Memories stirred by cookie column

Published 5:00 pm Wednesday, September 27, 2006

To the Editor:

Your article, See Jane Bake in the Then and Now column by Ane Mac (08/31/06), brought back lots of memories. I would like to expand on Ms. Macs history of Harrisons Bakery.

First, let me say that Jane was the bridesmaid at my sister, Jean Buerks wedding in Our Lady of Victory Church when she married the late Vern Buerk. At that time Vern was in the U.S. Army stationed at the radar site on Tillamook Head. I was an usher at that wedding. As Mac points out, Jean and Vern later owned the Bakery from 1969 to 1982 after Vern had worked for Mr. Harrison since 1946.

What some readers my not know is that when Jane went to work there it was called Walkers Home Bakery after owners Gentry M. and Charlotte E. Walker. A picture taken in 1936 is available from the Seaside Museum and has been printed several times in the Signal showing Jane Larfield, Mrs. Walker and two other employees in front of the bakery.

When I sold the Portland News Telegram newspaper up and down Broadway in the mid 1930s I recall one time putting my nose up to the glass to look at the cookies. While drooling over those tasty morsels a hand reached in and extracted a monster sugar cookie with a raisin in the middle. Mrs. Walker appeared at the door and exclaimed, “Would you like this?” as she handed me the cookie. How could I refuse?

After my parents divorce in 1933 my father, Harold, went to work for Walkers driving the delivery trucka one-ton 1930 Chevrolet. As Jane did during WWII, my father delivered to grocery stores, hotels, and restaurants, including Cannon Beach and Gearhart.

It was on a delivery to Billy Badgers Chicken Inn that my dad picked me up near Gearhart when I was on one of my “running away from home” kicks. When Dad offered me a cookie the notion of running away became obscured. After delivering to Cutlers Grocery in “downtown” we proceeded to The Ocean House owned by Mr. & Mrs. D. B. Shroeder where Harold bought me lunch. At my tender age (about 8-years-old) I hardly noticed the attraction between Dad and the waitress, Anne Adele Schroeder, the daughter of the owners. Adele became my step-mother when she and Harold were married in 1935.

After Milton and Irma Harrison bought the Bakery and changed its name I worked briefly for them while attending Seaside High School in the early 1940s. Later, my son Jess, who was born in the old Seaside Hospital that later became the offices of School District 10, worked for Jean and Vern several summers to help pay his way through college at Oregon State.

We Hickersons and Buerks have quite a history associated with that bakery from the 1930s through the 1980s. Thanks for the memories.

Val Don Hickerson

Bandon, OR