An essay on Doughnut Lady
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In September 1917, four women, all members of the evangelical Christian charitable organization, traveled to the camp of the 1st Ammunition Train, 1st Division, mere miles from the trenches of eastern France. Initially they provided the same wholesome activities they’d provided stateside: religious services, music played on a Victrola, and treats like hot cocoa and fudge. Then two of the women hit on a novel idea: what if they made donuts to remind the men of home? And so Margaret Sheldon and Helen Purviance collected excess rations for the dough and shell casings and wine bottles for makeshift rolling pins. They filled a soldier’s helmet with lard to fry the braided crullers. Later they improved their fried creations by combining an empty condensed milk can with a narrow tube of camphor ice to make a cutter in the true donut shape, wrote John T. Edge in Donuts: An American Passion. The treats were an immediate hit, and cemented the Armed Forces’ relationship with donuts, and the girls that served them.
The donuts were simple in flav
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From earliest memory, I pondered the mysteries of the universe. Why did the chicken cross the road? And, even more puzzling: which came first, the chicken or the egg? Beyond these (eventually) soup-related brain-teasers, I also could not figure out a couple of very significant doughnut-related questions. Whatever happened to the doughnut holes? And, even more importantly, regarding doughnuts without holes: How did the jelly get inside a jelly doughnut?
It was quite like one of those chicken-and-the-egg type quandaries, only carbo-loaded. I rolled the answers over and over in my mind at night. Ever since winning the coveted Troop 116 Baking Award and badge in my Brownie troop (I won with Toll House cookies, with the basic recipe on the back of the packet – but I think it was the chopped walnuts and butter-crispy edge textures that got me over the finish line into blue ribbon territory), I was designated the uncoveted role of family baker.
As the only girl of my generation in a very gender role specific clan, I guess it was kismet, and not necessarily a destiny of my own choosing.
Indeed, by a tender age, I had my heart set on becoming a jockey (female jockeys were quite a new thing back then, and rather glamorous). My brother couldn’t stand the thought of it, and persuaded me that I was already too tall to ride to victory in the Kentucky Derby. So I decided to become a pro football player instead.
Linebacker was my position of choice. We had a closet full of junior-sized padding and helmets. Every day after school, I would suit up and tackle the neighborhood boys. Actually, I was quite good at it; and I fancied I might even get my distant father’s approval one day, if he saw me winning a football game on TV.
I might not have been very good at catching or passing the football, but oh boy, was I good at tackling! I was a terror on the field (in this case, my backyard.) This particular fascination lasted all season, as the weather cooled off and the football frenzy heated up. In the midst of the post-war baby boom, our neighborhood was brimful of children, all of whom rode their shiny trikes and bikes (and the odd scooter) over to our house to fight for the pigskin.
I was good at it! Nobody cared that I was a girl. At least none of the kids did. But as for my grandmother, this was a different story entirely.
She bribed me with chocolate. Chocolate, cookies, and anything else she could use to get me off the backyard football field and back into the kitchen, where I apparently belonged. My grandmother brought me fancy treats, escalating from Swiss milk chocolate, with a detour at Pepperidge Farms, way up to real German marzipan, shaped and colored like precious little fruits. But the payoff for these treats was crystal clear: I must not play football. Ever. Verboten. I was a girl. I was supposed to cook instead. She handed me an apron.