After Helms Bakery opened their facility at 8800 Venice Blvd in Culver City (“Home of Helms Olympic Bread”) in 1931 and until 1969, these cute little yellow trucks delivered fresh-baked goods to hungry and grateful Angelenos all over the southland. As far as I can determine, this shot was taken around 1955, which seems about right. It has a very height of the 50s/Leave It to Beaver/Father Knows Best feel to it, if you ask me. Does anybody seeing this photo remember the Helms delivery truck roaming their neighborhood?
Helms bakery delivery fleet in 1931:
Staci KC on Facebook sent me the photo posted below along with this reminiscence: “We lived in Blair Hills, neighborhood in Culver City and the coach would come by and you would step up and into the coach. The driver would slide out the beautiful highly polished drawers filled with pastries and donuts. The shelf below the drawers had loads of breads. Summer time, they would come by my grammar school, Linda Vista, when summer school let out. He would have assorted candy in some of the drawers then. School took us on a field trip to toured the bakery and we received a tiny loaf of bread.”
Hi Martin,
We moved to suburban Anaheim in 1956 when I was six years old and lived there until 1966. Some of my fondest memories are of the Helm’s Bakery truck driving through the neighborhood.
Helms gave everyone a small blue sign with the Helms yellow ship’s wheel logo to place in a window when you wanted the truck to stop at your house. The trucks had a distinctive whistle that blew as they slowly went town the street.
My parents had them stop every Saturday to buy bread and baked goods. Double doors on the back of the truck opened to reveal several slide-out drawers full of fresh baked doughnuts, etc.
Ah, so that’s how they knew when to stop – a little sign in the window. Very clever!
I lived in Westchester in the 1950’s on a street very much like the one pictured here. The arrival of the Helms truck announced by its distinctive tooted whistle was happy event. Climbing into the truck where the driver would pull open the wooden drawers revealing the baked goods was the best part.
Absolutely. In the Fifties in San Bernardino (San Berdoo) the Helms Truck came at least once a week, and we went out to the truck in front of the house, due to its whistle, and selected our morning treat…
Absolutely. Like Gordon, we remember the sound of the wooden drawers opening. A silver lever we thought was magic released them. The overwhelming memory, though, is the aroma that filled the truck. Climbing in was a giant adventure. Thanks for another brilliant memory.
…and they went beyond the Westside; we were in what is now called East Hollywood (near Hollywood and Vermont)
Martin do you have any photo’s of the trucks from the 30s? I wonder if they looked the same. I love the fact that the bakery building is still around. I think it is a furniture store these days. I love all the nostalgia that is there in LA.
No I don’t, but I’ll be on the lookout for them now!
The H. D. Buttercup store that’s in the old Helms Bakery building on Venice Blvd. had a truck in the store. I haven’t been there in years, so I don’t know if it’s still there or not.
My Cub Scout den once went on a field trip to visit the Helms Bakery to see how they baked bread and donuts. It was filled with delicious aromas. And we each got a fresh donut. Unforgettable.
Yes, I sure do remember the Helms Bakery truck! And if memory serves me right, there was also a whistle or a loudspeaker tune that announced the arrival of the Helms truck! It was always exciting for us kids (back then) when the Helms truck or the ice cream truck arrived in our suburban neighborhood. We didn’t always have enough money to buy anything, though! But you could get a delicious whiff of the various baked goods and pastries & donuts when the Helms man opened the rear doors of the truck and slid open the wood trays with all the goodies!
Dear Friend Martin….
Ahh, yes how well I recall the HELMS man. All I had to do was put a large card with an H on it in my window….and he would stop and make a sound to let me know he was in front of my house! I would go out, stand inside the truck and choose what I wanted from large drawers of goodies. Also he had cardboard cutouts to fold into a little town which we could collect.
I will never understand why they quit coming…. Seems now would be a perfect time to start up again. BTW….I turned 95 last Friday!!
Hi Joan – I did wonder if you remembered the Helms bakery van doing its rounds. And happy birthday! You’re a marvel!
That’s so uncanny. I was just replying to a Facebook query about sounds (or smells) that you miss from the past and mine were the sounds of the wheels of the Red Cars and the smell of the Helms Bakery in L.A.
I now live in the Central Valley (Tracy) and miss a lot of the REAL L.A., like Angel’s Flight Trolley and the Hollywood Bowl. We toured as a class in probably third grade. We got a small loaf of bread (so soft and fresh) as we left. We lived in what used to be called Mid-town, but is now South Central, at 42nd and Broadway, blocks from the Coliseum and Sports Arena. We could smell the bread on a day that the wind blew inland.
I remember receiving a small, thin cardboard replica of the Helms truck that used the “insert Tab A into Tab B-type” model if memory serves me correctly.
I remember receiving a small, thin cardboard replica of the Helms truck that used the “insert Tab A into Tab B-type” model if memory serves me correctly.
Yes, they used to give that out to kids.
I found one (not assembled) on eBay and framed it for my kitchen.
The Helms truck came to my neighborhood in Glendale when I was in high school. That was in the early 50s. They had the best cram filled rolls and I would sometimes catch the truck as I left home for school. Great memories. There was a Helms bakery in Eagle Rock, where they did a lot of the bakin_-g.
Oh yes, I remember the Helms man. Their vehicles would slowly stroll the local streets with an occasional “tweet tweet” whistle to advise of the availability of goodies. If we behaved well my Mom would stop it and allow us to look at the doughnuts and select one from the wooden tray. We didn’t know when a truck would come by but when it did it was quite a treat.
It was the cream puffs. Lots of good things but you never got over the cream puffs. The aroma still wafts through the brain. (And then there was the rum soaked cake from Sarno’s.)
I wonder if anyone has restored any of these trucks? I sure hope so. Maybe there is a Helms Truck club in your area?
You’ve got me wondering if the Peterson Automotive Museum has one.
As I mentioned above, there was on in the H. D. Buttercup store in the original Helms Bakery on Venice Blvd. I don’t know if it’s still there or not.
You can see one in L.A. Confidential. First it’s there, then it’s not. They must have had to reshoot something?
We didn’t get much spending money but the Helms truck was always something to save for. I remember the “bridge” cookies, too. They came in the shapes of the card suits.
One of my earliest memories is being in a Red Car on Venice Blvd. and passing the Helmsman statue that’s in the middle of median. Based on when the Red Cars were discontinued, I had to be under 3 yrs old.
Those Fageol (later Divco) Twin Coach vans were seriously overbuilt with cast-spoke wheels like a big over-the-road semi of the time (or decades later) would’ve had, but the load space of a modern subcompact hatchback, 54 cubic feet which puts it in the Honda Fit/Chevy Bolt league. No wonder Helms was able to use theirs well into the 1960s despite production having ended sometime before WW2.