10
community
june21
2018
Jack’s Hobo Bakery:
portion of the operation. The Kauppila’s
son, Shane, works the front counter,
and they have already hired two other
employees to help with the baking.
Jack is also baking breads,
which he sells through the Bread Club;
customers can join the Bread Club and
pre-order bread for pick-up the next
week, either at the bakery or online at
hobobreadclub@gmail.com.
Breads
include, white, wheat, rye, olive, garlic,
chocolate cherry, gluten free, vegan, and
vegan olive. You can also pre-order oth-
er baked goods as well.
The Bread Club is how he origi-
nally started baking, which is an inter-
esting story itself. Jack, who had experi-
ence as a cook in Tacoma, Washington
in his younger days, had been working
in IT for 20 years in a dream job for him,
when he had, what was supposed to be,
routine eye surgery over five years ago.
When he came out of surgery he devel-
oped a rare neurological condition called
complex regional pain syndrome, a form
of chronic pain not well understood by
the medical community. “I’m in pain
constantly, 24/7 all over my body,” says
Jack. “It comes and goes, and does what-
ever it wants. I wasn’t able to continue
in my IT job because I couldn’t sit and
concentrate. As it progressed I contin-
ued to lose more of my life. I had to give
up my volunteering. I couldn’t do things
with my family. I couldn’t go out. For
continued from front page
years I was waiting for the pain to stop
and worked with different doctors and
healers, did all kinds of tests, and tried
all kinds of medications, but nothing has
really worked.”
He has found that meditation
and yoga does help him manage his pain
somewhat. “I’m just learning to live
with it,” says Jack.
As another way of coping with
his pain, Jack discovered that baking
offered some form of relief. “I always
loved the idea baking but I’ve really
never had the patience for it,” explains
Jack. “But I decided to try baking bread,
and I got a book and tried it out. The
bread was really amazing but it was cer-
tainly more than we could eat as a fam-
ily, so I started a bread club and gave it
away to people who were interested. I
took donations to cover the cost of ingre-
dients and people were really generous,
so I got to make more bread and the club
kept growing.”
Having an obligation to the
bread making process has allowed Jack
to work through his pain. “I discovered
that when I’m baking, no matter what
part of me is hurting or how I feel, I
know I have to take care of the bread,
and the amazing process that is happen-
ing on my counter,” says Jack. “I feel
really lucky that I get to be part of some-
thing like this. That really keeps me go-
ing. My pain hasn’t changed - I’m still
in pain all the time – but my
suffering has been reduced.
I don’t spend my time wor-
rying about the pain.”
Jack says his bread
making process is long –
about 48 hours from start
to finish. He bakes the
bread in a cast iron dutch
oven. “Sometimes it can
get a little dark in spots because of the
cast iron, and the first time I made it I
thought it looked like a hobo had made
it, so I started calling it my Hobo Bread,”
explains Jack. “The great thing about the
bread making process is there are all
these little half hours of time where I can
stop and meditate. I try to put a lot of
love and kindness out into the world and
a lot of peace, and love, and understand-
ing into my bread.”
“I really believe that’s why ev-
erything he bakes tastes so good,” says
Mary. “I think people can taste the dif-
ference and the love Jack puts into it.”
The Kauppilas had visited Ver-
nonia looking for a house and property
where they could build an outdoor bread
oven, and just happened to notice the
bakery for sale on the corner. “The pre-
vious owners, JD and Emily, had a sign
in the window that said they were look-
ing for someone who could keep the bak-
ery open a couple days a week and who
wanted to give back to the community,”
says Jack. “That just touched my heart
because that was exactly what I want-
ed to do. So without a plan to open a
business we contacted them and within
three weeks we owned a bakery.”
“Jack’s been an entre-
preneur in his head and in
his heart his whole life,”
adds Mary, “but he’s never
owned a business before
this. This is a first.”
Jack says he really
wants the bakery to belong
to the community. “I want
people in Vernonia to think
of me as their own personal baker,” he
says “I want them to bring me their old
family recipes to try. I have a guy who
brought me a raisin rye bread recipe his
mom used to make. I made one for him.
I’m making three for him this week.
We’ve gotten a few requests like that and
I love doing it.”
The Kauppilas are still working
out regular hours but are currently open
Friday through Sunday from 8:00 am to
4:00 pm. Pizza Nights will happen oc-
casionally, about once a month, and on
those Saturdays they will close between
2:00 and 4:00 pm to prepare the pizza.
They serve vegetarian pizza, including
cheese, margherita, and veggie sausage,
olive and peppers. Jack’s Hobo Bakery
will be providing cookies for kids who
complete the Summer Reading Pro-
gram at the Vernonia Library this year,
and are also contributing cinnamon rolls
for a grand prize winner. They also are
considering a pay-it-forward program,
where someone can come into the bak-
ery and use accumulated dollars if they
are short of money. “I really don’t want
price or money to be an issue for some-
one,” says Jack.
“I have no reservations about
being open six or seven days a
week if the demand is there,” says
Jack. Grand future plans include a
Hobo Sandwich Shop and Hobo
Pizza Company.
Jack continues to be good na-
tured about his pain and accepts
his reality. “I’m just trying to live
my life now,” says Jack. “ I don’t
think of myself as a sick person.
I don’t think I have an illness and
I don’t think there is anything to
cure or fix. The pain is just a part of
me now. My good friend who has
been with me through all my pain
reminded me the other day that
two years ago I was just hoping for
death with dignity. ‘Now you have
a bakery,’ he told me. Now I have a
life with dignity.”
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