Tonight, I will eat my last can of B&M Baked Beans, which I have consumed since I was a child. Its main component featured Michigan-grown Navy Pea Beans, coming from Michigan’s thumb area. My father was in charge of promoting Michigan agricultural products and there was a Michigan Bean Queen, all reasons for my love of this product, plus it featured the recipe for original Boston Baked Beans.
We always bought them at Jewel in the distinctive brown glass jars. Then no longer and I thought they had just been pushed out by Bush’s many varieties of canned beans, which all use the despicably large Great Northern Beans from Idaho. Nowhere could I find them except for Amazon.
For a few times I could order them from Amazon by the case. Then no longer there. What I found out is that B&M went out of business in Portland, Maine, about 2021, their distinctive sign taken down and the land developed for a college.
I have been living the twilight zone of stocks canned back about three years.
This is the last can. Nothing can replace B&M brand, but I keep looking.
Charles Chauncey Wells
Oak Park