I Should Have Been a Cop

From The Front Porch

Good Sunday morning…

Editor’s Note: This was first posted in June of last year when I was just getting started here on Substack. It got 24 views, so many of you regular readers now have not seen this post. It was published on National Donut Day. It has been a busy week here at the Golden Street Retreat in Georgia, so I’m turning to the archives for this week’s edition of From the Front Porch.

There’s a hole in my heart today, it’s National Donut Day.

I admit it, I’m addicted to donuts. If I have to have an addiction, I’m glad it’s donuts.

As a latch key kid (I didn’t know what that was at the time) I would get home from school long before my mother would make it home from her job in town. We lived up a holler in the hills of West Virginia. A long way up a holler. How they found me up there, I’ll never understand, but a company named Dutch Oven, I think, sent a van through the country selling donuts and possibly some bread and other things. But I could get a quarter from my mother’s stash and buy whole dozen donuts from that truck. I was hooked before I was 10 years old.

A little later, after we moved into town, I had an early morning paper route. For 15 cents, I could stop at a little cafe downtown and get a cup of coffee and a donut. It became an every morning treat and the way I spent most of my route’s profit.

I’ve often said, I love donuts so much, I should have been a cop.

After World War II police officers had few options for food on the overnight shifts, but the bakers were up in the wee hours of the day making donuts. And in the 1950s, in the cities, donut shops began offering free coffee and donuts to police. The officers rotated in and out through the day and night virtually providing free security. Nobody robbed a donut shop.

Several years ago I followed the billboards along a Michigan interstate highway to Clare, MI, where real cops sell real donuts at their Cops and Doughnuts store. They also have an online bakery and the menu can be found on their main website.

The store’s website gives this history:

“There is a doughnut shop and bakery in Clare, Michigan that has been in constant operation since 1896. This foundation business was within weeks of closing when the members of the Clare Police Department came to the rescue. All of them. That’s right, all nine members of the local police department banded together to save this historic business.”

Like the old Remington razor commercial, “They liked the donuts so much, they bought the company.”

I arrived at the store mid-Sunday afternoon, probably not a rush time for the establishment. There were only 11 customers in line in front of me. The line trailed along the case of donuts pictured with this essay.

Let me just say, those donuts were terrific companions for the rest of my trip to the Upper Peninsula.

Somewhere in the late 1980s I discovered Krispy Kreme donuts. They are, hands down, my favorites. A friend of mine called them “crack donuts”. Having a fresh one melt in your mouth will immediately hook you.

Writing of fresh donuts, I often say one of the things I have never seen in my 74 years is a stale donut. I often laugh when I have a bag of donuts with an expiration date printed on it. They never last that long around me.

Krispy Kreme has a big round light in its store window. When the red light is on, stop in for a free donut as they are rolling off the line, coated with that irresistible sugar glaze. They will give you a free one that is warm.

It’s a trap.

At the speed of a tripped mouse trap you will be ordering a dozen or more.

I also appreciate Dunkin donuts and Tim Horton’s. Heck, I like them all. I never had a donut I didn’t like. Local shops with long histories are still around for a reason. Their donuts are really, really good, too.

Well, I’m off to enjoy National Donut Day. For me, though, its just like most other days. (Actually as this is being republished I haven’t had a donut for months. I’ve been on a diet and have lost 30 pounds since Thanksgiving. I’d love to have a donut, but that would take me off the wagon and I don’t have the nerve to try just one, or maybe too. But I’m really looking forward to my next one.”)

By the way, it can be spelled “donut” or “doughnut.”

Photo by Charles R. Jarvis

Thanks for reading. Your comments will add a lot, just like that sugar coating on a Krispie Kreme donut.

Or you could buy me a cup of coffee here; but I might have to have a donut with it.