Richard Aston
Richard Aston was born in 1936 in Dallas and grew up in what was then North Dallas, in the Oak Lawn area along Lemmon Avenue near Wycliff. His father had come off a farm near Granbury, worked floating railroad cars in Fort Worth for nine dollars a week during the Depression, and learned the baking trade before opening his own shop in Dallas in 1934. His mother's parents lived on a farm in Palo Pinto County, on the other side of Mineral Wells and Weatherford, where Richard was sent each summer as a boy. His father described the family's roots as a mixture of English, Irish, and Scottish. Raised with Depression-era values of hard work and thrift, Richard grew up around the bakery, first as a child and later bussing tables and cleaning floors.
Richard attended a small grade school through the eighth grade in Oak Lawn, then transferred into the Highland Park system for junior high and high school, an adjustment he found challenging. After high school he went to Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida, a campus designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, where he joined ROTC and graduated in 1960. He entered the Army as a second lieutenant, trained in artillery, and was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he was among troops practicing helicopter maneuvers for what would become the war in Vietnam. Declining an offer to reenlist so he could help his father, he processed out and returned to Dallas in time to see 40,000 troops deployed that December.
Back in Dallas, Richard briefly worked for a pharmaceutical company before committing fully to the family bakery. His father sent him to a baking trade school in Minneapolis sponsored by Pillsbury and General Mills, where he studied on the GI Bill and, working nights at a large bakery, met his future wife Gladys. They married near Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and returned to Dallas, taking over Astin's Bakery around 1980. Richard staffed the shop with skilled German-trained bakers and semi-retired bakers he met through regional bakers associations. The bakery served the Jewish community for generations, supplying wedding, Bar Mitzvah, and Bat Mitzvah cakes and delivering to caterers at local temples. Married to Gladys for 42 years, Richard had three children and six grandchildren.
The bakery later passed to his youngest daughter before closing.
Full Transcript
Richard 1936 Dallas Texas correct let's go back what do you remember when you're just a little boy well I know that was north dallas at the time and it was on lemmon avenue and it was goes through oak lawn and it was a residential street and I thank my house was somewhere around Wycliffe which is a wendys hamburger shop right now and it was just a lot of houses around there my dad had a bakery on the corner of Wycliffe and and lemon avenue and we used to walk to work you know and not go down there and help him in everything and it was
just really a nice neighborhood there was a street cart Throgmorton line that went right to douglas and we could go downtown because everything was downtown at the time all the department stores the movie theaters all the restaurants everything was downtown now you were just a little boy when you'd work in the bakery well that was that's what they call childcare and as you'll find that in family businesses yeah they bring their children in and they they care for them on premise and then as I get old enough they have them bussing tables and cleaning the floor and doing things like that yeah but I bet
you love going in you know well of course you know it was when I got older but I had other things to do besides go right right how do you remember your grandparents at all not really because they were older at the time and they lived out on a farm and my parents because they both were working in the bakery that's where the term formed out comes in they formed me out in somewhere around the middle of June and then they picked me up somewhere in the latter part of August yeah yeah and they're not held my grandparents out there but that was my mother's
mother and father and my dad hits I don't remember my grandfather on that side but the grandmother was quite elderly at the time and so I knew her for two or three years yeah before she passed but it was my mother's parents that I remember out on the farm they were out on the other side of Weatherford and Mineral Wells out in Palo Pinto County know where your family originally came from my dad came from granbury which is out in the West Texas southwest of Fort Worth and then my mother came from kind of a farm area out there on the other side of Mineral
Wells right if that's what you mean my parents now the origin of my of my parents my dad always said we were kind of Heinz 57 he said we were like English and Irish and Scott yeah yeah and so he said it's kind of a mixture of the three yeah yeah you came along in the middle 1930s you know you're right after the Depression hit this country did your family ever tell you stories about how it affected them oh very definitely in fact I always tell my kids which made no impression on him whatsoever that I was raised with the depression hard work saved the
money safe for a rainy day don't overspend you know and and the value of a dollar and and of course they weren't listening but yes my dad instill all that on me yes he was uh he came off the farm and came into Fort Worth and he was floating railroad cars I think at the time and it was nine dollars a week that he didn't dare show up not show up late because they were 25 other men waiting for his his job yes and so he finally there was a lady that was doing cakes it out of her house I think that the first it
wasn't mrs. Baird there was some other lady and so she wanted somebody to help her and so he started working for her and there was another man working there also it was Heidi Kline Smith and he had ended up having clients miss bakery in Fort Worth at seven points and they became real good friends but there wasn't room enough in full worth for two bakeries at that time so my dad went to Dallas in 1934 and opened up a bakery there and what was the name of your folks Bakery hastens well it was asked ins English bakery at the time but then they drop English because everybody
wanted scones they wanted you know all these English products and everything and he knew nothing about him and he just had a friend that told him that it was very distinctive to have something else in the name besides Astin's bakery so they decided English yeah and then people started traveling people didn't travel very much at that time yeah notice the victory after my wife got real sick and I had to we both had to get out of the bakery business we turned it over to my daughter of the youngest one and so she worked it for a while and moved it down to Lover's Lane
but then the rent went up and the rent went up so she decided she'd move everything out and get into another location well there wasn't another location but she'd already given up that one so that was that was just last year so thanks she doesn't have any any location now so it's been out for no probably about six or eight months right now now where did you go to high school Holland Park okay what was high school life like oh not very much fun I was raised in oak lawn and we had a 8th grades which was not normal then because they just started instituting
the middle school which was 7 8 9 and so I went through eighth grade and we didn't have a limited number of teachers so we all kind of shared a teacher and things like that it was just a small square brick schoolhouse while everybody else is going through the hollow park system which was very update and modern and they had very good facilities and they were learning algebra geometry and trigonometry and I was still in advance crayola you know and so it it wasn't a very good experience transferring from the eighth I went through the eighth grade in grade school and then I went into
the ninth grade and Holland bar junior high and it was quite an experience you now after high school was into the service run to college gamma Zeta college and cordage where did you go I ended up in Florida Southern and in the middle of Florida it's in lakeland florida it was the college was designed by frank lloyd wright and so is a private school and i ended up there and went there for four years and i took oil to see while i was there and so whenever I got out of fun i graduated from college well then of course they had my number in the
service and I went right into the service but I went in as a second lieutenant so it was a lot easier than going through basic training or anything but no this was right after the Korean War this was i graduated from college in 1960 and so that was just that was after the Korean War correct right and then whenever I got out or was getting out processing out we were landing not landing in helicopters but what we were doing was practicing the helicopters not touching the ground and us jumping out with full field packs of m1 rifles which is nine and a half pounds and
everybody had pretty much twisted ankles at that time and we didn't know what the heck we were doing and we were training for because they can't land in the rice paddies in Vietnam and we were training for that and we didn't know it and so I went ahead and was processing out and since they had spent money on me and high school rotc college rotc hampton tree officers basic training artillery training and all this i sent me up to the Pentagon so they flew me up to the Pentagon and I met with a major up there he tried to read reup and I didn't understand
i said no I've got to go help my dad in the bakery business yeah and of course he didn't he wasn't at liberty to tell me what was going on and so I said no I'm going to go ahead and process out and so at that time I didn't get a ticket back yes I had to hitchhike with it I went out to the field and of course being a lieutenant doesn't cut it in Washington DC because there's three charts mr. Partch animals and every plane I would get on well here come in general own they're not get off and so I had to go through Fort Bragg and then go back to Fort Benning and then I processed out and then went back and held my dad and that was in November well in the first part of December all of a sudden we had 40,000 troops there on to be nounced to everybody in the public because they thought all we had was advisors right right and then all of a sudden here's 40,000 troops there and we're we're in a conflict very definitely whoa whoa now you
know you come back and go to work in the bakery well yes and then also I was working for a pharmaceutical company and then working for the bakery also you know I was just working for him part-time and then working for a pharmaceutical company I wasn't that good at sales because all I was thinking about was what I was supposed to be making at the bakery the next day right your hand so I wasn't selling that much I supposed to be calling on doctors and drug stores and and but that wasn't i saw that wasn't my passion right now so the man came in that
was my director for the pharmaceutical coming and he came to the bakery that day and he talked to myself and my dad he said you know your son belongs with you it's that he said he's doing okay but he's going to be a lot happier with you Kevin suppy he had terminated it it probably made your dad's very happy well he hadn't had any relief he was on a board of directors the National Board of Directors and then he liked to go to conventions and stuff like that and meet with other people he was a very outgoing friendly person and he wasn't able to get
away that much once once you have your own business you're tied to it and you just don't have any freedom that much and so what happened was what as soon as my wife and I came in well then he just started coming everywhere he was he moved up to be president of the National bakers Association you know for a year and then he was on the directors for about 10 or 15 years and he was just able to do a lot of things then and so you and your wife took over the business well we didn't take over at that time we would run it
while he was gone and then we took over in nineteen eighty I think now where did you meet Glenn's up in Minnesota I was helping my dad in the bakery and I was asking a lot of questions at the time I think that was probably in 1968 or something like that I was asking a lot of questions about will you put this yeast in here but you can't put the hot water in him because of the kill the yeast or why does he kill the east and he said well it just does you know and I don't have the answer then I say well you
know why are you doing this and putting that in the proof box and then you don't put the other in there I said some things rising something well look he said there's a school in Minnesota he said it's a you know you don't go back to college because you've already graduated from that so it's a trade school and it's sponsored by Pillsbury and general mills and it's up in Minneapolis where all the mills are and it's a baking strictly a baking school and we sponsor it from the Board of Direct a bakers Association and they supply all the flour and shortening and sugars and stuff
like that and why don't you go up there and I looked into it and the GI bill will cover for your tuition and your books and I said okay so I went out there and then I that was my tuition in books but I needed some money for other things too and so I started working at night but when i worked at night i was working for a large bakery up there and i met my wife in there you know when she was working in there and so I started talking to her and I told her I said well I go to school and then
I come working at this job and I sometimes I don't have any trouble I don't have any time to heat or anything and so she said I'll tell you what there's cabinets all around here and I'll tell you which cabinet the broken cookies are in or the broken cupcakes and I'll leave them in there for you and tell you it's number 152 you know and you find it while you're working at night and you can have something the munch on you know and so we got the meeting that way and then we got married up there in South Dakota and Mount Rushmore hell so then
I brought her down here she'd already had ten years experience and she was managing in-store bakeries up there so she had all the experience to and so we just came down and basically worked for my dad for a while until he was ready to retire so that you dead remind you how he sent you to school and you came home not only able to be a baker but now I'm head away so well a helper he called he he calls family members helpers yeah that's kind of like my wife said that's what she was up there that because the Germans and the Swedes they have
children out there to help on the farm and he spent and then after they get to be about 16 or so where they can leave they leave and also then they have more children please avoid noted your sister you had a sister well is your sister still life yes okay you have a sister that she was she involved in the bakery not that I recall she wasn't down there working or anything like that she was in school she's nine and a half years younger than I law so she was basically still in school and doing that and she married a college professor yeah he is
when he graduated and and there and then she was going to get her teaching degree and stuff like that so they were kind of tending toward the teaching profession was the happiest time in your life that it was basically in college and I don't know whether we should really go on to that or my certain invention in your lifetime that came along and possibly something in the industry you worked in but was there something that came along that he said wow how do we ever get along without that well of course the whole bakery business changed you know with automation and things like this as
well as all the other industries did too and it was a it was just remarkable but the machinery cost so much money and then you had to have space for it and then of course you had to have repairs and maintenance and everything yes there was a whole lot of things that came along but sometimes they they weren't financially or practical or whatever for our business because we had a very small bakery as far as capacity goes and we had a lot of trained German bakers in there that Heather training in Germany you know an apprenticeship and so I I could really turn out quality
products just about as fast as the machines could you know with my people that I had in there at the time I had some of the best bakers and well I say I was my dad had most of them you know and then I filled in the void after that with the ones that I got I got a lot of belong to a Dallas and southwest regional bakers Association and so I got to meet a lot of bakers and then whenever they retired I would approach them and ask them if they'd be interested in maybe three days work or two days work and so what
I did instead of hiring kids in there and have to train them and you know they have no experience whatsoever i would get Baker's that just wanted to work to two days or three days and then i would fill in the slots and all I'd have to do is just give him the list of products that I needed and it turned it out you know and it was just I was really very fortunate to meet all those people tell us about you from meeting your first wife first wife was in college okay and she was locally in the town where the college was and so
a friend of mine we went on a double date and and she was the other Heather lady in the in the date and so I got to know her well my roommate at the time Chicago and he used to go out skiing and all this of course skiing was completely foreign to me water skiing was completely foreign to me coming from Dallas because we had no not even that many lakes around here or anything and if they were they were man-made and so he was right there at Chicago will in Lake Michigan and so the girl that I was dating her parents had a house
and property owner one of the larger lakes in town and had boats and skiing and all this and so he kept pressuring me to go out there so he could water ski he's open so I got to know her then and and now we got together then and we winning we were married in cypress gardens and which is just right outside of Lakeland and and so that was back in golly I haven't had to go back that far why did you had two children together yes and while gloves in the army because by that time I was ready to graduate and so then we left
left Lakeland and went up to Fort Benning Georgia and then we had the two children while I was in the service up there and then you and Gladys Gladys had a five-year-old when you admit we're ready so you know together your family had three three kids yes anybody work in the bakery anybody a help from the bakery uh yes my son did he Steve if I was in Minnesota and that was in 69 70 71 he was working in the bakery and then of course he had gone to college and came out with an accounting degree and then he was going down to Austin and
take his CPA and so he was just kind of working there oh gosh for three or four years I guess you know just actually he finally landed what he really wanted and so that he went on into working for a large firm in their bookkeeping department and as an accountant and now he's in like setting up Hospital computers that interconnect with each other and so the hospital's can can transfer information back and forth and he goes and helps him set up their setup the systems and then your daughter she was a legal secretary downtown she advanced pretty well because she was with the company for
a while that's a vicky and so she had some ladies unto her at the time and then she got married and she started having children and then then she started becoming a housewife after that and then your third daughter the third daughter when she grew up in the bakery because she was living with Gladys and I and so she was pretty much raised in the bakery and she took it over whenever my wife went down and got real sick and we had to pull out so she took it over at that time and and started working at the bakery and then she moved it down
to Lover's Lane and opened up there you know you wouldn't what's her name Mary ok it's cute now in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions korean war in the Vietnam War President Kennedy assassination something good the moon landing in 69 the tragedy of 911 was there something on the national scene that really stood out and affected you and you knew exactly where you were what had happened well say that's your generation my generation I was affected by World War two and so that's when we were going to the movies and that's where you receive your news at that time they had newsreels
at the movies there wasn't television there wasn't any other way our media to get it and so that that is what is really vivid in my mind is all the war scenes in the correspondents and how they would record and tell the news in between your features you know when you went to a movie for a quarter and that included your popcorn and your drink because it was nonsense to get in well and but you had to earn it you had to go around and collect coke bottles for two cents and then turn them into the 7-eleven or something and get two cents or mow
lawn or something like that and that that really impressed me because then we would go to the army surplus store and try to get the combat belts and the canteens and you know and that little helmet liners and stuff like that and and I remember all those scenes and things of the of the war really and the development of the airplanes and the you know the bombing the invasions and stuff like that the other the other things I was either busy with the family are busy trying to pursue a job or you know doing have my career or whatever that that didn't really make an
impression and it wasn't really that long when I say the assassination I was actually you know in Texas at the time President Kennedy and then have the different events that you say but they were just a say a short event where that world war two was over a long my whole life as I'm learning right and that's when as a child of nine ten eleven I mean that's when you're really developing your you know capacity to remember things and learning things and it went on for you know quite a while Richard tell us about your involvement with the Jewish community the Jewish community my dad
was had a had a bakery and we were kosher for a while and so we dealt with a lot of the caterers that catered to temple emanuel sheriff is ultra fareth Israel and I would deliver I thought that was my car but it was the delivery wagon you know but he told me you know that oh that's your car but just on Saturday you know so you can deliver up there and so I got to meet Naomi sharps and soul and Bertha spiritus and all the caterers that they had and they were just really nice to me because I would come in with a cakes
in the back door I've never been in the front door of any of the places but I would time they were the kitchen there the kitchen very well in all of them and I would deliver the cake set them all up and do this and then that give me a sampling of their other foods that there yet they're making in the back you know and so I got to know the caterers real well and I come to find out that whenever I came up to the jewish center here and started talking to all the people that they they didn't know what i look like personally
but because i was in the back end of the bakery most of the time but they had done their their wedding cakes or I had done Bar Mitzvah bat mitzvah cakes for them and and and maybe their daughters and then you know maybe three generations so these are people you're meeting of the Joo Shin is a center correct yeah yeah and they knew the name you know but didn't know me personally you know but we had done the cakes over maybe three generations up here people and so it was it was really a quick Association you know as soon because as soon as I would
be introduced it somebody new up here they said you know Astin's bakery but they didn't know me you know what they do the name and new the product yeah but it made for an uneasy in up here yeah they accepted me let me put it that way because of my cakes i guess so you and Gladys married 42 years mm-hmm the three children six grandchildren yes what advice does granddad have for the next generation I don't have any advice because i don't think that i am the one to really give advice to to the next generation they seem to be doing very well it's something
that i can't speak about because i don't know about is it's all technology now right and and I don't know anything about it and so I can't really advise him I thought it was really silly all the little games they were playing on these little computer things and stuff but come to find out that that's helping them progress in the world of computers and so I think they're doing quite well tell you the truth he thinks for doing this to did a great job created you should take up comedy that was really funny