IN THE U.S., odd-numbered highways run from north to south, whereas even numbers run from east to west. So when you set out on Route 66 from Chicago, you will end up in California, 2,500 miles away. There is no official Rt 66 anymore, yet people still drive it every day. It is America’s most iconic road.
A few miles before you reach the ocean, there’s suddenly a windmill. Arcadia, California. It’s perched on top of a Denny’s restaurant. Not long ago the blades fell off, but funds were raised, so they’re spinning again, 24/7. Plenty of dough in Arcadia, home of one of America’s highest house price averages: clocking in at 1.7 million dollars per dwelling.
The restaurant used to be a bakery and coffee bar, Van de Kamp Holland Dutch Bakeries. Part of a chain that at its peak had a whopping 320 branches up and down the west coast. They were a household name in Los Angeles. So much so that Hollywood art director Harry Oliver volunteered to design the windmill – each branch had one. Sometimes very large, like the one in Arcadia, more often smaller.
THEY HAILED from Gelderland, the traveling Van de Kamp family: Elst, Valburg, Apeldoorn. Men and women who settled in Wisconsin, but one day sister Henriette married a guy in California, and soon she wrote that winter there trumped Milwaukee’s cold. So sister Marian joined her, brother Theo came along, and together with brother-in-law Larry they started the Van de Kamp empire. Just like that.
Holland Dutch Bakeries, blue and white windmills, the sisters in traditional dress – they left no misunderstanding as to where they came from. It all started with selling potato chips, but soon enough bread, buns, danish, pies and cakes took over. When during WO I white flour went on ration, they invented wholemeal bread: oat, corn, bran, rye, and called it war bread. And everything was Holland-style spotless: “Made clean, kept clean, sold clean,” was the Van de Kamp motto.
SUCCESS LASTED for two generations, then the business was sold. The new owners couldn’t keep up, and eventually they filed for bankruptcy. Yet many around Los Angeles still know who and what Van de Kamp was. If only because the brand name still exists, and its bread and pastry still sell in supermarkets. Moreover, Beverly Hills has Lawry’s steak restaurant, launched by Theo and Larry, still in family hands today. And LA’s oldest restaurant where Walt Disney once was a regular, the Tam O’Shanter Inn, may sound Irish and Scottish, but it was and remains very much Van de Kamp.
However, nothing compares to that old Dutch mill in Arcadia. Denny’s actually planned on demolishing it. But that didn’t go over well in the neighborhood. Loud protests ensued, and Denny’s caved, promptly. Which is why the mill still waves goodbye to you as you leave town to drive those 4,000 Route 66 kilometers back to Chicago.
