Skip to main content

Krispy Kreme

I drove into Winston-Salem the other afternoon and went straight to the Krispy Kreme on Stratford Road. It had occurred to me that a fresh Krispy Kreme might be just soft enough for my Dad to enjoy.

The consistency of a fresh Krispy Kreme doughnut is probably akin to the taste of an angel's halo, presuming those are edible. It's like biting into fresh, hot nothing covered in sugar. And then it disappears into your tongue and mouth and it's gone and so's the next one. They are hard to eat in the singular when they are young. Oddly, as they age, they fill with a cobwebby breadiness while their outside frosts over and stiffens. If you have a microwave, you can save your Krispy Kremes from this kind of fate.

This is the location of the flagship free-standing Krispy Kreme, and most of the present building is still pretty old. When I was a new lad in town in the 1960's, Thruway Shopping Center hadn't spanned to Knollwood Street yet, but you could get these great doughnuts right across the street. I was thrilled. My dad would bring home a dozen, and we'd make short work of them. When I was an errant teen, I would sneak out at night and wander across the I-40 bridge, sometimes meet my friends and dazedly watch the new doughnuts go through their little roller coaster, up and down on platforms guided by chains, into the hot grease and out of it. You could stand in the parking lot, looking in through a plate glass window; we did this a lot.

A few years ago, they enclosed the old building with a seating area on one side and a drive-through on the other. I went in and stood watching the doughnuts go around for a minute in the dusty afternoon.

A woman in a fancy hat was having a doughnut and a coffee. I'd seen her when I pulled up and parked. She was thin, wore sunglasses, read a paperback and sat alone at a table by the door. She seemed somewhat out of character for the Stratford Road Krispy Kreme in the afternoon. But you take your moments where you find them.

My dad enjoyed his doughnut very much.

Comments

Ginny said…
Don't know if you heard about it, but on Saturdy there's an event in Raleigh called the "Krispy Kreme Challenge." It's a fundraiser where participants run two miles from NCSU to the Krispy Kreme on Peace Street, eat a dozen donuts and then run two miles back. I'm not participating, but one of my coworkers is. I blogged about it a couple of weeks ago. Now that's Krispy Kreme dedication!
masons2000 said…
I lost my Dad to cancer in late 2006. When I'm back in Winston visiting Mom and I pass the Stratford Krispy Kreme, I think of the countless times in my teens and twenties that I made a late night run for a dozen hot glazed doughnuts ... and how Dad would absolutely pounce on them as I came through the door.

Hey Dad ... Hot Krispy Kremes NOW!!
Deaconlight said…
It amazed me when I heard Krispy Kreme went global a few years ago. I heard the franchising started with a bang then didn't go so well - probably due to the health-conscious way we are told to live our lives. But think of the mental benefits of the melt-in-your-mouth sensatioms a KK doughnut right off the assembly line provides. And to think it all started at that little place on Stratford Road, where I went many times as a kid and teen. Right across the street from Reznick's records, where I bought my first band shirt (I still have it) - a dark blue T with an image of Bowie from the US version of "The Man Who Sold The World." I wonder who was The Man Who Sold The T-Shirt to me at Reznick's back in the mid-70s?

Popular posts from this blog

Back in the saddle again -- new shows and updates from Peter H

  Outside The Hit Shed, Durham NC Hi everyone, Getting ready to start back up again, after a year-plus out of action onstage. I have five shows opening up for  Tommy Prine (son of John) coming soon:     August 6 - Georgia Theater (Athens GA)     August 7 - Cat's Cradle Back Room (Chapel Hill NC)     August 8 - The Grey Eagle (Asheville NC)     September 3 - 118 North (Philadelphia PA)     September 4 - Rams Head (Annapolis MD) I'm also going to open for the Connells , whose new album Steadman's Wake is superb:     September 18 - The Eastern (Atlanta GA) You all probably already know about Our Back Pages  (by Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey) being released on LP and CD via Omnivore Recordings, but if not, here's a link to the new video for "Today Could Be the Day." The songs on OBP are from the catalog of The dB's but given new and interesting treatments by Chris and me. I've been working in The Hit Shed, my home studio, over the months, writing a

Jungle gym

Day before yesterday, after school, I got to watch the five-year-old put hand after hand on the overhead ladder and get himself from one side to the other. It seemed like only days ago that he'd been struggling, worried about how to get from one rung to the next, how far down he would fall and how badly he'd be hurt if he did fall. Now he boldly traversed the ladder with me ten feet away, hearing "watch this, Daddy" and looking on, gapemouthed and amazed. I remember having that feeling about ten years ago, out at the lakefront park in New Orleans, watching my daughter struggling the same way for weeks of her trying and dropping to the sand, sadly defeated for all her effort. Until one day, she swung herself to the next rung, stayed attached then did it again with a look of intense exhiliration in her face. She was incredibly proud of her victory, as was I, and she has excelled at gymnastics and physical education ever since. There's one more child that I get to

"Back yet again!" says the Infrequent Blogger

(photo by Bill Reaves) I am inevitably confounded by the amount of time I let go by between posts here. My last post was February of last year (2022). You may ask yourself "what was he doing that prevented him from posting again?" and the answer is, of course, "nothing really." I forget I have this place to write my thoughts down for a waiting world to read, which would be helpful for me as well to empty my chaotic mind and make a little space. But since you're here and may be wondering what I'm up to, I'll try to fill you in. Mostly, I'm tending to home stuff. I do laundry and pick up groceries and a lot of domestic engineering that involves a broom, dustpan and mop. And sometimes that sweet shower glass cleaner recipe I found a while ago that makes it so you can see out again. We have a new junior at UNC-W and a new junior at Riverside High School, and they've been navigating their lives outside the nest. The high schooler just got her drivers&