mary's Pastries

On December 15, 2007 we were coming home from a week end in Ohio with the Kauffman's for Christmas. we celebrated over the weekend an early Christmas. When we traveled home to Indiana on Sunday afternoon we encountered a very bad snow storm. we looked at each other wondering if it would be better to turn around and go back to Ohio or trudge home. We would be about the same distance for being now about half way home. I told JD as we were driving that for some reason we are getting home. " I don't know why" I told him,but we kept going and found that the toll road was not to bad and made it home after all.
We walked into our home at 9:00pm and began the wonderful job of unpacking all the luggage and Christmas gifts. I was in the house about 10 minutes and my phone rang with one of my MOPS friends calling me. I hung up after a short conversation because her husband is on the fire department for Nappanee and they just got a call that the bakery might be on fire. I hung up and call Steve on his cell phone. He knew nothing and he was out to the bakery as soon as the first truck got there. JD stopped what he was doing and went to join Steve at the bakery. Steve called me once he got to the bakery and told me the bakery is totally on fire and that flames are coming through the roof. I told him JD is out there somewhere to look for him. I called Karen and Dori to let them know. They were all in bed, sleeping. No answers for both of them so i left frantic messages on both of there cell phones. Logan called our friend and neighbor to come stay with the children so I could join my family at the bakery and I also needed to go and tell my mom who was already in bed sleeping. It was very cold that night of the fire, about the coldest we had yet in December.
As I drove to Mom's house to tell her the dreadful news it was all I could do to remember the night of when I got a call late at night telling me my dad was not going to make it. (1998) Now I had to tell my mom what she had worked for all her life is now up in flames. As I walked into the house I talked to her so she wouldn't be scarred. My mom said all she could think of was that something had happened to one of my little family beings we were traveling in bad weather to get home. In my shock I thought my mom was never going to move out of that bed she just could not get moving. I believe she was in shock. I helped her get dressed and in warm clothes. I knew the weather was so cold outside I didn't know how mom was going to be able to take the rigid temperature. I am so glad we all have cell phones and we kept calling each other. We drove out to the bakery. The police man let us park at the bank and then Steve drove over with his truck and we got in and could watch from the back of the property inside the truck. There was nothing to do but watch, nothing to salvage, stay out of the way so the firefighters could work on the flames. We got calls from our family in Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania they are all wondering what it looks like. we told them and we comforted each other as best we could. We thought of the huge box of caramels that Doris and I had made for the Christmas orders. We thought about the cookie trays that we had planned on make for the next day. When you prepare for bakery baked goods we mix and put it into the freezers and then when you are in need of things we take them out and bake as needed. This way everything is fresh when it is sold. There we sat watching thousands of dollars worth of retail and Christmas orders that we had prepared and now would not be happening in the next week after all -- going up in flames. What a disappointment of the fire happening a week before Christmas. Steve told us later he was so sick to his stomach he could have just Puked. Yet the evening of the fire he was very quite and didn't say much. We left at 2:00am and tried to go home to get some sleep. During the night the fire department was called out again because the fire rekindled. At 5:00am the girls from work (mostly amish) started to arrive and didn't realize that the bakery had burned. They hugged and gave words of encouragement to the family. The next couple days found us walking around in the freezers and coolers etc .. throwing things in the dumpster and counting inventory as we went. We salvaged as much as we were allowed and gave many things away. We washed over a thousand pounds of cheese in soapy water and gave it away. We gave away butterhorns, pie filling, and pie crusts from the freezer that was outside the bakery and was not affected by the fire. We couldn't sell it but we could give it away. The weeks that followed had us putting all the inventory on paper and then documenting it onto a computer spread sheet and then verifying everything with prices and sales receipts. As of almost 2 months later we are still waiting on insurance to get there end of the job done. It takes for ever and lots of paper work. We are in the process of looking for a future location to start up again. We would like to take the opportunity to move up town and leave the farm property for mom so that when she ever decides to sell the Nappanee farm she would have a more valuable piece of property to offer with frontage now since the bakery will get demolished. At the time when the bakery was built eighteen years ago it made sense to build on the property. Now everything is industrialized out by the bakery. Look for us to stay in Nappanee though.