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THE CLARION-LEDGER ■ JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI ■
t .._
monday;october
30,1989
DANNY : McKenzie
Columnist
The Clarion-Ledger
Ruth’s Bakery ,, , serves up history, art, and good eats
.I - One of those proverbial funny things happened to Jim and Ruth Thompson a couple of years ago. They moved their Bay St. Louis bakery from a busy shopping center to the very heart of their beautiful little Gulf Coast town,
. figuring they’d lose retail business but make up; for it in the wholesale end- >	,■	i
“Naturally,” Ruth says, laughing now, “our retail business has tripled and we hardly ever get much wholesale business.”
•	It was late Tuesday night a couple of weeks ago — after Gene Taylor had blitzed Tom Anderson to win the 5th Congressional District special election — when we got the word that Taylor, a Bay St. Louis native, would be at
. Ruth’s Bakery at 8 o’clock the next morning to thank his supporters.
•	I decided I’d skip that one, thank you very much, and catch a little extra sleep before heading home. But when somebody called my Biloxi hotel room at 6:30 the next morning looking for something named “Maude McKenzie,” that ended any hibernation plans I had. So I got up and headed for Ruth’s Bakery.
; Talk about your lucky breaks. • • r Ruth’s Bakery is one of those charming little 'places you run up on every so often and fall in love with but you don’t want to tell anybody Bbout it because then everybody will find out •about it and start going there and pretty soon it won’t be the same charming little place you fell in love with. *•
■	Which is a pretty good description of Bay St. Louis it; elf.	-
President Gray presides
:. In my notebook, I have written beneath . Charles Gray’s name: “older than N.O.”
-	Actually, that means Bay St. Louis, not Charles Gray, is older than New Orleans. I know this because the rest of my notes are history lessons and quotes from Gray, a most intriguing man who is now the president of the J3ay St. Louis Historical Society. He holds forth . .in Ruth’s Bakeiy because the.society’s offices ,• are ri ght next door — donated, of course, by J im and Ruth Thompson.
Walk in Ruth’s Bakery, toss a quarter in the collection cup and pour yourself a cup of the. best and strongest coffee south of Canada. Go over and grab a couple of Ruth’s pastries — all loaded with calories, guilt and absolutely sinful flavor.	.
Then sidle on into the room off to the left and pull up a chair at one of the three tables. Read y one of the many newspapers, magazines or cat-alogs, or one of the hundreds of books on the overflowing shelves. Or play a game of Scrabble orchess. '•> ’	-	- "	.i'v'-
Or just sit quietly and soak up some of the local color and admire one of the several paintings by local artists, which, by the way, are for sale. See Ruth. •	'
’■ If you’re really lucky you’ll strike up a conversation with Gray, who moved to Bay St. Louis from New Orleans nearly five years ago after he and his brother sold Dunbar’s, the French Quarter restaurant they’d owned for 29 years. *
.? .	•'	•	J	: 1
Gulf Coast Willie
Gray reminds me a lot of a Gulf Coast version of Willie Morris. He tells of the town’s history, about how in the late 1700s it became a big resort for New Orleans residents because there was no bridge over the bay to what is now our Gulf Coast. Gray explains how the resort business died out, saying things like, “In the early 1800s most of Bay St. Louis washed away or burned down with great regularity.”	■	>
As Gray talked and I listened that day, Millie Brodtmann came in and everybody in Ruth’s Bakery got up and hugged her neck — one at af time, of course. Her husband, Buddy, had died a week or so earlier and this was the first time since the funeral many of them had seen Millie. They needed to let her know they cared.
Taylor, our newest congressman, has said many times he’s not moving h|s family to Washington. He’ll go back to Bay St. Louis on the weekends, he says, because it’s the kind of (town to rear a family in, and because it’s home.
1 It’s also where Ruth’s Bakeiy is.
Danny McKenzie’s column appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.