A Walk Down Memory Lane

Who doesn’t enjoy a good trip to a bakery?

I enjoy it even more when it means I get to simultaneously cross something off my 25 Things List. Meet number 15 on my list: Go somewhere nostalgic from my childhood.

After deciding to put this item on my list, I started accumulating ideas for places I could visit, and in the end, I visited three of those places. Check.

I only intended to visit one of these spots, but as the day spiraled away from us, we ended up in various locations from my childhood.

The most fun place on my list was the site of the former Chaska Bakery, which is the first bakery I ever visited. After they closed down, I always felt a little sad inside when I would pass the empty store. There used to be a painting of a jolly baker holding a rolling pin, which remained for quite awhile after they closed, located on the now blank cream wall to the left of the storefront.

But now, the Chaska Bakery is the Red Bench Bakery.

And it is quite different.

When I was around four years old, I lived in Chaska, Minnesota, and even then I was an avid reader (or an avid listening-to-my-parents-read-to-me-er). One night, my mom was reading a Sesame Street book to me, in which Big Bird goes to a bakery.

I looked up at my mom, and in a tiny, four year old voice, asked, “What’s a bakery?”

She was struck by the fact that I didn’t know what a bakery was, and had never been to one, so she described a bakery to me. After watching my little toddler eyes light up at the idea of a store filled with donuts and cookies, she promised to take me to one.

Enter Chaska Bakery.

The Chaska Bakery was a typical small town bakery – it smelled like warm dough, and upon walking in you were greeted with the sight of rows of donuts, covered in frosting or cinnamon sugar, and trays lined up with fresh cookies. There were booths all along the wall, and several tables for customers to sit at. And outside was a red bench, from which the new bakery gets its name.

I was ecstatic. I walked along the glass case, carefully examining each treat to make my final decision. I chose a sugar cookie, covered in yellow frosting and strategically decorated with black frosting to create a smiley face. My mom let me pick out a treat to bring home, so I chose a long john coated in chocolate frosting and filled with vanilla pudding, which is still one of my favorite donuts today. My mom also let me get a small paper carton of chocolate milk, which was an added bonus, since we didn’t normally have it.

I remember there was an elderly man sitting at one of the tables, who’d just gotten a kick out of the fact that it was my first time at a bakery. My mom chatted with him for a few moments, because she is the most social butterfly there ever was, while I impatiently waited to eat my sugar cookie. Finally she and I settled into a booth together.

I don’t remember what we talked about, I just have a warm memory of sitting at that booth with my mom, as we chatted and enjoyed fresh baked goods and chocolate milk. When we were done, we went outside and sat on the red bench for awhile. I vaguely remember something about a bee flitting around me. It’s weird, the things that stick in your memory.

Fast forward a few years, and I decided this would be the place I would visit from my childhood, so I asked me mom if she wanted to go with me, and we planned a mother-daughter date.

Old brick, new sign. We were pretty excited to see what the interior looked like, though I had a sneaking suspicion that the Red Bench Bakery was going to be more of a hip locale that sold lemonade with lavender extract and fancy, freshly baked bread laden with sprigs of rosemary, in stark contrast with the warm, sweet-smelling bakery of my childhood. I was correct.

It wasn’t a bad thing, by any means! Just a different experience. I’ve gone back to the Red Bench Bakery several times since, as they won me over with their delicious croissants.

The interior was simple but cute. In the old Chaska Bakery, display cases of donuts, scones, and cookies were lined up against the far right side of the room, and small booths lined the left-hand side of the room.

The Red Bench had expanded the square footage of the bakery, so the main space that the Chaska Bakery once occupied is now all seating. Meanwhile, the register and selection of baked goods was at the back of the bakery. They didn’t have as wide of a selection as the former bakery, but I can tell you that everything was damn good.

My mom and I decided to test out three of their baked goods: the ham and cheese croissant, apricot-filled brioche, and a cinnamon roll. They didn’t sell chocolate milk, but in a homage to our first trip to the original bakery, I ordered a hot chocolate.

*Mouth waters*

The ham and cheese croissant was phenomenal. Flaky, savory, everything you could possibly want in a croissant. I’ve returned several times just for this treat. The cinnamon roll was pretty unique. It didn’t have a typical sugary glaze over it, and had more of a thicker cinnamon sugar mixture twisted throughout it, instead of the syrupy cinnamon goo that typically fills cinnamon rolls, which I actually don’t like. I very much enjoyed this rendition of the cinnamon roll!

We also enjoyed the apricot-filled brioche, which was beautiful and delicious. What a combo.

We sat and enjoyed the baked goods, ambience, and each others’ company for awhile, and then decided to drive out to the old house we used to live in years ago, while we were Chaska residents.

Here it is! In all it’s glory. We lived here until I was four years old, but I actually have quite a lot of memories of living here: my dad waking me up early in the morning before he went to work, watching Scooby Doo cartoons with him and sometimes eating mint chocolate chip ice cream at an hour way earlier than any human should possibly be enjoying mint chocolate chip ice cream at; playing dolls and action figures with my older brother, pretending they were life-sized people who’d been shrunk down while playing with them in my toy kitchenette; my mom teaching me how to write letters at the kitchen table.

We also had a family tradition of taking pictures of my brother and I in front of the birch tree in our front yard on the first day of school – every house we’ve lived in has had a birch tree, so we continued the tradition long after we moved out of this place. Naturally, my mom insisted she got a photo of me in front of the birch tree here, years later.

Here I am, a little nugget, back in the day where if you blinked during a picture you didn’t find out until the film developed. Classic. Glad I could demonstrate here. Check out the cars in the background. There was once a road behind this tree, but they ended up removing it years later.

We also got a photo next to another tree in the yard, where my Dad had once set up a swing, from which I constantly demanded to be pushed.

Big fan of swings, over here.

I’m the tiny bundle wearing a bonnet, enjoying a nice swing.

That tree and I have both certainly grown up.

On a kick of checking out our former homes, my mom and I decided to visit two more. After we lived in Chaska, we moved to Norwood, right next door to my mother’s childhood home. I got to grow up next door to my grandparents and roam around the acres of land, letting my imagination run wild and scouting for rabbits, my favorite animal. I often “helped” my grandpa in his garden, more often than not getting distracted by butterflies floating by, or ladybugs scuttling over green leaves. I remember sitting in the warm sunshine of the “New Room,” which had been added on to my grandparent’s home years prior but had still retained its name, eating fresh oranges and telling my grandma about kindergarten, my elbows sticking to the floral vinyl tablecloth she kept placed over the table.

We lived in a little red rambler next door, and I loved that house.

When we moved, eight-year-old me had dreams of returning one day as an adult and buying that place.

And right next door, a white two-story house that my grandparents raised their eleven children in.

Visiting this place was a little sad – the gardens around the house that my grandma once tended to were overgrown, the house desperately needed a power wash, and the grounds were not kept up in the pristine condition my grandpa always had pride in keeping them in.

Things always change, and sometimes it’s difficult to look at. There were a lot of memories that flooded back all at once – excitedly running into the hot front porch that the sun would always beat into and which always had its unique smell of summertime, happy to visit my grandparents; piling into the wagon pulled by my grandpa’s tractor, packing in with all of my cousins as our grandpa drove us around the yard in the summer; rolling snowballs up the hill in the winter to create the biggest snowman I could with my older brother. It was a large property with even bigger, brighter memories, and I am grateful for the moments it fostered for myself and many others.

And with that, my mom and I drove to our new homes, and I crossed one more item off my 25 Things List. It was fun spending the afternoon with my mom, visiting places that we’d made homes in, reminiscing and exchanging stories both of us had forgotten.