Untitled Document

14 April 2004

Krispy Kreme

There is a marvelous confection of fried dough called the Krispy Kreme. Perhaps you have seen the green and white boxes. The yeast-risen sugar-glazed snack comes in dozens, and some places they are ubiquitous as Girl Scout Cookies. They sell them by the dozen in bright green boxes to raise funds for neighborhood organizations. You see that a lot in front of the big marble buildings here in official Washington.

I used to see them on sale by earnest hopeful people at the foot of the pedestrian foot-bridges to the Pentagon. There was a lot more activity on the approaches to the building before 9/11.

What's a "Krispy Kreme?" It is a staple of First Responder and military reserve units all across this great nation. The Krispy Kreme empire has diversified, of course, and they make doughnuts with sprinkles, topped with chocolate and filled with all manner of things. But I always think of the signature treat: the Original Glazed.

The commercial version of the recipe dates back to 1933. Fascism was rising in Europe and American needed something sweet to cut the acid from our percolator coffee. The time was ripe. In Paducah, Kentucky, a visionary named Vernon Carver Rudolf acquired the recipe for a yeast-raised dough-nut from a New Orleans chef.

Colonel Sanders started selling his secret fired chicken recipe there years ago. The town is a culinary cross-road, located at the junction of the rivers that were our first highways.

But for Krispy Kreme there were many slips on the way to becoming an international sensation. Paducah didn't pan out, and it was not until 1937 that Rudolf alit in North Carolina in his Pontiac sedan and things began to take off. The company is still headquartered there, in a town who has contributed not only the only air-extruded doughnut but Winston and Salem cigarettes to the world.

The outlet stores have a special neon sign that dates back to the founding store in Winston-Salem. Locals would look to see if the Hot Light is lit, meaning the doughnuts were fresh out of the oven. They would flock in. Over the years the chain expanded, finally reaching the West Coast in 1999. Along the way, the Fascists and the Communists were vanquished. It is that powerful a doughnut. They even sell it at Harrods in London now.

I was fumbling around this morning thinking about a nice hot sugary snack to go with my coffee. I surveyed the reporting on the wreckage of the President's address last night, and the news about the most recent four KIA in Iraq. I watched it, of course. It is a grim sort of public duty and he has only had three press conferences in prime time.

I thought his prepared remarks were well crafted. But I winced through the rest of the press conference, when he had to ask spontaneous questions. Can this amiable man really be the leader of the free world? I had hoped for some word on reform of the Intelligence Community, or a real plan to transition to some strategic plan to confront the people who want to kill so many of us.

During the question period the most that the President could say was that he was "open for suggestions."

It seemed as good a way to start a day that in the past has included the assassination of President Lincoln and the sinking of the Titanic. But sometimes you can get lucky.

I had a short meeting in the Pentagon yesterday and was running late. The stories take too much time in the morning but I love it so much; it is the only time in the day that is mine and mine alone, when I command the world and not the other way around.

So I was flying along Washington Boulevard with only a few minutes to spare. i did not have time to park at the Mall and walk the mile over to the Pentagon.

I didn't have to walk. I could always take the Metro, which is absurd considering the awkward nature of the transit, too long to be convenient and too short to be impossible. It is a useful option when it is as wet as it has been of late.
But as close as I had cut it yesterday neither was an option. I just drove into South Parking and started cruising the lanes. The General Parking was all gone, even the sections far off by the expressway. The Handicapped lanes were wide open, of course, they always are. But that is just asking for a special ticket. I chose to park in the Car Pool Lane under the great ceremonial footbridge that was obsolete before they completed it. Once it was intended to get the people up above the traffic lane where the buses come and go.

Now the security perimeter extends beyond them, and we are all mixed up in the mess in the parking lot. And there are many fewer spaces. Over on the other side of the building they have carved North Parking in two, moving Route 110 a hundred yards further away from the Eighth Corridor Entrance. There is an elegant and preposterous footbridge that rises now from what was the middle of the first third of the vast expanse of black asphalt.

I climbed up the other day to see if I could make sense of the construction. From the height, you can clearly see how the road is being directed like a vast river to hug the shore. I can see the long bulk of the Remote Delivery Facility that stretches under what used to be the lawn on the Mall front of the Pentagon.

I heard that they have moved the Pentagon officer's Athletic Club, too, our haven and refuge from the twelve-hour days in the bowels of the Joint Staff.

The stairs going up the overpass are much closer to the limited number of free parking slots at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Grove, which used to be used for joggers and gays seeking anonymous sex in the bushes on the other side of Boundary Channel.

There just are not many alternatives. You must accept vast expense and personal inconvenience. You have to work in the building to qualify for parking, and not always even then.

So there I was, sliding the convertible into a slot to which I had no right. I locked it up and walked thirty yards to the bottom of the footbridge. I limped up the stairs- this aging thing is becoming quite intolerable- and showed my building pass to the guard at the Third Corridor entrance. He had the good grace to put down his doughnut as he waved me through. I was in the office of a Senior Official with minutes to spare.

The meeting was vigorous but precise. The Senior Official had to attend a meeting with a more Senior Official at 7:30, and I was praying that the traffic officials were still munching doughnuts someplace.

As it happened, that was the case yesterday. But I had only been a Krispy Kreme away from an efficient tow to the impound lot on the other side of the building, way in the back, almost in another Zip Code.

Sometimes you have to just live on the edge. I was running late yesterday because of the distribution of the morning story. I can never tell how long the creative process will run, or at what point I need to just cut it off and send it. I need to take a lesson from Vernon Carver Rudolf. I think I will invest in a neon sign, and put it outside my door here in Big Pink. I don't know what the condominium association would think. They are a pretty ferocious bunch about this stuff, but they allow Christmas lights, and some of the residents still have theirs up.

It would sure make life easier for me. When the story is done and most of the typos removed, I could flick a switch and the colored lights would come on.

"Daily Socotra: Get it while it's HOT."