I had a wonderful childhood, and I realize that not everybody can say that. So I'm grateful. One of the best memories stem from the fact that my dad owned a donut shop. Yes, you heard me correctly, a donut shop! Now we were not rich like some of my other classmates, but when you are in elementary school a donut shop trumps a mansion.
Of course, being a child, at didn't appreciate it so much. To me it was just were my dad worked. In fact, I really wasn't that fond of donuts. But boy, did I love that donut shop. I loved rolling out scrap dough, sweeping the floors, watching my dad decorate cakes, running the delivery route at four in the morning, and helping customers. I would go in to the shop with my dad very early in the morning. My brother and I would still be asleep in the car and my dad would scoop us up and carry us in the shop and lay our little, snuffly, warm bodies on huge pallets of flour bags so we could finish our naps. The bakery would be warm and yeasty. The smell of yeast still makes me feel drowsy. When we woke up we would grab a freshly glazed donut and a carton of milk. Let me tell you, there is absolutely nothing better than a hot puffy fried piece of dough with melted sugar dipping down its circular sides.
If I was having a lucky day, Dad would be decorating a wedding cake. He would pull up a stool for Bubba and me, and we would sit there for hours watching him sculpt blue roses from icing or making lacy ribbons to wrap the cake. Who ever heard of blue roses?! It seemed like he did a lot of them, but perhaps it is just my child's memory being amazed by the blue. Maybe he only did it once, but I like to remember that it was always blue roses.
When it came time for lunch, Dad would take us across the street to a real, old fashion, grocery store. It was the kind of mercantile that you had the clerks get the items off the shelves for you, and I swear there was a pickle barrel. This grocery had a full butcher counter where they made from scratch all their sausages. Dad would order four or five hot links (you know the bright red fat wieners) and the clerk would grab a couple of big dill pickles for the bubba and me. We would trot back across the street, and my dad would drop those hot links in the bubbling hot oil that we fried the donuts in. Oh my stars! What deliciousness! They were so hot in every sense of that word. They were spicy, fire hot, and they were temperature hot. I think they were about 1,000 degrees. This is what happens when men are in charge of small children all day. I was about five years old. Bubba was three.
Now, the first bakery was really owned by my grandparents, and my dad joined as a junior partner. He was being groomed to take over after they retired. This meant that I spent my days not only with my dad, but my extended family as well. My grandmother, Anna Mae, ruled that bakery with an iron fist. Everything was to be her way. To put it plainly, she was pushy. She, of course, ran the cash register. I think only half of all sales were rung up. All rare coins were put in her pocket. As a result, she had a lot of cash hid from the IRS in strange places in her house. Money was in the freezer, in books, taped to the bottom of drawers, in the attic, buried in the backyard, etc. My grandparents never were in debt. They paid cash for everything they ever owned. They saved enough money to live into their old age, and both of them spent a long period time in nursing homes that their money (that was maybe partly IRS money) paid for.
My grandfather was a quiet man (perhaps because Anna Mae was so chatty). He worked all night, slept all day, got up for supper, watched an hour or so of T.V. then went back to bed until he had to make the donuts. But I suppose, now that I look back on it, he had another side. A "darker" side. There was this machine in the back of the bakery that dripped a clear liquid. When my little self asked what it was, my father told me that Grandpa was distilling water. It was suppose to be healthy. Drip, drip, drip. Well I wanted to taste distilled water. My dad assured me that I would not like it. It's just water, right? He let me have a sip, and it was awful! I am a grown woman now, and I know for a fact that distilled water tastes just like water. If my memory serves me right, this water tasted like fire! Like firewater! I think my grandpa was distilling spirits. He had his own private stash of hooch! I think he shared with my father. Maybe it was my father's still. Who knows?
After my grandfather retired, my dad opened his own donut shop in a "nice" part of town. My grandmother still worked for him in the front. Grandpa retired to playing golf and fishing for bass. This bakery almost killed my father. He was not made to work nights. He sold it when I was in the fifth grade, and he moved on to the trucking business. I moved out of childhood into puberty at the same time. I was becoming a young woman, and I left the warm, yeasty environment of childhood and moved to the hard metal dirty business of trucking and adolescence.
