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Looking back: East Side Creamery spread butter all around

It was a family affair, the East Side Creamery, a lively Freeport butter manufacturer that distributed butter to businesses throughout the Freeport area from 1939 until the early 1950s. George Washington “Pop” Bloyer first owned and operated the creamery at 715 E. Stephenson Street beginning in the late 1930s. Leo and Gladys Haas, his son-in-law and daughter, took it over and ran it together until starting a business in Rockford in the early 1950s.

Cecil Haas, Leo and Gladys’s son, and his cousin, Judy George, Pop Bloyer’s granddaughter, had some interesting information to add, along with the help of Phyllis Zamowski of Rockford, another cousin.

Proud of their Heritage

Ice cream confections were also made and sold there at the creamery at 715 E. Stephenson St. and it was that portion of the business which Roger Hill eventually purchased and continued to run and enjoy its popularity. Hill in time purchased the entire building and made the upper floors into apartments.

Cecil Haas and Judy George have added some nitty gritty to our East Side Creamery story. They said kids flocked in like flies to get their ice cream. But the butter making was an epic in itself. Haas recalls the huge churn where the butter was mixed, and the auger that cranked it into the apparatus where it was molded and moved on to be cut and hand-wrapped.

Some of the butter was wrapped into quarter pounds, Cecil said, as some people wanted to buy it that way. He will never forget how extremely anti-margarine his father was for a while. He would get worked up if anyone even mentioned the product, Cecil said. Cecil is impassioned to let it be known that the creamery was owned and operated by his father and mother. It had not been brought out in the previous story.

Childhood Memories

Cecil spent many hours of his childhood playing in and around the creamery and the nearby Taylor Park after his father and mother took the business over. He remembers riding with his mother on her ice cream delivery routes to small groceries and gas stations around the countryside. “I’d often fall asleep during the ride,” he said.

If you missed ArtsFest 2011……. « BrumCityCentre.com

……..here are some photos of the scenes in Centenary, Chamberlain and Victoria Squares and down New Street taken on Sunday 11 Sept. The weather was highly variable – glorious sunshine then the next minute threatening clouds and thankfully just a little rain. This didn’t deter the visitors who appeared to enjoy the whole festive event.

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