Posted on: Tuesday, December 25, 2001
Georgia town is proud 'fruitcake capital'
By Russ Bynum
Associated Press
CLAXTON, Ga. — The jokes don't offend John Womble.
He even collects them, such as a gag Christmas card labeled "Attack of the Killer Fruitcake."
"I think about this every time I make a cake. I make sure you're never going to knock off on my cake," says Womble, the third-generation operator of the Georgia Fruit Cake Co.
While many deride the holiday dessert as an inedible doorstop, Claxton has long embraced fruitcake as its claim to fame. City-limit signs carry the slogan "Fruitcake Capital of the World."
Joking aside, the dense mixture of poundcake, nuts and translucent candied fruit has enough fans to support two fruitcake bakeries in this south Georgia city of 2,200, which is 45 miles west of Savannah.
The larger Claxton Bakery Inc. ships more than 4 million pounds of fruitcake every year for retailers such as Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. The Wombles' bakery makes several hundred-thousand pounds, mostly for sale to military bases.
Different families own Claxton's two bakeries, but both owe their recipes to the man who introduced fruitcake to the area.
Italian immigrant Savino Tos opened the Claxton Bakery in 1910. During the holidays, Tos also baked fruitcakes.
It was Tos' two young apprentices who would stake their businesses on fruitcake and market it around the world.
Ira Womble and Albert Parker started working for Tos at ages 10 and 11, respectively. Womble left in the 1920s to manage a federal bakery in Iowa, while Parker remained and took over the Claxton Bakery when Tos retired in 1945.
Parker, who decided to specialize in fruitcake and market it far beyond Claxton, produced 45,000 pounds of fruitcake in his first year.
Ira Womble returned to south Georgia in the 1940s, opening a bakery with help from automobile tycoon Henry Ford, who wanted Womble to experiment baking with soy products. In 1948, Womble moved back to Claxton and opened the Georgia Fruitcake Co.
His son, Ira Womble Jr., entered the business in 1954. Ira Jr. and John Womble now run the bakery.
Dale Parker, one of Albert Parker's four children, says sales are strong at his family's bakery, up this year from 2000. And John Womble says this may be his best year in a decade.
Still, both families are mindful of being the butt of holiday jokes, such as Johnny Carson's crack that there's only one fruitcake that gets passed around year after year.
And what about fruitcake's infamous lifespan? Can it really reach antiquity and still be edible?
Left out, fruitcakes will last about four months, after which the nuts go bad, Parker says. But stored in the refrigerator — not frozen — "they're good pretty much indefinitely."
