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Pat's Meanders

Pat's Meanders

Elmira Smith Wilkey  /  February 16, 2012  /  Views: 92  /   No Comments

MIGHTY FINE

Sweet and gooey. Warm and fragrant...glazed. Sheen of chocolate icing; the puffed swirl of a lightweight cruller. Let us sing the praises of a Bismarck filled with ruby jelly, the taste of lingering crystals of sugar on the fingers of the he/she who has noshed at the table of doughnut delights.

Himself and Pat were meandering on memory lane and took a deliberate turn to the "doughnut" experiences of our lives. We didn't need a nudge to climb from one doughnut height to another, since we both grew up with doughnuts.

For a time, himself and I attended the same grade school; he, as a boarder at Our Lady Academy in Manteno, and I, as a day hop. Once a year, I'd beg my parents to let me be a "boarder." And they would agree, asking the S.S.C.M. (Servants of the Holy Heart of Mary) nuns if they would let me board.

Off I'd go to live for a week the life of a boarder.

Now comes the doughnuts. Maybe they're bigger in our minds, because like most of us when we're young, are little, often judge size that way? Anyway, let's just say for the record, THOSE doughnuts at the academy were the best of the best. Himself and I think that the nuns had a standing order because the doughnuts were delivered to the playground, round about 4 o'clock.

The presiding playground sister would ring the big handbell (but we kids knew from our stomach growls), to assemble us for the doughnut dole. There was no lining up in ranks at the ring, as we were required to do for morning classes, and when returning from recess etc. Nope. We just gathered, close, and hoped that our favorite doughnut confection would still be in the long box when it was our turn.

What doesn't taste great to a youngster released to outdoors for play, after a day in the classroom? Himself recollects that the boys summoned by the doughnuts call came running across the gravel, full tilt. They flung themselves, (the male competitive gene?) at the unlided box, where the good, gooey doughnuts nestled in rows--even though they also had to wait their turn. Girls or boys, we lit into the delicacies and were transported to doughnut heaven. The resisdency was brief but impacting sufficiently to keep the memory of those doughnuts ever after.

What's your doughnut? Is it super size? Want it with coffee? Better with friends? From a bag, beside you on the seat of your vehicle? Can you be trusted if you and doughnuts are alone without observers--alone enough to fake surprise or make excuse if the next person looking for doughnuts calls out there's been a miscount, a deficiency is noted? As a child, could you placidly accept a half a doughnut and be satisfied? Did your sister or brother, in your opinion, get "advantages" with doughnuts and you didn't--were you one of those making complaint about unfairness? A passion for doughnuts will sometimes grip you like in childhood.

The pity, if you have to restrict yourself to sugarfree doughnuts, they shouldn't even be honored as family members of the ancient doughnut culture that is more broadcast than meets the eye, country to country. There, I said it. Expressed my bias. Healthy doughnuts? The poor substitute for real...who are we fooling here? Egg white substitutes in the recipe? No-fat? Purists laugh at the mention of such a desecration of the honest-to-goodness doughnut. Either you "do" doughnuts or you "don't." Compromise is not decent, so sayeth the graduate of the preservation of time honored originals of the order, "Doughnut."

Ever read the poem, tongue in cheek, of the man who "sat him self, down with a bag of doughnuts and...ate the whole bag--even opened the bag as an afterthought ( or was he being conservative?), and licked the bits of glaze-frosting, from the paper? His dog ate the waxed paper. Good buddies, those two.

Our clan remembers one of their grandpas who would purposely stop at the store to purchase one item only: a big box of "day old" glazed doughtnuts. They had to be revived by taking them out, carefully because they often stuck together as the glaze weeped, or if they were three days old, they partially dried/shrunk and the glazed cracked off in chunks...The little doughnut gobblers here at the homestead didn't let day old keep them from feasting on those doughnuts. They still talk about them.

Compulsive eating can be a killer. Doughnut mania is, of course, exempt as a condition to avoid on pain of death. Pat offers herself as as an example; himself joins me. We grew up with doughnuts--store variety, bakery AND homefried, mom's and ours (!!). Imagine that. We do and it's all good. "NO, it's SWEET"

"Happy Valentine's Day." Celebrate. Show the love.

comments: miraswilkey@yahoo.com

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