Three Cabots - Part two

Once inside we would bee line for the counter and climb on the stools. Ah, those spin-around stools! If we had to wait that was just fine with us. Just more time to push ourselves around.

The money we had earned determined our choice of ice cream be it in a cone, sandwich, milkshake, soda, sundae or banana split. And with those choices came the exciting sights and sounds of the Bake Shop’s soda fountain - the slicing, scooping, pouring, stirring, hand pumping and high-pitched blending.

And what would boyhood be without blowing bubbles in your soda or milkshake or making the slurping sounds in your cone shaped paper cup once you were at the bottom.

If we ordered chips they came from the kitchen. When it was ready, a shutter in the far corner of the mirrored wall, would suddenly lift and a hand would push the order out on a counter. And like the quickness of a guillotine the shutter went down again. Seemingly only hands worked in the kitchen as we hardly ever got a glimpse of the people working behind the shutter.

As we grew older, we were quick to sit in the booths to order and more importantly check the rock and roll records in their jukebox. A little gizmo attached to wall allowed you to flick through the listings. Plays were a dime or three for a quarter and they were heard throughout the restaurant. But they weren’t deafening. Deafening just wasn’t Sally’s style.

In American movies and comics, the soda fountain waitress was typically, the stereotypical voluptuous blond. However, a Bake Shop waitress was often more akin to another American creation - Olive Oyl - Popeye’s truly ordinary true love.

In 1968, while living in Toronto I saw two former Olive Oyls, near arm-in-arm, at a very busy Bloor and Yonge subway station. What a sudden, unexpected surprise from home! Where were they going? And just as suddenly as I saw them, they vanished into a sea of commuters. What ever became of them God knows?

At times my mother would send me to the Bake Shop to pick up a brick of ice cream or a 50-cent order of fish and chips. The latter was placed between two cardboard plates and laid flat in a paper bag for take out. The cod was notably, strikingly white.

My mother called the Cabot’s bread “baker’s bread”. It was sold by Sally at her cash register. We bought a couple a loaves at a time while a friend’s family bought a box a week. Cabot was the only brand we would eat.

Once at supper I was first to take a slice. With one bite, the whiff went up my nose and immediately I said aloud “That’s not Cabot, that’s Mammy’s!” That set off a chain reaction of “I am not eating that!” It’s a wonder mother didn’t kill me.

As for buying bread, a neighbour, Rex Davis, once came down our street riding his bike, one-handed, using the other to bundle two loaves under an arm. As he neared our house, the backs of the bags gave out and a double trail of beautiful white bread spread out behind him as he continued on down the road. The crows loved it!

For years on end Stan Collett, a quiet man, could be seen delivering Cabot Bakery products to local stores. Any time you saw him he was busily unpacking products from cardboard boxes and filling the shelves. The boxes were collapsed and returned to the bakery to be refilled - recycling long before its time.

A fabulous change at the Bake Shop was the opening of a retail outlet alongside the restaurant. There you could buy all sorts of sweets, cookies, cakes, donuts and breads.

An added delight for us was to see it managed by Mrs. MacPherson, whom we dearly missed. She and her husband had operated MacPherson’s Candy Store that had been torn down to make way for then new, Harvey Dawe Carpenter Store (now 48 High).

All the great baking at the Cabot was done behind closed doors. We could smell what they were doing, but we couldn’t see the goings-on. -

The Bake Shop was attractive and always spotless. Its menu included the standby regulars including hot dogs, hamburgers, fish and chips, hamburger platters, soup, and hot turkey and hot roast beef sandwiches. But the Bake Shop’s soda fountain gave its menu that added touch, that added edge.

The Bake Shop was a popular gathering place for adults, teens and children. It was a place to go for families, friends, visitors and high school sweethearts. Sadly, the Bake Shop shut down even before the bakery moved to Cromer Avenue.

However, a retail shop was operated on Cromer and the quality of the Cabot’s products such as the breads, hot cross buns, pies and pastry filled donuts remained in a class of their own. The popularity of its molasses raisin bread meant line ups for it for Christmas Eve and Good Friday. And it was most disappointing to show up and find the shelves bare.

Our children’s maternal grandfather, Jim Power, often went to the bakery to buy bread and almost always a box of center filled donuts and long johns. The after supper treat for them was only matched by Cabot’s cinnamon bread with icing on top. In the morning, toasted, it was a heavenly way to start a school day.

But my preference was the Cabot’s apple fitters. With a coffee in the morning it was a to-die for combo! Tim Horton’s, eat your heart out!

All the great baking at the Cabot was done behind closed doors. We could smell what they were doing, but we couldn’t see the goings-on. Obviously, all the mixing and baking of the Cabot’s tasty products was done by bakers first class at their trade.

Cabot Bakery was a private family business founded by the late Sandy Moore. When he died in 1954 his wife Olivia and their son John carried on. John and I, besides being neighbours, had a common bond. We both served, at different times, on the Grand Falls Town Council.

In conversations with him, he was noticeably quiet, calm, and gentlemanly even when discussing contentious issues. In one such conversation he spoke about the challenge of operating a small bakery in the era of big chains stores and big bakeries. As well the challenge of getting some retailers to pay their bills.

All good things come to an end, and the end came for the Cabot Bakery on Thanksgiving weekend, October 1995, when it unexpectedly and out of the blue, closed down.

It was a shock for the community. Undoubtedly, it was even more shocking for the Cabot’s long time employees who were suddenly unemployed with no income.

With the Cabot’s demise we lost one of our all-time great local businesses. No bakery has yet come along to match the Cabot’s overall quality.

John Cabot’s native Italy was renown for its breads from ancient times. Appropriately so, a bakery in the new-found-land bore his name. And just as John Cabot was a man of the sea, so was John Moore.

On July 31, the unpretentious John Moore sailed from this life for the last time. His life long presence and commitment to our town added to its quality of life. He helped to make it a better place to live.

May he rest in peace.

Andy Barker at abdp9@hotmail.com.