It may come as a shock in this age of supermarkets and super malls, but the groceries used to come to us.

The milkman and the iceman and the vegetable man and the meat man all came to the door, and the grocery man delivered the rest.

The Good Humor man may still be around, but just about the last to go was everybody's favorite, the guy who blew the whistle, the Helmsman.

Mae: This was a whistle that comes off of the Helms Bakery.

Would you like me to blow it?

[Toot toot toot] Can you hear it?

[Music playing] Ralph: Paul Helms started Helms Bakeries in 1930, and he got a contract to supply the Olympic training tables then took on the Olympic job of baking for all of Los Angeles.

Pretty soon, 300 trucks fanned out over the city every day.

Thousands of kids chased after the Helmsman for their share of sugared donuts.

And Karen Bunde was one of them, and she's still a fan today.

[Music playing] [Whistle toots] Karen: The Helms coach would come about the same time every day with all the fresh baked goods you could possibly want, whether it was jelly donuts or cream puffs or chocolate-chip cookies or Olympic bread or wheat bread or donuts of any shape and variety.

Mae: And you would just put up a card in your window, a Helms card, that would state that you wanted bread or pastry or for him to stop.

And he would blow his whistle, and, um... then you would go out and purchase whatever pastries or whatever you wanted.

Barbara: You got a lot of service in those days.

If you didn't have a car, it didn't make any difference because people brought things to you.

That was their business.

[Music playing] Karen: This particular coach, owned by Hillcrest Motors, is a 1948 Helms square coach.

[Music playing] Mr. Helms said, "Don't call them trucks, "because garbage comes in trucks."

So, they are Helms coaches.

And he started with 11 coaches, and at the height of the business, there were over 500 coaches on the road any given day, delivering to more than 3.5 million households.

Sammy: Most people don't realize, but I was the first non-white ever to win a national championship in diving and the first American-born Asian to win a gold medal for my country, the United States.

But while we were there in London, Helms Bakery used to fly in the Helms bread every day for our consumption.

And I remember all the Europeans, the Asians said, "That bread "that is like cake, "it is so white.

"How can they make bread so white?"

So, we ate like kings.

The French brought in their own wine.

But we brought in Helms Bakery.

Ralph: In 1969, a loaf of Helms bread sailed up in the Apollo 11 space capsule to become the first bread on the moon.

But a sad postscript-- five months later, they turned off the ovens because those Earthbound little delivery coaches were just too expensive.

[Music playing] Karen: It was a wonderful time, and Helms Bakeries, I think elicits a very warm, personal feeling about the essence of Los Angeles at that time.

[Music plays]