by Danilo Lopez

Created on: August 31, 2009

Bread Man

When I was a child, days began at eight or nine in the morning. I was still too young for school, so I enjoyed the luxury of waking up late. When I started elementary school though, it was a different story. I had to ride public buses for an hour before arriving at school. I used to get up so early, at about five a.m. It was then that I saw him for the first time.

Bread Man arrived in his bicycle at five or five thirty in the morning. The felt hat slanted to the right, his pants tied with a rubber band at the cuff so they wouldn't be caught in the bike's chain. A big basket in the back seat with a huge table cloth wrapping the varied pieces of bread he sold: French bread, monkey fingers, large loaves, small ones, semitas, triangles, all warm, right out of the carbon oven his wife had at home. Eating that bread with real, homemade butter, soaked in cafe con leche, was a heavenly breakfast, with frijolitos, love eggs, you know, real eggs, made by hen and rooster, with a brown shell, good sized, orange-yellow yolk. Not like the ones we swallow today, all pale like if they had leukemia.

But when Panaderia Jumbo, the Jumbo Bread Factory opened in the late sixties to early seventies, all that changed. The owner, some Dutch immigrant who spoke funny, had brought all that modern machinery from Holland. He opened the factory in the middle of the barrio. Some people were happy to work in a clean environment making more money than what they were used to, wearing a distinctive uniform with the word "Panaderia Jumbo" threaded on their chest.

So, Bread Man started to lose clientele. It wasn't necessary anymore to madrugar, to wake up at 5 in the morning in order to buy bread. The Jumbo squarish, white pieces were available any time, day or night in many pulperias, neighborhood grocery stores. You could store it longer without it getting hard as a rock. It was cheaper and they had a wide variety of types also, all of Bread Man's and some more; different shapes, colors, and flavors.

When I entered seventh grade, Bread Man had stopped delivering. I don't recall why by brother and I remembered him once and wondered his whereabouts. We decided to visit his house on the other side of the creek. We rode our bikes and got there. It was his house alright, but he didn't live there anymore. Some unknown tenant was there, he had moved out and away, the old man said, I don't know where. "I bought his property very cheap, including his oven and molds". And he showed them

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