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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

‘The Cot Man’

Larry Schreck brings fresh fruits, vegetables to Millwood

Steve Christilaw Correspondent

When Larry Schreck was growing up in Pasadena Park and roaming the streets of Millwood – looking for all the world like television’s idyll of Mayberry, which found its way onto television screens in 1960 – a cot was what you slept on when you camped out.

All these years later, he’s proud to be Millwood’s own Cot Man. Schreck’s Wenatchee Fruit Co. stand, tucked behind an espresso stand where Argonne Road meets the railroad tracks at Euclid Avenue, is a seasonal institution.

Most weekends during the season, you can find Schreck holding court at the stand on Fridays and Saturdays – at least for as long as the north central Washington fruit holds out. If you know his schedule, you can catch him Thursday afternoon when he unloads the weekend harvest.

Pick up his business card at the stand and you can call him to see what he has to bring in for the weekend. “Larry the Cot Man,” he says when he answers the call.

“I never started out to go into the fruit business,” Schreck laughs. “In fact, for a long time, I didn’t look to make a profit. I just wanted to make sure I covered my expenses and make sure I paid for my gas.”

Schreck’s boyhood was all about sports. The former three-sport All-City League athlete graduated in 1961 and played basketball under the legendary Jud Heathcote at West Valley High School. He later played baseball and graduated from Washington State University.

Schreck and his family moved to Wenatchee for the 1972-73 school year, and he settled into a busy life teaching and coaching. He was head baseball coach for 14 seasons, assistant coach for football and basketball.

But through all that, the pull of Millwood and of family kept bringing Schreck home. His parents still lived in the family home and staying close and seeing them often was a priority.

“I used to bring back fruit whenever it was in season,” he explained. “In those days, people canned fruit all the time, so I brought back whatever was in season for them to put up.”

As news of the Wenatchee bounty grew, so would the size of those weekend loads.

Things changed when one of his former students, now an orchardist, asked Schreck to take a big load of apricots to sell. The fruit was ripe and if it didn’t move quickly, it would spoil.

The timing was perfect.

“We sold every single box,” Schreck said. “Fast. It was a lot of friends and family, sure, but there were a lot of customers from my dad’s old oil business.”

It wasn’t exactly a business model in the back of Schreck’s mind, but rather a social network built around a fruit pit. Bring good fruit, see lots of old friends.

Turns out it was both. And popular.

Roughly 15 years ago, Schreck began an association with one of the few remaining independent growers in the Greater Wenatchee area, John Tontz. Since then, if Larry sells it, Trontz grew it.

“John is kind of a dying breed,” Schreck said. “Most all of the orchards are part of the big co-ops. John isn’t. He doesn’t sell to the big warehouses. He has a group of buys like me who buy his fruit and go out and sell it to our customers.

“Starting with cherries, he grows it all.”

The Cot Man’s weekend business almost came to a stunning and sudden halt in 2004.

After visiting his dying mother, Mabel, Schreck was struck by a drunk driver while walking on the sidewalk. Both legs were broken along with both arms. His head struck and smashed the windshield on the car that hit him before carrying him for more than 100 yards before being thrown off in a broken heap.

The injuries healed, but the process was slow. He spent 11 weeks in the hospital. The accident forced him into semiretirement from teaching and coaching.

But the fruit kept coming. In a wheelchair while his legs healed, you could still find The Cot Man sorting fruit on summer weekends.

“These days it’s more of a happening than it is a business,” he says. “I do try to make a little money doing this these days. It gets more and more expensive to haul it up here, for one thing.”

The cast of supporting characters that help Schreck distribute the Wenatchee bounty keeps him going.

“A lot of the people who show up to help are people who my dad took care of when he used to deliver oil to them,” he said. “Dad took care of them, and they come over and keep an eye on me.

“I don’t even handle the money. I have some people who take care of all of that for me. They take the money, make the deposits, and I never have to look at it. If I did, I wouldn’t be in business for more than five minutes.”

Right now, Schreck is on a run with peaches and nectarines. Tomatoes come in big, red and ripe. Jalapeno peppers by the box-load. Onions and corn.

But if you want some, you have to be there early.

“Last week we were packed up and gone by noon because we were all sold out of everything,” Schreck laughed.

Contact Steve Christilaw by e-mail at schristilaw@msn.com