December 1990

Unused cartons of Barnum’s milk show the old Golden Guernsey labels, which were phased out in 1990, the same year production of the 4-percent variety (right) stopped. (Dave Ballard / News-Tribune)

Requiem for a heavyweight

Diet craze kills an institution built around Golden Guernsey 4% milk

By J.P. Furst, News-Tribune staff writer

This has been a lean year for “4-percent drinkers” in the Twin Ports, the hard-core consumers of a heavy, old-fashioned milk bottled in Duluth for nearly 40 years.

Barnum’s Golden Guernsey Milk – a creamy, high-fat milk produced only by Guernseys and packaged in Duluth’s West End – disappeared from local dairy cases last spring.

For longtime connoisseurs, it left an empty spot in the refrigerator and on the kitchen table.

It marked the passing of a Duluth institution, a local custom that harked back to the days when every neighborhood had its own dairy and the milkman brought glass-bottled milk to your door.

Like it said on the carton, “Guernsey cows are the only cows that give you milk like this.”

“There were a lot of true 4-percenters out there,” said Art Massie Jr., an ex-employee of the 49-year-old family business that distributes Barnum’s milk. “That milk had a real richness and ‘tastability’ to it. It was a unique product.”

In the heyday of high-fat milk, about 20 years ago, Massie said the Barnum’s line distributed about 5,000 half-gallons a week to corner groceries and the new supermarkets coming of age in Duluth.

“Those were the days when you had a grocery on every corner,” said Massie, 59. “You got to know the grocer and build a relationship, and you got to know your customers. The Barnum’s line was the only one that was in every Twin Ports store through those years.”

Art Massie Jr. is shown on Dec. 6, 1990, in front of the family business, which distributes Barnum’s milk. (Dave Ballard / News-Tribune)

“It was mainly older people who bought it, people who may have grown up on creamier milk,” said Harvey Winthrop, owner of the Ideal Market in downtown Duluth. “They were looking for a richer milk, and Golden Guernsey was the richest on the market.”

It certainly was. Pure Guernsey milk contains 4-percent milkfat or more, at least 1 percent more than Holstein milk. It has 10 percent more milk solids in it. It has the consistency of half-and-half – almost like a thin milk shake.

It tasted great.

“Fat tastes good,” said Wally Gronholm, president and general manager at Franklin Foods in Duluth, which bottled the milk for Barnum’s. “It’s a fact. Most of us who like good food like fat. That’s why we like hamburgers and fries. they’re full of fat and they taste good.”

But most Americans are trimming fat out of their diets and that’s becoming obvious in milk-drinking habits. “Skim, 1- and 2-percent milks are the ones people are buying now. The average fat content of all the milk we bottle is less than 2 percent now. That’s a big change from 10 years ago.”

The demand for Golden Guernsey milk was drying up, said Steve Massie, Art’s nephew, who now owns the family business. They were distributing only about 1,000 half-gallons a week earlier this year.

The number of Guernseys milked by Northland farmers was also dwindling, and it was getting more expensive to truck the milk to market.

“It became unprofitable after a certain point,” said Massie, 40. “But you miss having something so completely unique on the market.”

Half-gallon cartons of Barnum’s milk roll down the production line at Franklin Foods in Duluth on Dec. 6, 1990. (Dave Ballard / News-Tribune)

For some people, it was like when Fitger’s quit producing beer, or when Joe Huie’s cafe locked its doors for good. “We still get calls now and then, asking how come it’s not bottled anymore,” he said.

“They had their loyal customers, all right,” said Mark Miller, co-owner of Snow White Food Center on Wopdland Avenue. “That’s all some people would drink. They’d come in and buy the Guernsey milk religiously – until their doctors told them to drink lower-fat milk.”

The Barnum’s label itself is representative of the changes in the local milk business. It exists on paper only – or on wax cartons. The milk is actually packaged by Franklin Foods, as are Arrowhead and Kemps milk. The Massies’ company simply owns the right to the Barnum label and is a distributor.

Since dropping the Golden Guernsey line, Barnum’s milk is now similar to its competitors’ products, but people remain loyal, Steve Massie said.

“Barnum’s still exists because we have very loyal customers and we give good service,” said Massie, who remembers helping his grandfather, Art Massie Sr., package cottage cheese in his basement on St. Paul Avenue in the ’50s. “That’s been our family’s tradition since 1941. It’s the main ingredient in our success.”

Steve Massie of Massie Distributing, distributors of Barnum’s milk, loads a truck at the Franklin Foods Dairy in Duluth’s West End on Dec. 6, 1990. (Dave Ballard / News-Tribune)

The only place in the Northland where 4-percent milk is still in the stores is around Ashland, Wis., he said. “We thought about buying our Guernsey milk from a bottler over in Waukesha, Wis., but it didn’t seem feasible to bring it in here.”

There’s a certain amount of Guernsey milk in all of the milk packed at the Franklin plant in Duluth, but it’s nothing you can taste. “All milk tastes pretty much the same once you take the fat out,” said Gronholm. “A Guernsey drinker might give me an argument about that, but it’s true.”

Were the Massies “true 4-percenters”? Did they pour that heavyweight milk, as viscous as 10W-40 motor oil, on their corn flakes at home?

Steve said, “Nah. We were down to 2 percent milk at my house.”

Art, a wiry man with a long memory, chuckled. “That’s what I’m down to, too.”

Even the milkman has to go with the flow.

– end –

After typing in this archive article, I’m a little confused about the lamentations over the loss of 4-percent milk. You can still buy whole milk – is that not the same thing? Was the “Golden Guernsey” variety something unique, unlike other brands of whole milk? If you remember – and if you know any more about when the Barnum’s brand name disappeared from local shelves – please post a comment.

And while we’re at it, can you think of any other unique, Northland-favorite food products, past or present? Over at Perfect Duluth Day there have been occasional discussions about Connolly’s Tom and Jerry Batter. What other local favorites can you think of? Again, post a comment to contribute to the conversation.

November 13, 1987

Lights glow at the Taystee Bread bakery, 2326 W. Superior St., as loaves are “baked while you sleep” in March 1983. The beam of light is from a passing car. (Joey McLeister / News-Tribune)

After today, Taystee bakes no more

By Mike Hughlett, News-Tribune staff writer

Today will be the last time Earl Sellards helps you make a sandwich.

Sellards will preside over the mixer at the Taystee bakery that blends 700 pounds of water, flour, yeast and shortening into a blob of dough big enough to make 25,000 loves of bread a day.

But that isn’t nearly enough to beat the plant’s competitors. The machines in the 66-year-old bakery at 2326 W. Superior St. don’t have the muscle to move any faster. So when Taystee bakers bag their last loaf today, another Duluth industry – large-scale commercial baking – will disappear.

Heileman Baking Co. bought the Taystee plant from American Baking Co. last summer and decided to end its baking operations today. The plant will continue to receive bread from Heileman’s St. Paul bakery and ship it throughout the Northland. But 33 of the approximately 65 jobs in the plant will vanish.

“It looks like I’ll close it up,” Sellards said.

Bob Veillet turns out enough dough to make 640 large loves of bread at Duluth’s Taystee’s bakery in March 1983. (Joey McLeister / News-Tribune)

Sellards said about 500 people worked in Duluth’s commercial baking industry when he started at Taystee 31 years ago. Most worked at the Taystee plant and at Zinsmaster Baking Co. in the West End.

In his younger days, Sellards had to pour 100-pound sacks of flour and bulging bags of raisins and sugar into the dough mixer. Now, the raw materials are pumped into the mixer by machine.

But otherwise, the job hasn’t changed much.

Sellards will spend today tending an elastic ooze that will become white, rye, wheat and raisin bread by the time the plant closes. After the bread rises for 4 1/2 hours, he’ll give it a solid punch to let air escape. Then He’ll throw the glop back into a mixer.

Beads of perspiration will coat his temples and forehead. His white T-shirt and white pants – a standard baker’s uniform – will be mottled with light stains. Flour will encrust the joints of his fingers and dust his forearms.

Sellards and his co-workers make enough bread every minute to keep a family in a host of toast for three months. But Heileman’s competitors, as well as its own plants in other cities, can bake four times as much bread per minute, Sellards said. The other plants have newer machines, some run by computers.

“You just punch buttons, that’s all you do,” he said.

Bob Benson, Tom Anderson and Dean Derosier unload baked bread and load up unbaked loaves at the Taystee bakery ovens in Duluth in March 1983. (Joey McLeister / News-Tribune)

Sellards and others said they saw the end coming at Taystee long ago. The plants longtime owner, American Baking Co., did nothing to prevent the plant from becoming a relic.

“This place was so outdated. It was just a matter of time,” said Tim Sullivan, the plant’s shipping foreman, who has worked at Taystee for 10 years. “If I walked in here and saw what this place had, I’d shut it down.”

Heileman decided to do exactly that a month after it bought four American Bakery plants in June. The company offered 33 break makers in Duluth the chance to take jobs at Taystee bakeries in St. Paul or Madison, Wis.

Jerry Rudolph said he and five other workers accepted Heileman’s offer. He’s got an apartment ready to rent in Shoreview, Minn.

“They say it’s a lot nicer down there,” he said as he snatched a pan of bread from the oven. “They say it’s gonna be a real nice job.”

Roger Halverson operates a dough cutter at the Duluth Taystee bakery in March 1983. It cuts the dough into 1 1/2-pound  loaves. (Joey McLeister / News-Tribune)

Cal Jasper works aside Rudolph flipping fresh-baked loves onto carts bound for the slicing machine. The air around the oven is filled with the pleasant smell of fresh bread. It also is hot, but not as sweltering as in July, when the temperature near the oven soars well over 100 degrees.

A stocky man with a full beard, Jasper was hired at the bakery almost 10 years ago when he was 21. At $9 an hour, the job paid him well enough to raise a family.

His family will keep him in Duluth, even though he could work in Taystee’s St. Paul bakery.

“I’ve lived in a lot of smaller communities and I didn’t want to raise a family in a big city,” he said. “I grew up on the St. Louis River. To go down and have my family grow up on the pavement – I just couldn’t see it.”

Taystee bakery production manager Don Haglund checks out a freshly baked loaf of bread at the Duluth plant in October 1981. (Karl Jaros / Duluth Herald)

Jasper, like other workers, may be eligible for job retraining money through the Jobs Training and Partnership Act. The city of Duluth and Clyde Iron plan to give Taystee workers some excess money from a $72,500 state grant awarded to Clyde. The state, however, must agree to the city’s proposal.

Because Jasper didn’t quite work 10 years at Taystee, he is ineligible for even a minimum pension, unlike Sellards and Ron Nichols, who has worked at the plant since the 1950s.

Nichols cleaned flour and scrap dough from the bread assembly line for most of his years at the plant. Today. he’ll work on the stretch of the line where bread dough plops into pans.

But even a 34-year veteran like Nichols won’t receive much more than $500 a month in pension money after the baking operation folds. Saturday, he’ll be looking for a new line of work at age 53.

– end –

The Taystee bakery still stands today; it’s the home of Northern Business Products at the corner of Superior Street and 24th Avenue West.

Here are a few more News-Tribune / Herald file photos of the Taystee bakery while it was still in operation:

Curtis Brosseau of Duluth takes unbaked loaves of bread to the ovens at the Taystee bakery in Duluth’s West End in October 1981. (Karl Jaros / Duluth Herald)

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Bob Benson (right), head oven operator, and Bob Sawyer, flip table operator, work at the Duluth Taystee Bread bakery in October 1981. (Karl Jaros / Duluth Herald)

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Bob Veillet punches down dough at the Taystee bakery in Duluth’s West End in October 1981. (Karl Jaros / Duluth Herald)

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Mike Mallory of Duluth loads up a truck at the Taystee Bread bakery on Oct. 18, 1981. (Karl Jaros / Duluth Herald)

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The Taystee bakery discount store in Duluth, October 1981. (Karl Jaros / Duluth Herald)

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As noted in the story, there was another large bakery nearby – the Zinsmaster Bread Co., later Metz Baking Co., at 2831 W. Superior St. That bakery closed in 1980; the building burned in late 2010. Its last tenant was Peerless Auto Body.

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