I’ve heard people make the claim that they “got where they got all on their own.” Their position in life was completely of their own doing, they say. Without even knowing their circumstances, I can’t imagine how this could ever be true.
We rely on others for every portion of our lives. Even someone who lives completely off the grid, away from all human contact and influence, had to have been given food, water, shelter as a baby. It is undeniable.
I think about this every day as I take a bite of my oatmeal and try to imagine the incredible number of people whose work went into bringing that hot bowl of cereal into my kitchen. Or when I drive my car to anywhere, and think about all the people, it took, just to make that personal activity a possibility. Our lives are incredibly interconnected in all that we do.
Which brings me to James Dewar. There are a lot of James Dewars in this world. But this one was born on February 5, 1897, in Pugwash River, Nova Scotia.
This is a place, and a time, far away from me. It would be important when I was 6 or 7 years old, in the aisle of Liberal Grocery Store in Dayton, Ohio. I didn’t know it then, but as a young man, Dewar worked on boats in Nova Scotia, the kind that shipped timber and limestone. It wasn’t the life for him, so he headed to America, to Chicago.
And it was there where Dewar found a job at the Continental Baking Company. Later, that Baking Company would become Hostess Brands after a series of mergers and acquisitions. But Dewar started out small there as a delivery boy in 1920. He took pastries around to the neighborhoods in a horse-drawn cart.
He must have been a good employee because eventually, he became a plant manager. So, some eleven years later, in 1931, Dewar’s plant was making strawberry shortcakes. And you know how that goes. You can only bake strawberry shortcakes during strawberry season.
So it was then that Dewar came up with an idea to create a shortcake without the strawberries. He thought they could just put cream on the inside instead of strawberries. And, as if that weren’t enough, he had just seen a billboard for a shoe company called the “Twinkle Toe Shoe Company.” It stuck with him as he decided to name his new shortcakes, his new invention, the Twinkie. The anniversary of the Twinkie fell just a few days ago.
I was never a big fan of the Twinkie as a kid. I can remember trying my first one at a friend’s house. They came in a two-pack, and we each had one. I took a bite or two and handed it back to her, asking if she wanted the rest.
Which brings me to the grocery aisle. My sister liked the Twinkie. And I liked the Ho-Ho. And every so often, our Mom would let us pick out a box of Hostess treats. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, we’d always have this disparity in tastes. I think, for the most part, we traded back and forth pretty fairly.
But, back to Dewar. He was darn proud of his Twinkies. He said, “Twinkies were the best darn tootin’ idea I ever had. I still eat at least three of them a day.” He was 83 at the time, at a 50th-anniversary celebration of the cake.
He even claimed they helped build athletes. He had several kids, but one son played football for the Cleveland Browns, and the other was a quarterback at the University of Rochester. I’d like the do the Hostess Snack Cake / Athlete study sometime, citing my sister and me, both college athletes, as examples.
Little did we know, as we enjoyed our favorite and not-so-favorite snack, that James Dewar, a guy from Nova Scotia, made them possible.
Rock on, Universe. Rock on.
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“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
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“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
― Ernest Hemingway
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“The day I found my smile again was when I stood in my own storm and danced with my tribe.”
― Shannon L. Alder
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The connect between all of us and the hostess.
