Donut Wars

By Bob Liddil

Growing up in the south of the 50’s and 60’s is etched into my memory as having been at the very least a challenge and an adventure. At least that’s how I see the events as they return to my mind.

Southern boyhood is not so much geographical as it is a state of being. The events portrayed actually happened pretty much like this. . . .

- Bob Liddil -

Just after my 13th birthday, during a family visit to Sears, Roebuck and Company, I experienced love at first sight. The object of this virgin, unbridled passion was a brand new, shiny, red, 50cc, two-speed moped, resplendent with chrome fenders, a chrome package rack, and two very large chrome mirrors - one for each side of a brilliant chrome pair of handlebars.

Up until that moment, I had believed myself doomed to travel no faster than my legs could pedal me on a built-from-salvage bicycle that carried me everywhere I needed or wanted to go. The moped, however, had a motor! True, the tiny Puch 50cc displacement engine that powered this freedom machine was barely large enough to move a lawn mower through inch-high grass, but to me, it was every motorcycle I’d ever seen , rolled up neatly into a boy-sized package. Most importantly, it did not require a driver’s license.

The moped was red, trimmed with chrome including a chrome luggage rack wide enough for a book bag. It had a two speed transmission that shifted with a rotation of the right handlebar grip. It called my name in a low and sexy voice that I have only heard duplicated one other time in my life, the day in 1989 when I first met my (also red) Camaro. It also begged to be mine.

But the price on the moped cost was $179.95. That year, 1960, when minimum wage was 65 cents an hour and the monthly rent on the house we lived in was thirty-five bucks, it might have just as will been a million.

That evening, when my Grandfather came home from work, I gave him my very best pitch. I described that moped in loving detail, right down to the single sparkplug in the center of the little brushed metal engine. I presented my case with such passion, that my Grandmother commented, as she often did when I pulled out all the stops, that surely I would grow up to be a lawyer, at least I would if a bicycle with an engine on it didn’t terminate my young life on some city street at the hands of some reckless motorist.

Her observations concerning the dangers of the moped was Grandmother Code to my Grandfather to nip this idea in the bud. He took the hint, but closed the conversation in a different way than she would have wished.

“Well, I’ll tell you, boy,” he said gently. “If you can earn the money, you can buy it.” He spat a glop of tobacco juice in his customary Maxwell House can, which was his signal to my Grandmother that he had pondered the situation, rendered a viable solution, and was in complete control.

The chances of me earning that much money roughly coincided with the odds against a man landing on the moon before my 21st birthday. My total life savings consisted of seven bucks of newspaper route money, five bucks of lawn mowing cash, plus my wheat penny collection, which was missing all the really pricey dates.

But I had been given a green light. Still, the problem was imponderable. How could a kid convert twelve bucks and a penny collection into the King’s ransom needed to buy a moped? There seemed to be no solution at first, but then, the answer came much sooner than I expected and from a most unlikely place.

Out of necessity, I placed the moped on the back burner. By my reckoning, it would take more than a year to earn the money I needed, saving off my paper route. To any boy, a year is an impossibly long time. To me, it fully represented an eternity.

Meanwhile, life went on. School dominated my weekdays and Sunday was church. The only day I had to myself was Saturday and that was my YMCA day. On a particular Saturday, not too long after the discussion with my folks, The Y scheduled a field trip to the Krispy Kreme Donut factory. It was a thirteen-block hike off down Main Street, but we knew from previous trips there that a delicious reward awaited at the end of the tour.

As I and thirty or more other Y boys happily sat, happily consuming glazed donuts, my best friend, Buddy Bell commented, “What a shame we can’t get these at school.”

His words would have been no less of an epiphany if a yellow light from a cloud above had delivered them in the somber voice of John Houston. It was as if my entire life suddenly flashed before me without the threat of death. There it was - Krispy Kreme donuts were, quite simply, a moped in the bank.

It was a case of simple arithmetic, not my best school subject, but adequate for the moment’s calculations. Krispy Kremes cost sixty-five cents a dozen. Every kid in school had a minimum of fifty cents milk money to spend at lunchtime. Twelve Krispy Kremes at a quarter apiece returned three dollars gross. Deducting the original sixty-five cents investment, that meant that every twelve donuts advanced my moped fund by two dollars and thirty-five cents.

Monday found me out of bed at the crack of dawn. That was more than two hours earlier than normal, and without the usual fuss that always accompanied any awakening of me on a school day. I sat quietly at the breakfast table and even drank all my milk. This prompted my Grandmother to feel my forehead and take my pulse to check against any oncoming illness.

I was out the door and gone shortly after having been pronounced healthy, leaving the Old Folks staring quizzically behind me in astonishment.

I took the city bus downtown to the Krispy Kreme factory, spent every dime of my net worth and grabbed the next bus back to school as smoothly as if I had been doing it forever. I got some pretty strange stares from morning commuters as I rode alongside a stack of donut boxes as tall in the seat as I was. Inside, my heart was singing. I knew exactly what to do.

At school, a strange, new odor wafted through the hallways as I, heavily laden with Krispy Kreme boxes, made my way toward my locker. All that morning, the smell of warm, fresh donuts called subliminally to student and teacher alike. By noon, there wasn’t a man, woman or child in that building that didn’t crave donuts.

At lunchtime, I sat in the farthest corner of the cafeteria, my table seductively stacked with turquoise and white boxes filled with a circular confection rumored by word of mouth to be had for only a quarter. Within fifteen minutes, all I had left were six empty boxes and a jingle of silver. Glazed Krispy Kremes became an instant sensation.

Each day, for the next two weeks, I sat in the back of the cafeteria and sold donuts. By the end of the third week, I’d enlisted the help of a couple of friends to meet extra demand, which by then had grown to 21 boxes a day, including three boxes specially supplied to the teachers’ lounge to go with their coffee. Without a doubt, I had become the donut king of my school as my moped fund grew exponentially.

My Grandmother grew more and more anxious at the beginning of the fourth week of leaving the house early, then bringing home a pocket full of change after school. She questioned me repeatedly. At one point she even scanned the newspaper to see if there had been any parking meter robberies.

“Everything’s OK. Don’t worry, Grandma.” I assured her, smiling a mischievous in-voluntary half grin that always seems to come over me when I am not telling the whole truth.

Monday morning of week five, a kid named Bill Whatley showed up in the cafeteria bearing Krispy Kreme boxes of his own. He set up shop in the opposite corner from mine, offering both jelly and crème filled donuts. The smirk on his face spoke volumes. Bill Whatley was no friend of mine. Over the years, we had been rivals in almost everything - sports, scouts, and the attention of a 7th grade girl by the name of Pinky, which is certainly another story. I’d never liked him before. Now, he was my enemy.

Whatley did a brisk business that first day. His donuts were selling for the same quarter I charged for glazed. Bugs Bunny said it best, though, “Of course you know this means war,”

Next day, I changed my price to two for a quarter, winning back most of my regular customers. Undaunted, Whatley countered, offering a free glazed with the purchase of a jelly. I then dropped my price to a dime. From that point onward, the donut wars raged out of control.

The marketplace suddenly exploded. Customers were faced with dilemma upon dilemma as the cafeteria swelled to bursting with donut vendors. By Friday, it seemed that everyone with a saved allowance and a spark of ambition was now aboard the Krispy Kreme bandwagon.

Monday morning, our Boys’ Vice Principle brought business skidding to a screeching halt. He announced over the school loudspeaker that Krispy Kremes in any form were banned at school. Privately, through the grapevine, he let it be known that the next kid he saw bearing a box of Krispy Kremes would suffer three licks from the “board of education” and be sent home for a month.

Immediately my competition evaporated. The price of donuts skyrocketed to a dollar apiece. They were that tough to get. Myself and my cohorts, now known simply as “the donut gang” sold bootleg confection on the playground, in hallway corners, bathrooms, anywhere and wherever seemed safe from the prying eyes our enemy.

I never found out who turned me in. Perhaps it was a science teacher miffed at paying a buck for a donut or maybe a rival gangster, jealous of my high profit margin. I had been living large, but busted, I now was.

Returning from my second period English class, I found my locker door open and three poker faced school official standing over six boxes of donuts unceremoniously piled on the floor.

It was over. My inventory was confiscated. I was lectured for two hours on the benefits of proper nutrition. My butt was summarily and very vigorously paddled, and I was suspended from school for one solid month, as an example to any would-be rule-breaker who might think to follow in my footsteps.

The incident was added to my “permanent record” and has followed me throughout my entire life.

Exactly one month to the day, I rolled into the school parking lot on a brand new, shiny red, chrome trimmed, two speed, 50cc Puch powered Sears and Robuck moped. I had paid for it in cash, from three bags of nickels, dimes and quarters and some sixty dollars in greenbacks. The salesman very generously threw in a gallon of gasoline worth the price of a Krispy Kreme. My Grandfather signed the papers and took the bus home.

Despite being off for a month, I got an “A” in economics that semester. That prompted my Grandmother to take to the couch with a hand fan in disbelief upon seeing such a high grade on my report card among so many low ones.

My Grandfather sat on the porch and just chewed, and spat. He seemed to be very cheerful about something. Years later, he confided in me as a young man that it was one of the few times he’d ever won an arguments with my Grandmother.

I absolutely believed him.