AP News -- Town Calls Itself Fruitcake Capital
December 16, 2001
Town Calls Itself Fruitcake Capital
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:48 p.m. ET
CLAXTON, Ga. (AP) -- The jokes don't offend John Womble.
He even collects them, such as a gag Christmas card labeled ``Attack of the Killer
Fruitcake.''
``I think about this every time I make a cake. I make sure you're never going to
knock off on my cake,'' says Womble, the third-generation operator of the
Georgia Fruit Cake Company.
While many deride the holiday dessert as an inedible doorstop, Claxton has long
embraced fruitcake as its claim to fame. City-limit signs and a 50-foot water
tower carry the slogan ``Fruitcake Capital of the World.''
Joking aside, the dense mixture of poundcake, nuts and translucent candied fruit
has enough fans to support two fruitcake bakeries in this south Georgia city of
2,200, located 45 miles west of Savannah.
The larger Claxton Bakery Inc. ships more than 4 million pounds of fruitcake
every year for retailers such as Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. The Wombles' bakery
makes several hundred-thousand pounds, mostly for sale to military bases.
That makes Claxton a legitimate contender for its self-proclaimed ``fruitcake
capital'' title. Its main rival is Corsicana, Texas -- where the Collin Street Bakery
cranks out about 4.5 million pounds of fruitcake annually.
``It means a lot to us to have something that we can hang our hat on,'' says Perry
DeLoach, Claxton's mayor of 32 years. ``It may have never brought us an
industry, but it has brought an awful lot of people to Claxton. They'll always stop
in Claxton and buy fruitcake.''
Different families own Claxton's two bakeries, but both owe their recipes to the
man who introduced fruitcake to the area.
Italian immigrant Savino Tos opened the Claxton Bakery in 1910, selling fresh
bread, pastries and homemade ice cream. During the holidays, Tos also baked
fruitcakes.
It was Tos' two young apprentices who would stake their businesses on
fruitcake and market it around the world.
Ira Womble and Albert Parker both started working for Tos at young ages -- 10
and 11, respectively. Womble left in the 1920s to manage a federal bakery in
Iowa, while Parker remained and took over the Claxton Bakery when Tos retired
in 1945.
When grocery stores began stocking fresh bread and other baked goods after
World War II, Parker decided to specialize in fruitcake and market it far beyond
Claxton. He produced 45,000 pounds of fruitcake in his first year.
``We make that much cake now every day before lunch during the season,'' says
Dale Parker, one of Albert Parker's four children who now run the bakery.
``We've come a long ways.''
Ira Womble returned to south Georgia in the 1940s, opening a bakery with help
from automobile tycoon Henry Ford, who wanted Womble to experiment baking
with soy products. In 1948, Womble moved back to Claxton and opened the
Georgia Fruitcake Company.
It was his son, Ira Womble Jr., who landed the bakery its first military contracts
-- for 116,000 pounds of fruitcake -- when he entered the family business in
1954. Ira Jr. and John Womble now run the bakery.
Dale Parker says sales are strong, up this year from 2000. And John Womble
says this may be his best year in a decade.
Still, both families are mindful of being the butt of so many holiday jokes, such as
Johnny Carson's well-know crack that there's only one fruitcake that gets passed
around year after year.
``It's not a joking matter,'' says Parker. ``It's like you're talking about a member
of our family.''
Womble wonders if the yuks will hurt fruitcake's future. Most of his walk-in
customers are in their 50s or older, and he wonders if younger generations have
been biased by fruitcake bashing.
``People from their 40s down have been influenced mainly by television and radio
jokes about fruitcake, and they haven't tried it because they think it's bad,''
Womble says. ``That's the reason I don't run from jokes about fruitcake. I've
changed many people's minds.''
So what distinguishes good fruitcake from bad? Lots of pecans and walnuts,
candied cherries and pineapple -- and very little cake, Parker says. The Claxton
Bakery says its cakes are 70 percent fruit and nuts.
``We put just enough batter in it to hold the fruit together,'' Parker says.
And what about fruitcake's infamous lifespan? Can it really reach antiquity and
still be edible?
Left out on the kitchen counter, fruitcakes will last about four months, after
which the nuts go bad, Parker says. But stored in the refrigerator -- not frozen --
``they're good pretty much indefinitely.''
In south Georgia, even fruitcake haters show some deference to Claxton.
Last year, a Savannah radio station held a contest to drop, toss and catapult
unwanted fruitcakes to see which made the best splatter. But contest rules
prohibited destruction of Claxton fruitcakes.
That thought gets a smile from Womble, who blames substandard fruitcakes for
tarnishing the dessert's reputation.
``We've got too many people who are hungry to throw food away,'' he says. ``Of
course, some of those cakes deserve to be thrown. Twice.''
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On the Net:
claxtonfruitcake.com
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press |
