Bakery Truck compliments The Mid-Morning Snap of my childhood. Twice a week the pale yellow box-on-wheels with blue trim would park itself on the corner of our block delivering fresh breads, donuts, and custom cakes to the housebound homemakers of Southern California. Drifting down the path from our apartment building to the curbside wagon, the honeysuckle air of The Mid-Morning Snap would mingle with a scent I would forever only call crust. The Helms Bakery Truck smelled like warm, brown, hearthy crust.
Standing near the open doors, I would wait for driver to open the wooden drawers that held within them the various baked goods so fresh from the Culver City bakery that they were still warm. Inhaling these smells was how I learned to distinguish a good donut from a bad without having to taste it. A steamy aroma of fresh oils that was anything but heavy, it was the promise of lightness and cakiness and spongey yeastiness, an education is baked goods that bypassed the tongue because my mother would rarely by anything but the most basic loaf of bread.
The truck itself was the one vehicle most like the toy trucks I played with. Its utilitarian design stood out from the clean lines of American cars and the curves of Volkswagen beetles that surrounded it. Later in life I'd have pangs of Helms truck memories whenever I saw seaside fish-n-chip trucks in British films, another boxy vehicle that promised nourishment from the faint whiff of cooking oil in the air. As housewives began to buy into the corporate supermarket ideal, the trucks disappeared and with them the promise of something good in the air. Without warning or notice,The Mid-Morning Snap became nothing more than a transition, easily missed once we were in school and caught up in learning to write cursive. It was a sensation that disappeared with the last Helms delivery trucks in the late 1960s.
-- David Elzey
photo credit, top, helms bakery district
middle: curbside delivery, tlc, picasa
photo credit, bottom, reseda bear, flickr, creative commons
What a wonderful piece! You completely transported me to a time I didn't know, yet I felt as if I could smell the truck coming around the corner. Thank you for such a wonderful sense memory, I wish I could have experienced the Helms truck myself!
ReplyDeletei was telling someone about the helms truck once and they started nodding, but they were from the east coast. i thought it was because they had a helms-like bakery delivery truck. nope. turns out that there used to be potato chip delivery service. you'd have a large metal tin and weekly the charles' chips truck would come around and deliver the freshly cooked, and most importantly unbroken, chips to your door and put them in the tin for you.
ReplyDeleteit seems odd today that such a common snack food would be treated so carefully, but there did seem to be a time when we cared a bit more about our food in this country.