Years ago, my wife was pregnant with twins and a gentleman took me aside at a meeting of the Eureka Springs Rotary Club. He said, “Everyone says that twins are twice as hard, but don’t believe it. They’re ten times as hard.”

Now go back in time to 1982 when I was a lowly freshman at Eureka Springs High School. Sophomores Lori and Lisa Bingaman were twins, as were Juniors Amy and Scott Bingaman, all the progeny of Don and Lynn. If one set of twins is ten times as difficult, how would one do the math on two sets of twins so close together in age?

As mentioned previously, Don Bingaman and his older brother Claude purchased the Eureka Bakery on Spring Street from Al Neumann in the early 1960s. Illness forced Claude to close the popular bakery in 1984.

After the first set of Bingaman twins were born, Lynn pushed Amy and Scott in a side-by-side double stroller in the Annual Folk Festival Parade. The top of the stroller flipped up and said “Double Your Pleasure With Fresh and Tasty Homemade Bread and Pastry – Eureka Bakery.” They won first place in the walking division of the parade.

Lori remembers going by the bakery in the early morning and getting “a hot fresh donut out of the dripping glaze and eating it on the way to school.” She also recalled helping out at the bakery: “I was able to help my dad with the bread slicing. I would put the bread down the chute, he would put it in the bag and I would put the tie on the bag. He realized, after some customers mentioned it, that the ties were put on backwards. You see, I was left-handed! My career was short-lived.”

Work begins at a bakery in the middle of the night and bakers have to nap when they can. Lori said, “I remember my dad would be asleep on the couch in the living room. When he would awaken, we had fun beating the couch and watching the flour emerge in a cloud!”