“We are going to tour the Mrs. Baird’s Bread Bakery on Central Expressway next Tuesday and are going to be allowed to leave school a little early to get there while the full crew is on duty,” said Mrs. Stark and Mrs. Themer to the seven Cub Scouts of our Den in Forney, Texas, as we sat in the Community Center and waited for parents to “pick up” their boys at the conclusion of the biweekly Tuesday meeting. Our Den took more “field trips” than any other, and we were fortunate.
When I saw the obituary for Allen Baird (battled the Covid-19 Virus for weeks in November and finally lost the fight at age 97), I immediately recalled fondly the first paragraph above.
We had loaded up two vehicles with our Cub Scout Den’s members—Kenneth Brooks, Warren Hatley, Pat Kelly, Richard Penney, Bobby Smith, Rod Stark, Don Themer—and probably my sister, Ann, who was usually part of our group because she would have been “home alone” and too young to actually be safe with no one else there. Of course, our two volunteer Den Mothers, Helen Stark and Marian Themer, drove the vehicles!
As we reached the Mockingbird/Central Expressway area at the peak traffic hours of “going home time,” the fragrance of BAKED BREAD overwhelmed the exhaust fumes wonderfully! We could not wait to get inside the factory and see/ hear the tour. We did not know that we would receive samples at the end, but we were always excited to learn about the businesses around our area.
The tour amazed us, as we walked along behind the plant manager, who explained all the machines, ingredients, workers, vehicles, wagons, etc. and was able to answer all our questions. The tour was long, but the time seemed to go so quickly!
At the end, as the manger was telling us good-bye and thanking us for our visit, we let him know how great the tour had been. About that time, a “suit” came up, and the manager called him, “MR.”
MR. asked if we were hungry and would like to taste the bread, and it did not take long for us to agree and persuade our Den Mothers to let us stay a little longer. MR. sent two workers over to a giant machine with a conveyor where there was a steady stream of steaming bread moving on down the line to the cooling/wrapping area, and they counted us and returned with 11 full loaves.
The workers cut each one into halves, threw back into the scraps area some of the middles, and then used a big brush to put butter onto the hot bread that was mostly crust. We each bit into DELICIOUSNESS as you cannot imagine! Basically, we each had about 1/3 of a loaf of Mrs. Baird’s bread, large smiles upon our faces, and butter upon our lips, as we all said “Thank You” to the men for giving us the tour and then the bread.
We returned home and all pledged to only buy Mrs. Baird’s Bread from then on!
ALLEN BAIRD, former chairman of Mrs. Baird’s Bakery (112 years old Ft. Worth institution), was the 2nd oldest of five children and was raised around the bakery in the ‘20s and also worked for it on the weekends during his high school years.
He was in the Army Air Corps in WWII and came back home to try to expand across Texas the family industry after the war. He knew the family secrets for making and baking at just the right times and temperatures and also knew the ins-and-outs of the development of the largest factories in Houston and Dallas as Mrs. Baird’s grew during the 1980s.
Allen Baird officially retired from the active business in 1998 after seeing it rise quite a way from a ONE WOOD-BURNING STOVE FACTORY of his Grandmother’s direction.
According to thoughts of his family, he was always a laughing, loving, fearless leader, and RELATIONSHIPS were his strong suit!
I don’t know if Allen Baird was the “suit” that the workers called “MR.” the day during the late 1950s when we Forney Boys were there, but I like to imagine he was!
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