Neighbors

Bread, Rolls and a Side of Love at Larry’s Pastry
By Stephen Fay

Chapter 13 of St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians advises that good works, high purpose and fine speech amount to nothing if we do not have love in our hearts.

Launa Picard is never short of either goodies or good words at Larry’s Pastry. PHOTO BY STEPHEN FAY

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,” Paul writes, “but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.”

Were he around today, Paul might call our attention to Larry’s Pastry on Main Street and say, “There, that’s what I was saying.”

Because at Larry’s, the warmth comes not only from the ovens. And only part of the sweetness is from confectioner’s sugar.

Bread and rolls, pies and donuts, gingerbread men and sliced bread are their products, but in a funny way, what they make at Larry’s is community.

“If you don’t have the community at heart, you can’t do a good job,” says Launa Picard, daughter of Larry Pelletier, bakery founder, who passed away last year. “Everybody touches everybody’s life in one way or another.”

Lives are touched a little or a lot every morning as hundreds of regulars come in to pick up their dozen bagels, cinnamon rolls or—on Saturday—quarts of beans. Sometimes the counter help is vastly out-numbered by customers. But people tend to be patient and it is extremely unlikely that you’ll ever have to take a number, because at Larry’s, a number is what you ain’t.

“They’re like family,” Launa says of her regulars.

By some sort of osmosis, Launa knows about your children, what team your son made and what your daughter wore to the prom.

Curiously, for all her personal, natural interest, she does not learn names quickly. What she learns first is what you like, and so, until she commits your name to memory, your identity might be Large Coffee with Two Sugars and a Glazed Donut, or Small Decaf with Milk No Sugar and a Toasted Bagel.

Launa is a pretty easy touch and the amount of food and drink she has given away to schools, community groups, veterans and marching bands is legendary.

“Our motto is: `Never say no unless you have to.’ Anything that’s affiliated with kids—that’s where my heart is. Or the senior citizens.”

If you are no longer a kid and not yet a senior citizen, fear not. The kindness appears to be pretty inclusive.

Launa arrives at the bakery each morning between 4 and 5. Her partner-brothers, Larry and Leo, have been baking all night. The three consult on inventory and orders before opening at 6. And then it all starts again: an unbroken procession of school teachers, post office employees, fuel truck drivers, florists, nurses, high school students, cops, grandmas, new moms and sternmen seeking coffee, rolls, pastries and a moment of acknowledgement from Launa or maybe just her trademark greeting: “How are you anyway?”

New Testament scholars occasionally debate the various translations of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Specifically, they argue whether Paul, in talking about what you should have in your heart, used the word for “charity” or the word for “love.” And depending on the translation, you will see one word or the other. But one’s experience at Larry’s confirms that the correct word is love. Anything else is just a donut.