Saturday, June 27, 1998

A straightforward (Wonder) bagel

By Bob Greene

COLUMBUS, OHIO -- The fragrance as you drive by the Wonder Bread plant on Fourth Street is the same as it was 40 years ago: delicious. It smells like ...

Well, like Wonder Bread.

If the phrase "white-bread America" is supposed to have a snide tone to it, then those who sneer must not be familiar with Wonder Bread. Bland? Yes, Wonder Bread is kind of bland. Unexciting? Not many thrills in a loaf of Wonder Bread. Predictable? Like the sun coming up in the morning. Bite into a slice of Wonder Bread, and you know what you're going to get.

Wonder Bread is the national icon of the white-bread America of nostalgic memory: plain and standard and obedient and home before dark. If Wonder Bread were a person, that person would wear a white shirt every day, brown oxfords with shoelaces, and a neatly knotted tie; if Wonder Bread were a person, that person would shine those shoes every morning and go to church every Sunday.

Which brings us to the headline news:

Wonder Bagels.

Yep. Wonder Bread, while the world was looking the other way, has entered the bagel business.

A little background is in order. During the decades when Wonder Bread was epitomizing America the Non-Ethnic -- that's what white-bread America was, after all -- bagels were symbolizing a very different America.

Those of us who were a part of that second America may have eaten Wonder Bread in our homes -- hey, who doesn't like Wonder Bread? -- but there was another bakery product we ate that was as un-Wonder Bread as un-Wonder Bread could be.

Bagels, of course. Bagels were Jewish food; bagels were tasty and filling, but the one thing bagels were not was Wonder Bread. Bagels were found at bar mitzvahs, not in public school cafeterias; bagels were served after synagogue services, not after Cub Scout meetings. We were all Americans -- we all ate Wonder Bread -- but some of us also dined on bagels. We knew in our hearts that Wonder Bread America would never understand bagels, or want to; the U.S. was not as homogenized as it pretended to be, and bagels represented the great divide.

In the years since the 1950s, bagels have gradually crossed over. Protestants, Catholics, every denomination of every religion eat bagels these days -- there seem to be bagel shops every few blocks, all over most cities.

African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans -- the ethnic background no longer matters. Sometimes you choose to have your sandwich on a bagel. Sometimes you decide on a bagel and cream cheese for breakfast instead of corn flakes and milk. Bagels are served on airlines, at ballparks -- bagels have become a part of mainstream America.

Or maybe it's the other way around -- maybe there no longer is such a thing as mainstream America. Because if ever there was a corporate capital of mainstream America, it was the headquarters of Wonder Bread. And Wonder Bread now has a new division:

Wonder Bagels.

"Wonder Bagels have the red, yellow and blue balloons on the wrapper just like Wonder Bread does," said Mark Dirkes of Interstate Brands, the Kansas City, Mo.-based company that now owns Wonder Bread. "Are Wonder Bagels mainstream bagels? I think you could make that conclusion."

Wonder Bread is baked at 70 plants around the U.S.; Wonder Bagels all are baked in Milwaukee and shipped to 18 states. That number is expected to grow -- Interstate Brands feels the bagel boom is far from over. "We've done our research," Dirkes said.

Does this mean white-bread America, as we have known it, is done for? That bagel America is the wave of the next century?

Not exactly. Wonder Bagels don't do anything close to the sales volume of Wonder Bread. More than 146 million loaves of white Wonder Bread are sold each year in the U.S.; so far only 1.6 million packages a year of Wonder Bagels are being sold.

But the very fact that Wonder Bagels exist says something. We are living in new American times.

Not that everything has changed completely. Isn't "Wonder Bagels" a contradiction in terms, Mr. Dirkes?

"I don't think so," he said.

And then, like a true Wonder Bread man, he added:

"A Wonder Bagel is a pretty straightforward bagel."

Chicago Tribune