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The Verbena Bakery
by Max Kinney 1-11-2015
Like most boys growing up in the south during the 1950’s and ‘60’s our desire to push the envelope produced antics and pranks that today would be considered criminal intent with malice. So, I must be content to share with you a story of a gentler nature for fear of condemnation or reprisal.
Gentilly Woods was a relatively new neighborhood in the suburbs of New Orleans and its inhabitants were young families started at the end of World War II. Our neighborhood was the first of its kind because the houses were built at ground level on concrete slabs poured over pylons that were driven thirty-feet into ground. Before the war, houses were built above the ground on blocks that sat on terraced lots built up to four or five feet above the street level. Knowing, at that time, that about fifty percent of the city was at or below sea-level, terracing the lots and raising the houses made sense. Well, progress is progress my grandfather use to say, before it became cliché to utter such a phrase. I mention the old building style because our neighborhood bordered an older neighborhood built before the war, and the stark contrast was not lost on this twelve year old boy.
The Verbena Bakery was ensconced in this old neighborhood, the only brick structure amid the old cypress homes with huge porches featuring wide steps guarded by grand, sphinxlike lions. Cornices and lattices adorned these porches and the vertical support columns were scrolled or engraved with pine bows and hanging pine cones or a fleur-de-lis. The porch rails, too, were embellished which reflected a craftsmanship a lifetime away from the flat, one-storied constructions of the modern 1950’s.
The shop was called The Verbena Bakery because it was on Verbena Street. It was owned and operated by an aging, sixty-year-old widow we called Miss Verbena. We didn’t know her real name and she never bothered to correct us, so we figured she like it. Her shop was open only on Fridays and Saturdays after mid-night and did most of her business on Sunday mornings after church let out. Her only employee was Neb (or something like that), an old black man who had to be past seventy, but had unusual speed and dexterity when it came to cutting dough for doughnuts. Miss Verbena let us in to watch on Saturday nights because we were regular customers, or so we thought, but perhaps it was because she knew it was a rare privilege and thrill for us to witness the sights and sounds and wonderful aromas of the toils of another dying breed of true craftsmen. Miss Verbena in her dyed calico dress and matching apron and Neb in his all white uniform and baker’s hat were a marvelous sight to behold; a synchronous unit well-oiled and perfected by years of working side-by-side, interrupting their stride just long enough to bring the first batch of hot glazed doughnuts to a half-dozen cheerful and grateful kids. The syrupy
sugar, sticky and hot, would run half way down your arm and the soft steamy dough would melt in your mouth
like cotton candy. It just didn't get any better than this, unless you counted annoying your sister or engaging in
a suicide, water melon fight just before the summer sun went down.
It was a much simpler time then, and it was a happier time; a time that seems more than a lifetime ago when a kid was just a kid.
by Max Kinney 1-11-2015
Like most boys growing up in the south during the 1950’s and ‘60’s our desire to push the envelope produced antics and pranks that today would be considered criminal intent with malice. So, I must be content to share with you a story of a gentler nature for fear of condemnation or reprisal.
Gentilly Woods was a relatively new neighborhood in the suburbs of New Orleans and its inhabitants were young families started at the end of World War II. Our neighborhood was the first of its kind because the houses were built at ground level on concrete slabs poured over pylons that were driven thirty-feet into ground. Before the war, houses were built above the ground on blocks that sat on terraced lots built up to four or five feet above the street level. Knowing, at that time, that about fifty percent of the city was at or below sea-level, terracing the lots and raising the houses made sense. Well, progress is progress my grandfather use to say, before it became cliché to utter such a phrase. I mention the old building style because our neighborhood bordered an older neighborhood built before the war, and the stark contrast was not lost on this twelve year old boy.
The Verbena Bakery was ensconced in this old neighborhood, the only brick structure amid the old cypress homes with huge porches featuring wide steps guarded by grand, sphinxlike lions. Cornices and lattices adorned these porches and the vertical support columns were scrolled or engraved with pine bows and hanging pine cones or a fleur-de-lis. The porch rails, too, were embellished which reflected a craftsmanship a lifetime away from the flat, one-storied constructions of the modern 1950’s.
The shop was called The Verbena Bakery because it was on Verbena Street. It was owned and operated by an aging, sixty-year-old widow we called Miss Verbena. We didn’t know her real name and she never bothered to correct us, so we figured she like it. Her shop was open only on Fridays and Saturdays after mid-night and did most of her business on Sunday mornings after church let out. Her only employee was Neb (or something like that), an old black man who had to be past seventy, but had unusual speed and dexterity when it came to cutting dough for doughnuts. Miss Verbena let us in to watch on Saturday nights because we were regular customers, or so we thought, but perhaps it was because she knew it was a rare privilege and thrill for us to witness the sights and sounds and wonderful aromas of the toils of another dying breed of true craftsmen. Miss Verbena in her dyed calico dress and matching apron and Neb in his all white uniform and baker’s hat were a marvelous sight to behold; a synchronous unit well-oiled and perfected by years of working side-by-side, interrupting their stride just long enough to bring the first batch of hot glazed doughnuts to a half-dozen cheerful and grateful kids. The syrupy
sugar, sticky and hot, would run half way down your arm and the soft steamy dough would melt in your mouth
like cotton candy. It just didn't get any better than this, unless you counted annoying your sister or engaging in
a suicide, water melon fight just before the summer sun went down.
It was a much simpler time then, and it was a happier time; a time that seems more than a lifetime ago when a kid was just a kid.
