Well I get off topic with others, one story brings up another, so if the moderator allows, it is so fun reading stories and threads from all, I would enjoy hearing stories, and tangents, and as long as we mention a car every now and then maybe we can just tell stories. starting with my last irrelevant post talking about bismarks, a raspberry filled sugar coated doughnut, now it is tough to drive and eat and drive at the same time, is it wrong? sugar crystals everywhere and jelly sticking up my hands and steering wheel, but boy does a taste of good coffee make it a mag mile. My rumor is the doughnut was named after the sinking of the German ww2 Bismark, but what the red jam represents the blood of the german soldiers that died? @bing just for fun
On the subject of donuts… 
All I can tell you @Barkydog, is that you had better keep going to that little bakery, or they will be gone too. We had one when I was about 10 years old. I had a paper route and my dad would take me around the route on Sunday mornings in the CAR because the papers were so thick, I’d be back home 8-10 times to reload the baskets. When the route was done, dad would take me to the local bakery and we would pick up dozens for doughnuts so that mom wouldn’t have to cook for the eight of us in the house.
The bakery did good business for many years and I always remember a line of CARS in front of the place on my way to work in the morning. Then the local Big Box grocery store opened another store a mile from the original, and the convenience of walking in and grabbing two dozen pre- boxed doughnuts drew too many people away from the bakery. And a gas station has very good doughnuts also, much fresher than at the grocery.
I suppose the bakery would have stayed in business had 5% of the local people walked in the door for one item each week, but it’s too much hassle for people to make the extra stop…“I can just get it all in one place”… mentality takes over. They closed their doors about 10 years ago.
I am just as much to blame. I only remember going there a handful of times as an adult…just not a big doughnut eater…but now I see how much the local merchant needs all of us. Had I known what would happen to the little local merchants, I’d have gone there for a loaf of bread, a pie, doughnuts, or buns…once a week.
I live between Milwaukee and Madison Wi. , still rural yet on the brink of getting run down by the urban sprawl.
Cheese stores are going the same route and few are left. I remember the local one closing about 20 years ago, yet I could DRIVE you around and in an hour point out 6-8 buildings that used to make their own cheese and many had a little retail counter to sell their cheeses. They were all built in the same style, so they are easy to spot. Now I DRIVE 40 miles north to get my good 12 year old cheddar, or well aged brick, and I take my mom on a cheese run 6 times a year 100 miles to find the best string cheese you’ll ever taste. The last trip…10 days ago, I bought over 20lbs of string cheese for people. I just take their order and deliver it that evening.
There is a major difference in taste and texture than those bricks of cheese in the Big Box stores.
So if anyone lives in or near a little town…check out the downtown and try doing a little shopping there too. Or soon it will all be empty buildings.
Yosemite
Heck, yes, support your local bakery! I suggest light creme filled doughnuts as better driving fare because the weight of the creme is easier to control than jelly. Bite the doughnut at the creme injection site so it doesn’t squirt all over your steering wheel when you bite down.
A Top Tip for those that work in a white collar office and sometimes bring in doughnuts. Never bring more than 1 or 2 powdered sugar doughnuts in the entire purchase. Never. Notice that they will ALWAYS be the last doughnuts in the box because no one wants to risk their clothes on powdered sugar before a meeting. It gives YOU desert after lunch - assuming no meetings after lunch, of course.
Carolyn, I love it!!!
There’s a genius out there somewhere…
I found me a new mom and pop donut shop about 1 mile out of my way to my new office. It’s a once per week habit now.
Thank God for the little guy who gets up at 3 am to make $0.65 per donut.
Oh yeah, I always eat at least one in my CAR before I get tom work.
It’s been a really, really long time but I can remember stopping at a small cheese making store in a “town” that had but one intersection. I’m pretty sure it was heading north on old 45 and may have been called Silverton. Only real WI cheese curds squeak when you eat 'em!
They used to hawk “new” potatoes at a roadside stand not far from there. I recall not knowing what that meant other than why would anyone want to buy OLD potatoes?
Traveling the old highways is nostalgic but also depressing…
We HAD the best donuts in the universe at Mr Donut just 10 minutes away. It was so good that the developer of our neighborhood had been going there every workday morning for decades. Then they shut down and there is a crummy bank in its place. Sniff…
@cdaquila This is the first time you’ve ever sugar coated a post! Your typical highway patrolman would literally chew it up!
In my late 20s, I was in a meeting where the chairperson brought a big plate of donuts. As I was eating one, an older co-worker said to me: “You know, those are called fat pills.”
I shrugged him off thinking he didn’t know what he was talking about (because I was thin and didn’t need to worry about my weight).
Now, in my latter years, I realize how right he was!. I wish I listened to him sooner.
One of the editors of Car & Driver was passed by a patrolman with his light flashing and decided to follow him at a discrete distance. Sure enough he turned into a Dunkin Donut place to get his fix!
A local craigslist ad for a “retired” cop car a while back included a picture of a partially eaten doughnut on the passenger seat.
Gotta hand it to Dunkie’s… they’ve developed the ultimate in security systems.
Hey Barkydog, looks as if you had too much sugar.
But on the other hand I sometimes visit the donut shop I went to as a child.
I don’t care for donuts but I always stop and they are fantastic.
We were traveling on I-74 in Peoria IL and a city cop flies by.
I said," must be a fresh load of donuts ahead."
My wife correctly stated “don’t say those things in front of the kids”.
We turned off the highway and low and behold there were three cop cars all lit up in front of Dunkin Donuts.
Of course they were handling a situation but I smirked and pointed, SEE, SEE!
Mrs. laughed also.
Donuts from what I heard were “invented” when a baker noticed her cakes have a soggy center and wanted to get rid of it, so made the cakes with a hole in the middle.
When in the East coast we would always went to Dunkin Donuts, so when the 1st California store opened in Santa Monica we drove 60 miles (this is the car reference by the way), and had to wait in line for it. Nothing special, but just brought some good memories back.
My dad ran a retail store his entire career, with a lunch counter and booths. We lived next to the store, so he had the local bakery drop the doughnuts off at the house and he brought them in when he opened the store in the morning. We were up eating breakfast well before him and we got to raid the boxes. Bottom line: every morning we had a large variety of freshly made doughnuts waiting for us at the breakfast table.
Yum!!
Donuts from what I heard were "invented" when a baker noticed her cakes have a soggy center and wanted to get rid of it, so made the cakes with a hole in the middle.
You will find todays donuts at places like Dunkin that are baked. The original donuts were FRIED…and IMHO are the BEST…especially when the just come out of the frier. There use to be this donut shop near SU…we would go there after the bars closed at 3am. That’s when their first batch of fried donuts came out. My mouth is watering just thinking about that place.
There’s a county in suburban Baltimore that doesn’t have a county police force. Often rural counties in MD use state troopers instead. The troopers don’t use the state police barracks when on this duty. In this county, the offices are in the back of a 7-11.
My wife managed a doughnut shop when she was 19 for a few years. She was quite thin - a subliminal message to the customers that THESE doughnuts don’t make you fat!
Every morning she was was met by a policeman sitting in the parking lot waiting for his first cup and doughnut on his mid-shift break. I never worried about her store being robbed.
One day she noticed a couple of guys “casing” the store. She called a friend on the force and these gentlemen (who turned out to have long histories of bad behavior) were promptly greeted by 3 patrol cars with 3 very large officers and told they didn’t need any coffee or doughnuts from this store ever again.