Giant Donuts

We have a dearth of donuts in the upper midwest. To the outsider looking in at our nothern climes, this must seem an absurd statement. I mean, we're certainly chubby enough, myself included. The average denizen of a Great Lakes state looks like he or she consumes a cruller with each meal and counts donut holes as a "healthy snack" (they're tiny, after all). Yet, suprisingly, donut shops are as rare as heat waves in Minnesota. We have bakeries, yes, but donut shops? Do the Tom Thumb mini-donut stands at the State Fair count?

Spend a few minutes in rail-thin, image conscious Los Angeles, however, and you can't help but wonder, who is keeping all these donut shops in business? Are they fronts for various insidious operations - drug dealing or exotic pet smuggling, perhaps? Or is a pattern of binging and purging keeping the donut shops stocked with sprinkles?  The collective body mass index in southern California offers no evidence of regular donut consumption, so there must be some other explanation for the abundance of glazed twist entrepreneurs.

My appreciation for the L.A. donut culture has emerged over two decades of visiting my parents, who moved to the Los Angeles area in 1989. I've noticed that unlike Dunkin' Donuts on the east coast or Krispy Kreme in the south, the donut shops in L.A. are mom and pop operations. Every strip mall touts a tiny donut shop, and the L.A. sprawl is teeming with strip malls.  During the summer of 2007, I spent many hours driving past the strip malls between my parents' home in Burbank and the Kaiser Permanente hospital in Panorama City, where my mother lay struggling to recover from the pulminary embolism that would take her life that fall.  To keep my sorrow in check, I made a habit of counting the donut shops on my route. Grief usually got the better of me by number 12 or 13 and I never did tally the total number, but I am certain there were 20 or more donut stores in that 7-mile stretch along Vanowen and Woodman streets. Most of the shops had signs that advertised "Donuts."  Not "Joe's Donuts" or "The Jolly Jelly Donut," but just "Donuts."  One store, about midway into my route, promoted "Chinese Food Donuts."  I remember the welcome distraction this sign always provided me as I contemplated its possible meanings.  Could you buy both Chinese food and donuts in this establishment, or was there really something called a Chinese Food Donut? I never stopped to find the answer.

Although no giant donut franchise like Krispy Kreme or Dunkin' Donuts dominates the L. A. landscape, there are a plethora of actual giant donuts dotting its terrain.  For years the fleeting image of Randy's Donuts tantalized me as I navigated my way to Interstate 405 from one LAX rental car lot or another. Like Brigadoon, Randy's giant donut appeared to me only rarely, perhaps once every three years, and usually when I'd lost my way in Inglewood. It always popped up in my peripheral vision just as I re-discovered the freeway and was merging into death-defying traffic. As the L.A. interstates are not conducive to giant donut-gazing, I never got a good look at Randy's until Gary and I begged directions from a Dollar Rental Car clerk and set off with the express purpose of eating an apple fritter.  The clerk's directions were vague, at best, and when no giant donut rolled into view, I pounded my fist on the steering wheel and cried in frustration.  How could something so big be so elusive? Was it that I didn't believe in the giant donut, and therefore I couldn't see it? Like Tinkerbell, would it only exist if I chanted "I do believe, I do believe?" I fixed my thoughts on a chocolate-glazed old fashioned, and within moments Randy's emerged from the horizon.  I did believe, and at long last I stood in the shadow of the colossal donut. We paused to marvel at its magnificence, licked the powdered sugar from our fingers, and drove off into the California sunset to pursue other dreams.

We went in search of another massive donut during our most recent visit to Los Angeles, and this time we entrusted the navigation to our Garmin GPS device, which took us directly to the Donut Hole in La Puente without once questioning our faith in the existence of gargantuan carbohydrates. The Donut Hole is not just a giant donut, it's a giant drive-through donut.  Think about it - a giant roadside attraction that dispenses sugary treats, and you never have to leave your car! We felt like putting our hands on our hearts and singing the national anthem, we were so overcome with emotion.  Instead we pulled into the giant donut and ordered an assortment of raised and cake delicacies. We inhaled half a dozen donut holes, which were light-as-air, melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and then immediately circled the car back through the Donut Hole to get a dozen more.  After all, as every Minnesotan knows, donut holes are a healthy snack (they're tiny)!