Helms Bakery Trucks

                                          
By kiki

My memories of the Helms Bakery trucks date back to the late 1940s. While living at the Simons Brickyard (a company town in Montebello, CA.), I first saw that beautiful yellow Helms Bakery truck. The Simons Boys and I, one of the gang, would wait for the Helms truck at the Vail Avenue entrance to the Brickyard. As the driver slowed down to enter the Brickyard's dirt roads, we boys would jump on the rear bumper, open the back doors, and pull open the drawers where the loot was. We would go for the cream puffs and then some other goodies. The driver always knew what we were doing, and he never got pissed at us. As the Simons route was his last one for the day, he would give us what he didn't sell. We always had bread at home! I have to say that I am not proud of some of the things I did as a kid, and sometimes I wish I could go back to that time and have a word or two with that kid, but he probably wouldn't listen.

Later on, when I was attending Montebello Junior High School, a girlfriend and I would walk by the bakery via Maple Avenue; she lived on Mines Street off of Maple, about two blocks from the bakery. However, that didn't last as she dumped me for a high school guy "because he has a car," she said.