Ezra Jones delivered town?s bread in 1940s

Washington was a very different place in the 1940s. There were 19 grocery stores in town, and no one knew them better than Ezra ?Easy? Jones. Jones delivered bread to nearly all the grocery stores in town, and did so on a daily basis. He delivered bread for Colonial Baking Company for 11 years, and has many stories from his experience.

Jones was born in 1921 and raised in Novinger, Mo. He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and served in Ottumwa and Monticello. He was drafted into the Army and served in France, Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium and Czechoslovakia during World War II. After the war, he moved to Cedar Rapids where he began working for Colonial Baking Company. In 1948, he was transferred to the office in Mt. Pleasant.

Jones drove a bread truck from Mt. Pleasant to Washington and made a number of stops along the way. He dropped off bread at stores in Wyman, Crawfordsville, Ainsworth and Haskins before finally arriving in Washington. His hours were grueling as he awoke well before dawn and continued doing bookwork until after dark six days a week.

?On Mondays and Fridays I got up at 2:15 a.m.,? he said. ?On Saturdays I got up at 12:30 a.m. I got sleepy and awful tired during the day. I went to bed early, at 8 or 9 p.m. I never stayed up until 10 p.m.?

Jones delivered bread all day and arrived back in Mt. Pleasant between 6 and 7 p.m., but he wasn?t yet done for the day. He had another hour of record-keeping to do, and then it was off to bed for a few hours of sleep before doing it all over the next day.

Jones worked alone every day except Saturday when a teenager would tag along to help him unload boxes. The bread truck carried 51 boxes of bread and each box contained 20 loaves. The helper would be on the roof and hand the boxes to Jones, who whisked them inside the stores.

?One morning, I had a kid helping me and I told him I needed six boxes,? he said. ?He handed me a box and I turned around and stood there for two minutes before another box came down. I said, ?G-- d--- it, I didn?t hire you to stand up there! I want those boxes off of there now.? I turned around and there was a box coming down on top of me. From then on, there was a box in the air at all times.?

Jones said it was hard work to unload the bread all day without any help. To increase the number of boxes he could haul at once, Jones welded a metal plate onto the front of a dolly, which allowed him to carry six boxes.

When Jones started delivering in 1948, Colonial Baking Company had a contract with 17 of the 19 grocery stores in Washington. The only two in town that Jones did not deliver to were Widmer Grocery, near the northwest corner of the square (Jones would deliver to Widmer years later), and Alice?s Grocery, in the 700 block of South Seventh Avenue. None of the 19 stores in town in the 1940s are still in business, and many of them have been torn down.

Some of the owners ran grocery stores out of their homes, such as Mary Sherlock, who lived on the southwest corner of the intersection of East Second and 10th Avenue. Eli Yoder ran a grocery store on East Washington Street called ?East End Grocery? and he lived in the apartment above the store. A number of the grocery stores were also restaurants, such as ?Grandma Miller?s,? located on the northeast corner of East Third Street and North Seventh Avenue.

Maude and Earl Sim ran ?Sim?s North End Grocery? on the northwest corner of Second Avenue and Seventh Street. Bob Wade owned the ?Farmers Store? where the Mose Levy building is now. Dale Fuhr and Joe Cochran operated ?Fuhr and Cochran? on North Iowa just off the square, then moved their business northwest of the square where Widmer?s was and then moved it again to East Washington Street where it was called ?Piggly Wiggly?s.?

In the 1940s and 1950s, the square was loaded with grocery stores. Bob and Grace Lytle had ?Lytle Grocery,? and Fred Speed ran ?Speedway,? both of which were on the east side of the square. The Lytles had a daughter who shouted greetings to Jones from their second-story apartment. Jones would respond by singing ?On the Sunny Side of the Street,? a jazz standard from the 1930s.

?Benteco, the Benner Tea Company,? was the largest grocery store in town and was on the square?s north side. The Crone Brothers ran a store next door, and Bob Leet had a store on the northwest corner of the square called ?Leet?s Market,? which specialized in selling meat. Paul Thomason opened ?Thomason Grocery? on the west side of the square and Julius Kunic operated ?Kunic Grocery? on the block to the south.

Kunic also ran a grocery store in Wellman. Kunic needed someone to deliver hundreds of pounds of potatoes from Washington to Wellman. As a favor, Jones let Kunic put potatoes in his bread truck which he then hauled to Wellman.

Other groceries scattered throughout town were Mary McClure?s ?West End Grocery,? Ray Reeves? ?Reeves Grocery,? Marion Swanson?s ?South End Grocery,? and Al Batterson?s ?Batterson Grocery.?

?I was close friends with all these people,? Jones said. ?I ate at one of the stores every day.?

Jones said that when he started in 1948, his company charged 15 to 17 cents per loaf, and then the grocery stores added a dime. Jones suffered terrible back pain in the late 1950s and finally had to quit delivering in 1959. That was when he began working for Moorman Feeds in Washington, where he and his family subsequently moved to, but not before amassing a lifetime?s worth of stories on the bread route.