The Bakery-Memories of David Lemar Ruesch

The Bakery-Memories of David Lemar Ruesch-Written by Marilyn Ruesch Schneider

from Notes from an interview with David Lemar Ruesch with Schneider grandchildren-Thanksgiving 1983.

Key: I=Marilyn Ruesch Schneider, Dad=David Lemar Ruesch, Grandpa = David Ruesch, Grandma = Mary Ann Miller

Dad's earliest memory was of his father (Grandpa) surveying the bare ground for the bakery which he later built.  Dad was 4 or 5 years old when it opened.

The Bakery:  It was a bakery, restaurant, and grocery store.  Grandpa ran all of them.  Grandma helped with the restaurant and too care of the children.  They served ham and eggs for breakfast.  They also served steaks, cinnamon rolls and donuts at the restaurant.  Dad helped with deep frying the donuts.  He looped them through a tick and put them on a tray out of the deep fast.  Dad spent a great deal of time studying, so he didn't exactly work full time.

During rabbit hunting season, people would bring in rabbits to be cooked.  They always had icecream on hand. 

Grandpa borrowed money from the bank (on good character alone) to start the bakery.  He used the income to invest in farms.  He thought his boys would all become farmers and was gathering land for them.  However, at the same time he was always talking about the value of education.  He himself had gotten married and immediately left on a mission to Germany, while his wife working as a "nanny" for wealthy people in Salt Lake City.  None of his own sons went on missions, but all graduated from college with Masters Degrees in Business Administration and/or Accounting.

At Christmas time the bakery always had a beautiful, perfect 15' Christmas tree.  Some of the townspeople would be asked to go up to the mountains and cut one for the bakery.

Grandpa has gone into Salt Lake City after he located the bakery site to learn the business-It took 3 months.

All the kneading was done by hand.  At First they didn't slice bread, but later they had a slicer.  As the children got older they all helped.  dad had the job of sweeping out and running the bread wrapping machine.  The big furnace needed stoking with coal to bake the bread.  How did they know the proper temperature?--They had thermometers in the ovens.  They used a long stick for fishing out the bread from the ovens.

For years they lived above the bakery, where there were several bedrooms.  They ate in the huge kitchen of the bakery.  Hours for the bakery: Open when they got up, closed when they went to bed.  Grandpa got up very early to start the bread.  They had radiators for heating the house.  Dad got burned many times.