When I was a kid, I heard of The Seven Wonders of the World. Then I heard about The Seven Manmade Wonders of the World. And I’ve seen some of the grandeur of nature. No photograph, no matter how panoramic, can do justice to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. I didn’t witness it’s majesty until I was an adult and, once I recaptured my breath, I found myself wishing I had seen it many years sooner.
The shoreline of the Monterey Peninsula in California was surely sculpted by an artist and the rivers in Yellowstone National Park dash their way through ancient forests in magnificent splendor. While these images are tucked away in the cobwebbed recesses of my mind, there is also hiding there a picture, from way back in my childhood, which is still as vividly recalled as though it was remembered in Technicolor.
It was the donut drawer on the Helms Bakery truck.
You see, back in those days, the days when milk was delivered to your door, there was also a bakery in Culver City, California, which sent out fleets of trucks with fresh bread and bakery items. Helms Bakery began serving the Los Angeles basin beginning in the late 1930’s and had expanded to my family’s area when I was a child. Their distinctive whistle, tooted twice, would bring housewives from their homes, flagging down the trucks for fresh bread, often still warm from the ovens.
The bread was kept in the center compartment of the truck and the twin rear doors would open to reveal drawers filled with donuts and pastries. And the memory which shines ever-so-brightly in my little brain is of the first time I stood at the rear of that truck. My mother placed her hand on my stomach and scooted me back a step to make way for that wide yet shallow drawer. And when the driver drew it out right to where I stood, I saw beneath the Plexiglas cover the most spectacular array of deep fried, sugary delight that I’d ever seen. I had to have been awestruck for it to be so intensely emblazoned into my memory. The colors were magnificent! Astounding!
“Pick one…” my mother’s voice lilted in the distance; as if an angelic song was coming to me from off somewhere in the ethers. This had to be how a treasure hunter felt when opening a long lost chest of jewels. I opened my mouth to confirm what she’d just said to me but any words I could possibly have spoken would have been useless before a bounty of this magnitude.
There were some with sugar glaze. There were frostings of pinks and whites and yellows and blues. Some had sprinkles of a million colors and others with flecks of chocolate. Some had frosting of one color and another color was then drizzled across it in fancy patterns.
“Pick one…”
Some donuts had powdered sugar on them and a small hole on one side where I could see some sort of yellow custard. Others were glazed and in their little side holes I could see raspberry jelly. And they weren’t all round! There were oblong donuts topped with chocolate or (what I later learned was) maple.
“Come on now… Pick one…”
There were some topped with chopped peanuts and others looked kind of crinkly. There were even chocolate donuts with chocolate frosting or colored frosting! And some of those had sprinkles—both round and oblong—or chopped nuts. Another had pink frosting with what looked like flecks of cherries throughout. And others were dusted with powdered sugar. There was—
“Hurry up… Pick one…”
I want that one and that one and that one and that one and…
“Billy. Hurry up…”
Hurry up?! How can I?! I had never, nor have I since, seen anything that could compare with the magnificence of the sugary delights before my eyes. There were dozens of them! Millions! I had never even imagined anything remotely comparable. The brilliant colors began to move and soon twirled and swirled together and danced on my retinas.
A brief instant before I swooned and fell forward, banging my face on the Plexiglas cover, my mother nudged my shoulder and again said, “Hurry up! Pick one!”
I pointed and the driver opened the cover, selected my donut and deftly placed it into a small bag he’d withdrawn from the racks on the rear doors. He handed it to me and my mother paid him. She must have purchased a donut for each of my siblings. They had to be there. They were always there. But I opened the bag and brought it to my nose. The fragrance was intoxicating. I slowly walked, perhaps floated, away from the truck and made my way across my front yard.
My selection? It was a lemon custard filled donut dusted with powdered sugar. It was too sweet. It was too rich. And it was gone all too quickly.
