12
Friday, October 15, 1976
University Daily Kansan
Joe Smith
Lines in late night worship for Joe's hot white counter light.
The man who brought Lawrence the all-night doughnut
Midnight in Lawrence. Bars empty and cars cruising through the line of flashing yellow stoplights down the Ninth St. hill. A pair of large glass windows at labs are almost always lit: Joe's Bakery.
HOT DONUTS NOW glows a red neon sign in the bakery window, as if anyone needs a reminder. The cowbell clings on Joe's door as students move into line.
Outside, a jacked-up red Chevy races by on Ninth.
Forever flicked with flour. Joe savories a moment away from the board. It's there, bent over dough, that he's shaped his dream begun in baking school to run his own bakery.
"Grub up those doughnuts, ya hogs," the guys in the car shout, "Grab 'em up!"
SOON THE LINE of students, some bleary-eyed, some bellowing, most staring ahead at pastries, span the full length of a room. You can be sure you aren't forced to wait in line at Joe's; you are allowed to. You get the privilege of surviving until the instant you arrive at the display case and press your fingers lightly against the glass, pointing to your treasured
In the tidy, white-walled backroom, Joe M. Smith, the man who keeps doughnuts coming day and night, six days a week, sits among them in a six-foot shelf of pitted doughnut
"I'm busy, that's the name of my life," Joe says.
He's chubby-cheeted, has an easy smile and bears a hint resemblance to the face lift up outside on the Joe's sign above the windows.
JOE MOVES EASILY through the back room from machine to dough board, as if he could do it with his bright eyes closed. Sprinkles of dough dot the wooden floor, and the rich smell of butter and fresh-fried doughmats fill the shop.
"Cool weather's the best for sweet pastries," Joe says, bending over his three-foot high dough board. "We usually go through about 200 to 300 pounds of all kinds of sugar a day. When it gets hot, people stop grabbin' for sweets."
oees slices through the dough in long, even sets of strokes that last a breath and then snatches up the cut pieces on his thumb. When there are enough cutout centers, he waddens them into a ball and throws them back into the dough to mechanical rolling pin that fattens the dough.
In braids and jeans, Betty Wakins—who went to KU for three years and now works full-time at Joe's—takes the dough Joe has and cuts it into a deep fryer.
"WHEN I ROLL OUT of a dough, I know just about how many doughnuts I'll get out of it, give or take one maybe," he says.
"I work hard all night and can only about keep up with Joe," she says.
When the fried dough is sizzling, Betsy spears the doughnuts on a long stick, another them in Frosting and pours hot oil upon the opens to the front of the store. She gets her pick of the dripping-fresh doughnuts, usually eating two or three blueberries, doughnuts a night.
"IT TRY NOT TO eat any doughnuts any more," Joe says, looking through the window to the 1. a.m. line in the store. "I always know where to get bread. I put a few away any way during the night."
Mrs. Smith, who is working the counter, scribbles a phone-in order on a white keyboard. He opens the window to her husband. He tells his son, Ralph, that he reshaves, to frost the cupcakes. food cupcakes
“As song as I remember I've been doing something around here,” Halm said. When the vat of chocolate frosting is almost gone, you can see the layer of frosting on the cakes with his fingers.
"I used to be sweeping the floor, so I guess I not a promotion." he says.
JOE WASN'T MUCH older than his son when he began work in a Massachusetts Street bakery after serving as a cook in the Navy in World War II. He learned the recipe for biscuits, and he could at the bakery and attending the American Institute of Baking in Chicago.
"I lived on pastries and coffee for a week at baking school when I ran out of money," he says, back again at the dough board, "and I'm now learning how to bake fruit cake that we."
Joe bought a wholesale bakery down the block from the place in 1852 and moved it to their new home.
"When I was runnin' just wholesale, boys from Sigma Nu would come down and look in my window in the early morning hours and ask if they could buy up some stuff. They didn't turn him down and pretty soon they had all their friends back in with them."
SIX OR SEVEN customers came in the doughnut shop the first few days Joe opened it to the public. Now on most days the doughnut on the door dongs more than 1,000 times.
Jojex takes a rare break from his work and pushes back the paper cap on his balding
"When my night business began picking up so fast I can shoot. We open at the bar, then have a quick dinner."
So he is now open 24 hours a day except from 6 p.m. Saturday to 6 p.m. Sunday.
The rest has deed invade but you:
"For a while I dreamed of opening a room, but once you're past 40 you just concentrate on making a living," he says. "No, this店 is it now, and if my son doesn't want to take it over, someday we'll close down."
THE BOOMING BUSINESS has allowed Joe to buy a farm at west of town with 60 cattle he can hass over during Christmas vacation on the month the shop is closed in the summer.
"You get pretty well bleached out in here
in the winter," he says, giving some dough out of the long black hair on his arms. "So we like to spend plenty of time outside on the farm during the summer."
Then, back to the board he goes to nimbly
mead long rows of dough into what will soon be
pasture.
"I got to keep movin' 'cause they buy about whatever I make," he says, "if there's any left over I feed it to my cows when I get home in the morning. The cows come runnin' when they see me, so I better have something for them."
JOE ZIPS over to a massive old gas oven and fires up its burners. Every night at 2 a.m. he bakes pastries and the breads used for sandwiches in the oven.
And still there's line in the store and cars pulling up outside. The trash can by the door is stuffed with crumpled doughnut sacks, a shaved ice pitcher, and next-door gas station drive is invisible, covered by parked cars. Down the Ninth street hill streaks the jacked-up red Chevy, an old blue Cadillac car and the driver and two other guys jump, shuffle inside to wait in line.
Joe's arm arcs across the board and a trail of sliced dough follows. He slides them off his thumb into the frying rack.
“It’s a nice place to get away from it all, a nice place to be.” Joe savs of his rolling 120 acre spread and doughnut house used of town
Story
by Greg Bashaw
Photos
by Jay Koelzer
---