memories of home

 My west coast brother informs me that today is "National Glazed Doughnut Day" and "National Hot Tea Day."  Two absolute staples of my growing up years.  My mother made the world's strongest coffee, which my father seemed to love, but she was convinced that coffee was only for adults (and hers probably was).  Tea, on the other hand, was perfectly acceptable for children to drink, so our morning brew was hot tea with milk and sugar.  I'm proud to say that I was able to continue the tradition with my children, and even my grandchildren when they lived with me.  And they seem to have suffered no ill effects. Glazed doughnuts, on the other hand, were a summer treat.  

Back in the day we lived in the country, and quite a few delivery trucks were part of our routine.  If Mom put a certain card in the front window, the dry cleaner's truck would stop and pick up whatever we needed cleaned.  The "Jewel Tea" truck would stop by regularly with spices, teas, coffee, extracts and other items.  We even had a truck that would stop by a few times a year with fish on dry ice for sale.  But most wonderfully, the Nichol's Bakery truck would come once a week.  During the school year we bought bread but in the summer, when the Nichol's Bakery truck came, Mom would buy the usual bread order, but also a box of one dozen sugar glazed doughnuts.  In my memory this was always on a Wednesday morning.  As soon as the truck left, we would have a midmorning snack of milk (it was too hot for tea) and doughnuts.  I would like to think that we saved one for my father, but between the four of us (Mom, my two brothers and myself) we ate the whole dozen.  I don't know if Dad even knew they existed. In case you're wondering if we were all fat little piggies, no we weren't.  We all grew long and lean and worked and played outside enough to burn off all the calories.  In fact, I'm not sure if we had even heard of calories back then.  Such a blissfully ignorant existence.