Mulling things on my morning ramble
with Storm, the family’s mixed Lab.
Last night, the neighbor girl delivered the box of Krispy Kreme donuts she was selling for the Princess Pageant.
I had two of them with my coffee at 5 a.m. while I was working on some writing. Only meant to have one, but did two.
My preference is a healthier breakfast of a couple eggs.
I remember when Krispy Kreme had people lined up to get in. In the early days when the shop in Midlothian at Cicero and 147th opened, I was working the second shift in Sun-Times sports doing agate.
Sometimes on the way home in the middle of the night, I would whip off I-57 at 147th and buy a dozen and a small cup of coffee.
And I always meant to eat only one out of the box and save the rest for the family’s breakfast, but would always end up eating at least two and sometimes three. Probably not the smartest thing to have in the middle of the night: coffee and Krispy Kremes.
But there were the nights when the counter woman would reach back, pluck an utterly fresh donut off the conveyor (hot with oil and sugar) and just hand it to me.
There’s an utter sinfulness to Krispy Kremes at that point.
(For the Krispy Kreme business honchos, I would suggest there is a great deal of difference in the quality of donuts at that point and a day later in prepackaged boxes used for fundraisers.)
In the early days, Krispy Kremes were a novelty of the whole experience as much as the sinfulness of the taste of those donuts fresh out of the oil.
There’s the connection to coyotes.
I remember when coyotes were a novelty in much of Chicago and the suburbs. Then I started seeing them running down streets, roads and expressways in the middle of the night when I was driving to do some hunting or fishing story.
For a while, it was unique enough that a Chicago cop kept me appraised of how often he was seeing a coyote along the South Side of the Chicago lakefront.
Now, not so much. Coyotes are here.
As fall comes on, I stretch out my walk to two miles to help fend off the mental lethargy and depression that comes too easily in the dark seasons of fall and winter.
Didn’t see anything special this morning.
Eleven Canada geese were swimming by the bridge over the neckdown between the two old clay pits. That might explain why no great blue heron was hanging under the bridge.
I only saw two doves and a couple squirrels.
A belted kingfisher squawked off on the other side of the town pond, but I couldn’t pick it up.
I realized that the trees along the town pond had started yellowing and I didn’t even notice until this morning.
Fall sneaks gradually, without the pretense of being a novelty.
