When you’re young, time drags by infuriatingly slowly. I remember spending long, quiet hours on Sunday mornings with my father at our bakery while he did bookwork. Most of the bakery’s lights were off, the radio was silent and, aside from his fingers wrapping on the adding machine, the building was still. As I sat there, trying to find anything to pass the time, I thought those mornings would never come to an end. Neither one of us spoke as I respected the fact he needed quiet to focus.
Though those mornings with their deafening silence have long since some to an end, they are forever imprinted as a few of the countless memories I possess growing up with the family who’s kept the Reilly’s Bakery legacy alive.
Even back then, while I was squeezing frosting out of the decorator’s bags just for the entertainment, I guess I knew I’d always want the bakery to be a part of my life in the way it seemed ingrained in my father’s, my grandfather’s and my great-grandfather’s, who, with a partner named Robert McFarland, opened the doors for the first time in 1910.
This summer marks 100 years that us Reillys have dedicated our adulthoods to baking on Main Street, Biddeford. Though the very dynamics of how the bakery is run have changed, right down to the roles we play, our mission has remained pretty much the same through three generations of Reilly men, and potentially will be passed on to my older brother and myself, marking four generations of our family.
The history of our business is astounding and almost as tangible as the unmistakable aroma that has infiltrated downtown Biddeford for a century. We’ve withstood the test of time, survived two world wars, the wars at Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. We stayed open through the Great Depression, survived competition from a giant store and recently the transition of even more traffic leaving Main Street to explore Biddeford Crossing.
A few decades back, words like ”˜cholesterol’ and ”˜trans-fat’ were a foreign language to the vast populace. As people became more aware of what they ate bakeries took yet another hit.
And we’re still here.
Back in the “old days,” the men worked in the bake shop and the women worked at the front counter. You could smoke anywhere in the building and their original phone number was only five digits long (3-3731), yet still the same base of our phone number today (283-3731). If you were to walk into the bakery back when the original generation of Reilly and McFarland were the owners, chances were excellent you were taken care of by my great-grandmother or her sister, Mrs. McFarland.
In the year of 1910 William Howard Taft was president of the United States. Aviation was still a relatively new phenomenon and the Vatican vowed an oath against ”˜Modernism,’ to be sworn to by all priests.
Wedding cakes only cost about a quarter. A loaf of bread was a whopping penny. A Model-T Ford cost a measly $300.
Main Street peaked its popularity around the 1960s and ’70s when my grandfather, Edward Reilly and his older brother Norman were the head-honchos at the bake shop. Much like my own brother and I, they each had their specific job requirements and split the duties between the two of them, with help from hired bake staff.
At that time, families were still motivated to meet each night across the dinner table, eat a “square meal” usually followed by some sort of dessert. If you lived around here and had bread on your table, chances were good that it was made by my family.
Until the early 1980s, downtown Biddeford remained the hub of the tri-city area. The mills were still very much in operation (albeit starting to decline by the end of that decade) and if you needed anything from shoes to textiles, furniture to groceries Main Street was where it was at.
It really wasn’t until the introduction of grocery stores and big-box retail giants that Main Street started its decline in foot traffic. More of the cities downtown mills shut down with most textile work being sent overseas. For a while there, it was starting to look like a ghost town.
Thankfully over the past ten years Main Street has gotten a pulse again, largely because of the tireless efforts of several groups who love the area like we always have.
Although much about the building, area and people have changed, the family-oriented lifestyle remains just as much of a part of the bakery as it did at it’s inception. Reilly’s has always been a place to visit any number of my immediate and extended family. Along with both my parents and my brother, I’ve worked with cousins, aunts, uncles, in-laws and best friends. My own husband and I first became friends working together there.
My grandfather still comes in just about every day for a visit. After a lifetime of slinging dough and running the oven, he never totally walked away from the shop. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t, either. Since the early ’80s my father has been the sole owner and head baker with a select crew of helpers. For decades he’s been the glue that has kept the Reilly legacy alive, never once missing a day of operations for illness or otherwise. His dedication has been both unfailing and awe-inspiring. He’s the reason we’re still around.
We still hear, every now and again the same old rumors that always seem to circulate every few years, such as we’ve closed, sold out to another family or are gearing up to move away.
As far as I’m concerned, we’re not going anywhere without a ton of kicking and screaming.
These days as I watch my own daughter becoming more and more fascinated with the inner workings of what her mother, aunt, great-aunt, uncle and grandfather all do for work it’s like turning back the clock to those mornings there with my dad and the subsequent decades of learning recipes that had only lived in his mind, techniques that can’t be explained on paper and finding that camaraderie that’s been in motion for four generations. And counting ”¦
”“ Elizabeth Reilly can be reached at elizabethreilly1@yahoo.com.
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