Hunting for Donuts With My Dad

Photo by the author

I’ve just returned from a donut search. You can see the catch in the photo. Saturday morning was donut time in my growing-up family. Mom’s breakfast day off.

Sunday, too, when my dad would make pancakes while we were at mass. He was agnostic. But not about donuts.

I was the oldest of three boys. Maybe that’s why he let me ride with him to one of several bakeries in our hometown of Davenport, Iowa. Walcher’s, on Marquette Street, was my favorite. It was furthest from home.

One Saturday morning in 1962 sticks out. My parents had two cars and a small garage. One car angled into a spot next to the garage. The second was parked inside.

A basketball hoop resided over the opening, so we always kept the garage door open. That morning, my dad’s white Fiat 500 sedan was tucked inside. It had a floor stick shift between two bucket seats.

And would become my how-to-drive classroom. We opened the unlocked doors and, by rote, stepped up and into…A car with no front seats.

My dad died 33 years ago. Saturday morning donuts bring the person back to me. Not just memories.

The day before the car-seat-caper, two new friends had come over to play whiffle ball in our driveway diamond. We were playing when my dad came home from work and parked the Fiat in the garage.

My new friends happened to be black. On the way to get donuts, in our other car, my dad asked me about my new friends. This was nothing new.

Two years earlier, Dad had picked me up from a friend’s house. My friend lived a few blocks from our elementary school in a rough part of town. On the way home, he told me he didn’t want me hanging out with this kid. Who happened to be white.

We never did find out who took those car seats. Years later, my mom told me that my dad believed the thief was our next-door neighbor, who put the seats in his fishing boat.

It took my dad a few weeks to forage replacement seats.

For my first driving lesson.

I like to think my Dad would have liked this story. You can find more June prompts here.

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And more sweet stories here.

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