Page 10 - FINAL EARLY SPRING 2019 SWHS Newsletter

Ma Baker’s Corner Grocery

Corner grocery stores sprang up to
take advantage of new and better roads
and early automobiles.
Helga Gurina Baker, (known as ‘Ma
Baker’) operated Baker’s Corner Gro-
cery from 1920 to 1934.
After the death of her husband, Jack,
in a well cave-in on a nearby property,
the Norwegian immigrant mother of
four young children had to find a way
to support her family.
Baker’s Corner Grocery was locat- Young Elizabeth Baker on the porch of the store and restaurant. Note the old gas pump on right.
ed on the northeast corner of the inter-
section of Bush Point and Mutiny Bay deliveries made and gas pumped in a kitchen... special Norwegian goods
roads. Its small restaurant was a favorite never ending procession of customers. were made the year around. The sweet
local hangout, serving as a communi- Community leaders from Langley, enticing odor of Julekage, lefse, fattig-
ty nucleus for an area that as Ma Bak- Clinton, Bay View and Maxwelton met man, yule rye brod and cookies filled
er’s son, John, described in his memoir at the store to plan their strategy before the store, especially from the middle
‘Baker’s Corner: Early Days on Whid- going to the commissioners meeting at of November until a few days before
bey Island’ as: the Court House in Coupeville.” Christmas. Although at that time of the
“...the hub of the Island for the fish- John Baker described the layout of the year it was almost a round-the-clock
ing industry, logging industry, chicken store: “The center section was the main operation, there was never enough to
and strawberry farming, and the dairy store. Feed, flour, grains, sack sugar, fill the demand.”
industry... Sport fishing was also noted sack coffee, were through the door on During Prohibition, the store was
with several fishing resorts, not to men- the right, also accessible from the main also the site of after-midnight ‘don’t
tion the bootlegging industry during store. ask’ gas pumping, filling trucks for
Prohibition. Next was the oil shed, where we bootleggers who moved crates from
(The little store) was at the center of housed 10, 20, 30, and 40 weight oil... smuggling operations at Mutiny Bay
it all. Three slot machines (one-armed One of my morning chores was to fill and Smugglers Cove and numerous
bandits), punchboards and card games special made, spouted quart bottles with South Whidbey moonshine stills.
went on from mid-morning until late at each weight of oil. Early Gas Pumps
night. Food was served, orders filled, Behind the oil house and along the As automobile use grew and roads
outside wall of the store were barrels of were improved, stores such as Fred
kerosene, cloth cleaning fluid, vinegar, Funk’s Mercantile in Langley, Bush
molasses, upright barrels of imported Point Mercantile, Baker’s Corner Gro-
salt mackerel, salt herring, dried cod cery, Julia Mackie Brixner Cross’s
fish, a special imported lutefisk for the store at Maxwelton, the Bay View
Christmas season, 25-gallon barrels of Cash Store, the Mutiny Bay Store at
Kosher pickles and regular dill pickles, Austin, the Clinton Union Store (when
barrels of German-made sauerkraut it moved up the hill in 1931), and Aus-
and crocks of pickled herring and pick- tin ‘Deke’ Marshall’s 1937 Freeland
led pigs feet... store added the convenience of gaso-
The inside of the main store was line pumps.
jammed with regular groceries, candy, In the teens and early 1920s ‘pump-
Helga ‘Ma’ Baker at the wheel of a sec- tobacco, popular sizes of bib overalls, ing gas’ literally meant using a handle
ond-hand 1918 model T making deliveries jackets, socks, work shoes, (mostly on to pump gas up into a marked glass cyl-
from the store. No stranger to hard work, special order) all types and sizes of inder at the top which was then emptied
prior to opening the store she walked 4 miles tennis shoes. Imported sausages, corn into a car’s gas tank via gravity. This
to Bush Point each school day, hitched horses beef, a dairy case with fruit and produce allowed for an accurate measurement
to a wagon and hauled children to the Mutiny in season. of gas as well as assuring customers of
Bay School, then repeated the trip after school Baking was done daily in the large
was let out. the quality of the gas.
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