A Hot, Sugary Outrage

When I first heard a few years back that Krispy Kremes were being sold at the US Open in New York, I was horrified. I knew that to the Yankees these potato-flour Dixie doughnuts would be just one more comestible to shove down their maws, and not the venerated symbol of the South in pastry form that they truly are. I tried to reason with myself that Coca Cola is a Southern potable that has gone global, but somehow I knew that trying times were ahead for the beloved Carolina kruller. But this, this... desecration in Georgia, this is something I never foresaw:

I hate to ruin your day, but another sacred Southern icon has been desecrated by infidels.

Let us now mourn the shameful treatment accorded that sweet Dixie delight, the heavenly Krispy Kreme doughnut.

Oh, they're still as tasty as ever, and when the irresistible "Hot Doughnuts Now" beacon lures you to the corner of Raleigh's Peace and Person streets for a sackful, you will still swear they were kissed by angels.

But the devil lives down in Georgia, and he has had his evil way with North Carolina's second most famous culinary achievement. It is the confectionary version of putting a Speedo swimsuit on Michelangelo's statue of David.

At a pub in Decatur, Ga., a fiend fried a hamburger, topped it with cheese and bacon and thrust it between two halves of a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

That is just so wrong. Purity has been defiled.

I feared the worst when corporate America discovered Krispy Kreme. And I was right. Long lines formed at stores that had sprouted like kudzu. Famous people embarrassed themselves wearing the hat. That hat, like Mickey Mouse ears, should never be seen on the head of anyone but employees and kids younger than 8.

Krispy Kreme became, in a word, trendy. Which as anyone who owned pet rocks, mood rings and Boy George albums will attest, is a cultural and financial death sentence.

The sugar rush that so excited Wall Street drove stock prices higher than my Uncle Doc on a Saturday night. Then it became more akin to the queasiness I felt when I was 10 years old and ate a dozen of the little beauties in one sitting at Myrtle Beach.

Executives were fired, fortunes were lost and our humble doughnut became, in the minds of many, just another Southern bad idea. Like Atlanta.

Wall Street might have lost its appetite, but an unsullied Krispy Kreme doughnut remains the perfect Southern food. It is a medley of three of our primary food groups in one easy-to-handle shape: grease, sugar and flour. Add barbecue and bourbon, and your food pyramid stands tall.

It would have been forgivable for a bored cook in a backwater burg like Decatur to tinker with our native nosh for his own amusement. But the stupid idea not only caught on in Georgia, where people will obviously eat anything, but crossed state lines, which makes it a federal offense.

It seems the Gateway Grizzlies minor league baseball team near St. Louis sells these gut grenades for $4.50 to people who obviously have had way too much Budweiser.

This madness must stop. This is a sugary sacrilege. If we do not teach people that they cannot toy with Southern food, I predict a bad moon rising.

How long will it be before someone (probably in Cary) puts lettuce and tomato on a barbecue sandwich and thinks that's acceptable, too?

See, you're already thinking about it, aren't you?

Stop. Such depravity is what led to the slathering of innocent hot dogs with ketchup and relish instead of the way Jesus intended, which anybody from Wilson knows full well is with chili, mustard and onions.

Some people just don't know when to leave well enough alone.

(The link to the beautiful writing of Dennis Rogers via Consonant Man in comments.)