A small-town bakery during World War II

Matt, Walt and Walter Sehnert. (Courtesy photo)

My dad grew up in Presho, S. D.

He came from a family of bakers and in that family everyone worked at the bakery and I suppose he expected to stay there indefinitely. However, with strong encouragement from my mother, in 1930 he took the step of leaving the family in South Dakota and locating in Plainview, in Northeast Nebraska. This leap of faith had its rewards, but it also was packed with uncertainty, hard work, and disappointments.

Almost immediately the entire country was hit by the '30s Great Depression, a period of drought, widespread unemployment, and general disappointment across America. When banks began closing at an alarming rate across the country, there was widespread panic in the land.

A sign from Plainview, Neb., now hangs in the Bieroc Cafe. (Courtesy photo)

Though the bakery business was certainly not very good in the '30s, it was probably better than most. We never went hungry. People had to eat and my folks made a good product, so I guess they did OK, selling bread at 8 cents a loaf, plus similarly priced rolls, cookies and cakes, to the people of Plainview. My dad also had a couple of delivery vans and had east and west bread routes, covering nearby towns (which had no bakeries). Two railroads (the Burlington and Chicago Northwestern) went through Plainview and he used both to ship boxes of bread to towns, primarily to the west, that were beyond the range of the bread routes.

One of pluses of operating a bakery in the '30s for my dad was the fact that he could hire good people, to produce the product, and to deliver it. If someone quit, there was always somebody eager to take his place. But people with a job tended to stay put. Some of his employees at the bakery, who came with the bakery when he bought it, were with him all through the '30s, and were like members of our family. While nobody was getting rich in the bakery (or elsewhere), including my dad, it seemed to me, as a kid, that it was quite a happy time. Everyone was in the same boat, and if you had a job, you counted yourself lucky.

Things changed abruptly with the beginning of World War II. Suddenly, there were new problems. There was business. It had started to rain again. The drought ended. There was a market for what the farmers raised to sell, even an urgent demand for farm commodities. So the farmers had money to spend.

Everywhere, it seemed, there was good business, but there were not enough workers. Young men were being drafted. Older men and women were filling good paying jobs in war-related industries. The result was that there seemed to be a general lack of workers, in the schools, on the farms, and businesses in town, including the bakery.

Shortly after the start of World War II, the baker who had been with my dad since I could remember, retired and moved to Sioux City. What followed was a succession of bakers. The ones that were good tended to drift away, lured by better pay in the city. Some of the bakers Dad hired drank. It seemed to be an occupational hazard. When they did not show up for work my dad was the one who filled in for them at the bakery. I used to feel so sorry for him. My bedroom was down the hall and often I had just gotten home and was still awake at 11 p.m. and I'd hear his alarm go off, then hear his belt buckle click as he got dressed and headed off to the bakery, where he'd work into the afternoon.

My mother was a teacher before she married. The superintendent at Osmond was a friend of the folks and during the war, keeping a teaching staff intact was an ongoing chore for a superintendent. He tried to recruit Mom to come to Osmond. For a long time, she resisted. Then, when the Latin and English teacher retired just before school was to start in 1943, she agreed to fill in -- just for a week or so, until he could get someone permanently. She ended up staying for four years. She used to say that she had the luxury of teaching with wonderful people. "Poor dad, he deals with so many, who are not wonderful people!"

There are always exceptions. Lloyd Carstens was the exception to general rule of wartime bakery workers. Lloyd was just a boy when he came to the bakery. He had graduated from high school but had not yet settled on a career. One night, on the eve of Plainview Free Days, the big annual celebration, someone did not show up for work at the bakery. Dad was desperate. At 11 p.m. he went out to see if he could find someone to fill in. At Mary's Café, he found a table of young fellows having a bit of lunch before they went home. Lloyd was in that group. Dad made his offer of a job if one of them could just fill in for the night. Lloyd had been working for a farmer -- had put in a long day's work that day, but he guessed that he could help out, just for one day. He went back to the bakery with dad and was immediately put to work, helping the bakers, however he could. Lloyd worked with the bakers until they left -- at 4 p.m. the next afternoon! He must have been in the final stages of exhaustion, but he took his pay and set out to find his friends, to enjoy the evening festivities of "Free Days." What is more, he told my dad that he thought he'd like to learn the baking business. He stayed, married a local girl, raised a family, went to the Army and came back, and stayed with dad at the bakery until dad retired and sold the bakery. He was a jewel -- a good baker, an honest man, a good friend!

There were a lot of really good people, young and old who stepped forward during the War, without whom businesses would have had to close. I'll mention just one, who helped the bakery -- Bill Guthman, a proud veteran who had served with Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. He loved to tell about his experiences in 1898. He had been a grocer in Plainview during the '20s and early '30s. Long-retired, he heard that Dad was having trouble finding help, volunteered "to help the war effort." He did clean-up work at the bakery, washed pots, pans etc. He stayed at the bakery until boys began coming home from the Service.

Civilians took a back seat to the military in procuring commodities. Gas and tires were rationed. New cars were simply not to be had. That spelled the end to the out of town bread routes. At the bakery we were constantly short of sugar, certain flours, and fats (Lard was the fat most used in those days). These commodities were rationed. The bakery had a ration card, of course, but the allotment was based on prior years' usage. Since everyone tried to stretch their rations, they bought more bakery items at the bakery. That was good, but we ran out of supplies. To be sure, there was a market ("black market") that existed for all the commodities, and items were available -- for a price. But for most folks, they played by the rules and scrimped and saved, and grumbled over the shortages. At least twice during the War, for a week each time, the bakery was forced to shut down due to lack of sugar or lard.

One time, one of dad's customers had a daughter getting married. She asked dad to make the wedding cake. Reluctantly, he had to tell her that because he was short of cake shortening and sugar, he had temporarily stopped making cakes at the bakery. She was disappointed but said she'd be back. She came, with ration stamps from family and friends, enabling dad to buy the sugar he needed to make the cake.

(It was a beautiful wedding. We all had a good time.)

Saturdays were hellishly long days at the bakery. The bakers went to work at 10 p.m. on Friday and usually finished up about 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. The bakery was open until 11 p.m. or even later. After working all night dad slept a bit till suppertime, then went back down town to wait till the bakery closed so he could check up. He almost always went to the movie, a couple of doors east of the bakery. After that exhausting day, he rarely saw much of the movie after the first reel, but he was self=conscious about falling to sleep. One time a patron complained to the theater owner, Mrs. Hoffman. "My son (a good-sized 4-four -year old) will just sleep during the show. I don't think I should have to buy a ticket for him!" "Madam", said Mrs. Hoffman (in dad's hearing), "Walter Sehnert has been coming to the movie here for years. He always sleeps through the picture, and has never once asked for his money back!"

The bakery certainly was not the only business in Plainview where working conditions were difficult during the War. That is just the business that I knew about firsthand. Often, in those years I'd tag along with my dad when he'd talk with other business owners. Always the same story -- plenty of business -- not enough help -- shortage of commodities. Dr. M.A. Johnson was so worn down with long hours and lack of sleep that my mother worried that he might have a heart attack. (This did indeed occur, though Dr. Johnson did survive World War II.)

Somehow, some way, these stay at home warriors of World War II, managed to keep their doors open, using a blend of high school students, retired folks, who had sometimes been out of the of the job market for a number of years, and women, who heretofore had never worked outside the home, to preserve a semblance of normalcy that I fear, I (and my generation) did not fully appreciate at the time.

Our boys were fighting overseas, sometimes making the ultimate sacrifice, everyone at home was required to do a bit more. It was the natural thing to do.