***The Smells, Ah, The Smells Of Childhood- Ida's Bakery Over on Sagamore Street, For Arlene, Class Of 1965

Click on the headline to link to a Website devoted to oatmeal bread recipes. Hey, I never said I wasn't quirky on some of these links.

Al Johnson, Class of 1964,comment:

The Smells, Ah, The Smells Of Childhood- Ida's Bakery Over on Sagamore Street, For Arlene, Class Of 1965


There are many smells, sounds, tastes on the memory trail in search of the old days in North Quincy. Of course one cannot dismiss that invigorating smell of the salt air blowing in from Quincy Bay when the wind was up. And that never to be forgotten slightly oily, sulfuric smell at low tide down at Wollaston Beach, the time of the clam diggers and their accomplices trying to eke a living or a feeding out of that slimy mass. Or the smell of marsh weeds from up at the disfavored Squantum end of the beach. Or the sound of the ocean on those days when the usually tepid splashing against the shoreline turned around and became a real ocean and acted to calm a man’s (or kid’s) nerves in the frustrating struggle to understand a world not of one’s own making.

I know I do not have to stop very long to tell this crowd, the crowd that will read this piece, about the tastes of that HoJo’s ice cream back in the days. Or those char-broiled hot dogs and hamburgers from your back yard barbecue pit or the ones down at the beach. But the smell that I am smelling today is closer to home, as a result of a fellow classmate’s bringing this to my attention. (Although if the truth be known I was already on the verge of “exploring" the subject). Ida’ Bakery over on Sagamore Street, the next street over from my grandparents’ house on Young Street across from the Welcome Young Field.

You, if you are of a certain age and neighborhood, remember Ida’s, right? She ran a bakery out of her living room in the 1950s and early 1960s (beyond that period I do not know). Now I do not remember all the particulars about her, about her operation, about what she made but I remember the smells of fresh oatmeal bread. Or of those Lenten hot cross buns. Or of the 1001 other simple baked goods that put my mother, my grandmother, your mother, your grandmother in the shade. And that is at least half the point. You went over to Ida’s to get high on those calorie-loaded goodies. And in those days that was okay. Believe me it’s was okay. I swear I will never forget those glass-enclosed delights but I need a little help here. I do not remember much about the woman, her life, where she was from, or any of that. If you do, let me know. This I do know- in this time of frenzied interest in all things culinary Ida's simple recipes and her kid-maddening bakery smell still hold a place of honor.