The "How Long Ago Was The Bread And Pastries Made At Your Grocery Store?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Standing in the bakery aisle, looking for a loaf of bread.  Nothing new, right!  I can still remember back to the 1960s when I worked at the Acme Supermarket on North Queen Street and later at the Acme in the Manor Shopping Center. One of my jobs on weekends, when many of the full-time workers didn't have to work, was to stock the bakery aisle shelves with fresh bread.  Deliveries of bread and pastries came every day from the local bakeries around the town as well as a few bakeries from the Philadelphia area.   We never left bread on the shelves longer than a few days.  After that time they were removed from the bakery shelves and placed on a table that was marked "Day Old Bread" even though some loaves of bread and pastries may have been on the table for a bit longer.  Once on the "Day Old Bread" table, they would be sold for half price.  After so many days, if the stuff was still on the table, the people who worked at the supermarket were allowed to take them home for themselves.  I had a special pastry that I really liked and when it was removed from the bread aisle, I would try to hide it close to the "Day Old" table until it reached it's expiration date and I could have it for free.  We always had customers who would look through the stuff on the "Day Old Bread" table to find the freshest bread that may have just been placed on that table.  There were many days when I was able to take an entire grocery bag full of pasties home for everyone to eat.  Often wondered how the grocery store made money on bread and pastries, being that so much was sold for half-off or taken by the workers for free.  When the bread arrived most every morning, we could tell what day it was made by looking at the date that was stamped on the package.  At times the dates were smeared which made it tougher to see the dates.  Just before I stopped working at the Acme, the bakeries began to place a colored twisty that was on one end of the bread.  Bread with a blue twisty was made on Monday, with a green twisty was made on Tuesday, with a red twisty was made on a Thursday, with a white twisty was mae on a Friday, and with a yellow twisty was made on a Saturday.  Most bakeries were closed on Wednesdays and Sundays so workers could have a few days off.  We usually kept pastries on the shelves a day or two longer, since they didn't seem to go stale quite as fast.  The one special pastry that I just loved seemed to have found its way to the "Day Old Bread" table faster than most other pastries.  And from that table, it found it's way into a brown grocery bag that I would take home for my brother and myself to eat.  So, when you go to the grocery store the next time, check the twisty to see how long ago it was made.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.