Early Reminiscences
The Cornelius days hold special memories for 89-year-old Nellie Mae Jaques, the company's first production employee. She remembers hard work, friends, and fun.
"I knew Earl and Mildred even before they started making potato salad-we worked together at Billy Bo's. Mildred and I were waitresses and Earl was the cook. Al was about 12 years old, and he'd come in and help his dad cook. When we left Billy Bo's, they started making potato salad in their home, and I started working for them in 1952. There weren't many of us so I did everything-scrubbed floors, cleaned everything, peeled potatoes, made salad. We made and boxed everything by hand then.
"We'd cook potatoes in great, tall cans. Then we'd get up around 11 or midnight to peel them. We mixed the potato salad and ran it through the machine that filled the cups. We put lids on the cups and packed the boxes. There were maybe six or seven of us. We didn't have regular hours-you just had to be there when there was work to be done."
Nellie Mae remembers not only the odd hours and the hard work. She smiles as she remembers the family atmosphere.
"I had a good time working for them," she says. "I put in a lot of hours and I didn't mind it at all because we were all good friends. It was just a fun place to work."
Nellie Mae retired after 22 years to care for her husband, Ollie, who was the company's first route salesman in Beaverton, Oregon, and who also spent 22 years with Reser's.
"I wouldn't have quit if I hadn't had to," she says. "It was a good place to work."
Mary Chez Lockwood agrees. She was the company's first office employee and worked with Lois.
"I was hired as a bookkeeper," Mary says. "The people were great, it was a happy group, and it was just fun. We went to lunch together, socialized, enjoyed each other's company. I especially liked the tasting. Mildred would create a new product and bring it downstairs for all of us to taste to see whether we liked it.
"The Resers were kind to all their employees. They were very forgiving when we made mistakes. They had a sense of humor. They were understanding. We were all pleased to watch them grow, even though we hardly believed it would get to this size."
Leo Matussi shares that view of Reser's from the outside. He was the company's first produce vendor.
"I used to deliver produce to small, independent grocery stores," Leo remembers. "One day while I was unloading, Earl came up and asked if I had anything he could do to earn some money to put food on his kids' table. They had just moved here from Kansas. I told him I couldn't give him much, but he helped me until he found a job. We just took a liking to each other.
"Then one day Mildred asked me to bring her five 50-pound bags of potatoes. She made potato salad and sold it to Safeway. Their business grew and grew, and I sold truckload after truckload of potatoes to them at their home and at the Cornelius plant for close to 10 years. When they started making cole slaw, I sold them cabbage. When they started making caramel apples, I sold them Jonathans."
Leo enjoyed his relationship with Reser's.
"They were straightforward, never gave you a snow job. If I was high in price on something, Darrell would tell me."
Larry Schlesser, who handles Broker Accounts today, remembers the company had three or four trucks when he began working for Reser's in Cornelius in June 1960, and he remembers a simpler time.
"The load sheet was a piece of paper. You listed what you wanted and gave it to Gramps (Roy Smith, Al's grandfather). When you came to work in the morning, the product would be sitting behind your truck. You'd load it up and go out on your route, and you'd unload it at night because we didn't have refrigeration on the trucks. We had no inventory at all. We'd just put the product in a particular place in the cooler, and Gramps would add whatever we needed and put it behind the truck so we could load it in the morning.
We'd leave the money and invoices we picked up that day in a desk drawer and Lois would check everything the next day. They didn't really know what we sold. It was strictly an honor system."
Al remembers the Potato Board adventure and doing what he had to when the price of potatoes threatened the company.
"Back in the late 1950s, potato prices got extremely high, 15 to 20 cents a pound wholesale. There were certain grades of potatoes the government wouldn't let growers sell. The potatoes were small but there was nothing wrong with them. The government just wanted to keep the price up and set up Potato Boards to oversee the program. Farmers would sack up these potatoes and leave them in the field.
"Darrell and I would drive to Boardman about three times a week at night and pick up potatoes from different farmers. We did that about two months, and sometimes it was kind of scary because we couldn't have the truck lights on, had to be very careful, that sort of thing."
Keith Mills, who retired in 1991 after 30 years with Reser's, had his first contact with the company while he was working at Paul's Food Land in southeast Portland.
"I was managing the meat market when I saw Al and Earl coming down the aisle toward me. They were pretty big guys and they were wearing white coats. I thought they were a couple of state inspectors. I introduced myself and they asked if I'd like to handle Reser's products. I said, 'Sure.'"
Before long, Keith got to know Harvey Reser, the Reser's salesman, and began to think Reser's might be a good place to work.
"I liked the product and I was tired of working inside cutting meat; I'd been doing it for 15 years. Harvey said Al was putting on more routes, so I kept talking to him. After three or four months, Al hired me."
Keith remembers early adventures.
The trucks were not refrigerated so drivers used dry ice to keep the products cold. Dry ice fumes in a closed truck could mean dizziness for the drivers. Soon, however, Al bought trucks with cold plates that were charged nightly to provide refrigeration during the day. The two-part trucks-refrigeration and storage with a door between-were a major step up, but Keith still remembers hot summer days when gelatin salads liquefied.
Keith also remembers the long hours and the fun.
"We were drivers and salesmen-you had to sell your product. Sometimes I didn't get home until midnight or 1 o'clock. You could put in a 12- or 14-hour day and it just seemed to go by like nothing. You were constantly on the go and it seemed like you never caught up, but it was a good, tight-knit company. That's why I liked it.
"Al Reser is a good leader; he loves people. And service has always been his mainstay. The customer always comes first. That's how they've stayed in business."
And Keith remembers something equally important. "I know the company had financial problems in the early days, but Al always had paychecks for us. Never, even once, did he short his employees. I give him a big high five for that."
Ralph Thackery, who was a route salesman from the early to mid-1960s, remembers the first Reser's warehouse outside of Beaverton.
"I lived near Salem and I had worked up enough business that we could put a warehouse in Albany. That meant I didn't have to go all the way back to Beaverton every day. The warehouse was an old cannery."
Ralph also remembers Al's commitment to employees. "When I first went to work there, sometimes paydays didn't come easy. But Al always made them."
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