When I was in high school, I was one of the officers of our pep squad. Besides sitting in formation, wearing an itchy vest on Fridays and cheering on our team, one of my duties was picking up doughnuts early Saturday mornings at the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Shop on Plank Road in Baton Rouge.
By virtue of the size of the trunk that could fit a VW Beetle and the ability to pile dozens of doughnut boxes in the back seat and the front, I was always at the top of the volunteer list.
Our pep squad usually ordered 200 dozen doughnuts, and we always arrived before the workers were finished boxing our doughnuts for one specific reason: the ladies would let us stand at the end of the assembly line, pick doughnuts right off the conveyor belt and eat as many as we wanted.
Free Krispy Kreme on an empty stomach always sounded good until half way back to school. That much sugar compounded with that 20-minute ride, surrounded by boxes of hot doughnuts in a hot car, and the result was I swore off doughnuts for the next 25 years.
I didn’t think about the chain again until a cold night when my sisters and I were finishing up a day of shopping.
It was almost 10 at night but that didn’t matter when we saw the blinking red light indicating hot doughnuts were ready at the Krispy Kreme store right outside the Virginia mall.
Obviously this shop knew how to cater to people with the late-night munchies, because that red light was a siren’s song. We pulled up – this Krispy Kreme had a drive-up window – and ordered a dozen hot doughnuts.
When the clerk handed us the box, we decided we should order two more dozen for our children for breakfast in the morning. They didn’t yet know the thrill of Krispy Kreme, and it was our mom duty to teach them correctly.
We didn’t make it a half mile down the road until that first dozen was gone and we seriously considered finishing off the second one and never telling the kids. That’s how good hot, fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts are.
I thought about those Krispy Kreme days when I saw an article about the famous chain returning to the Houston area. The chain pulled up stakes back in 2006, and people are thrilled they’re making a return appearance to Texas.
There are some who’ll debate who makes the best confections, and there’s quite a few mom-and-pop shops around town who put out good doughnuts. They entice with candy corn and granola toppings, but all those toppings do is weigh down the prize.
For chains, Shipley’s and Dunkin Donuts put out a good product, no doubt about it, but there’s something special about Krispy Kreme. Perhaps it’s its lightness or the way the glaze completely covers the doughnut in an almost transparent sheen.
Maybe it’s because so many of us grew up with a Krispy Kreme shop within minutes of our house. For people from Louisiana, Krispy Kreme is as familiar to us as hot beignets from Café du Monde, the purple K&B sign and looking for the biggest crawfish in a just-boiled pile of mudbugs, corn and potatoes dumped on a picnic table.
The next time I’m in Houston, I’ll be looking for that blinking red light that tells me the doughnuts are ready. Add a cup of French Roast Community Coffee and, cher, I’m happy.
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.