Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Let Us Now Praise Famous Donuts
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
There’s Mount Rushmore, the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty. Then there’s Randy’s Donuts.
Thirty-two and half feet in diameter, the tawny-colored concrete donut towers over Interstate 405—the habitually clogged freeway to Los Angeles International Airport. Below it, Randy’s sells artery-clogging salvation to frustrated drivers in need of a sugar high before their flights.
Today, my closest faculty ally is leaving for a year-long sabbatical in Japan. Alice teaches, or taught, mathematics. I teach high school civics, including economic policy. With a hollowness deep inside me, I’m giving her a ride to the airport.
As we pass by Randy’s Donuts, she teases me about one of my lesson plans. It’s about the donut-defaming idiom “dollars to doughnuts.” A basic glazed or plain cake donut at Randy’s costs $1.60. As I pass out donut holes to my students, I challenge them to discuss and debate summer jobs that pay $1.00 an hour in cash versus one donut per hour. Doesn’t payment in donuts, I ask, represent a lip-smacking sixty percent pay raise? It takes them awhile to figure out that not all dough is portable, practical, fungible.
We reminisce about our caucus of two at faculty meetings. One year, we argued for student free speech, but against student demands for '“safe spaces.” To the angered annoyance of our colleagues, we wanted unfettered, uncensored, unruly campus debates. To the even angrier annoyance of our students, we opposed cloistered hideaways for ducking campus life in all its difficult diversity.
Alice’s travel skirt—modestly to her calves—is a zigzag pattern of black and white stripes. Her blonde hair is close-cropped. No earrings or necklace. She looks like an escaped convict.
When she notices me checking her out, she laughs, eyes crinkling with a knowing look. “I’m dressing down to avoid standing out on the streets of Tokyo.” I nod an affirmation, but I’m skeptical that a 5’10” Caucasian blond female in zebra stripes will avoid the curious eyes of Japanese men.
A mix of fatherly-brotherly-collegial-paternalistic protectiveness wells up, but I don’t say anything. I have to trust she knows that I have her back even from a distance. Still, maybe what goes unsaid goes unheard.
At the West Manchester Boulevard exit I impulsively take the off ramp to Randy’s. The racks of glazed, sugared, powdered, chocolate, cream-filled, frosted, plain cake, sprinkled, cinnamon, twists, crullers, old-fashioned, buttermilk, fritters, jelly-filled, coconut, red velvet, maple bars and coffee-flavored donuts are organized like World War I doughboys in parade formation. The colorful donuts glisten like lipstick on a Hollywood starlet. As if we have the power to delay her flight, we linger making our selections.
I’m happy for Alice and all that, but Japan is an ocean away. When Tokyo-bound United flight 632 lifts off, wheels up, my life will change.
Between donut bites, I can’t quite bring myself to accept that she is moving, changing jobs, maybe even falling in love. If she gets married, I’ll miss the milestone moment. For a wedding gift, I’ll airship her a dozen donuts.
Donuts are the perfect wedding gift—a reminder not to take the sweet things in my life for granted. People—like donuts—are missed the most when they’re gone. It’s a vulnerability against which I am defenseless.
On the drive home, I detour again to Randy’s. Same donuts. Not as sweet.
