cops/donuts meme

[Paul Johnson]

It seemed to me that, while  growing up in Chicago during the '40s/'50s
that cops rode the tin everywhere they could.  Lunch rooms, coffee
shops, bars (hat off, but in uniform, drinking from coffee cups)  But,
I'm sure that the donut (neon spelling) meme came from the few, legally
open all night places were greasy spoons selling cheap donuts and chili
with a thin layer of orange grease on top. If you were sober you went
for the donut, drinking... the chili had a siren call to it's aroma.

Marc Sacks wrote:

>Charles Doyle writes:
>
>
>>The history of specialty doughnut shops might be traceable--and not just
>>Dunkin' Donuts and Krispy Kreme. In the early 1960s, a place called
>>Spudnuts opened in Austin (the gimmick was an undetectable quantity of
>>potato flour added to the doughnut dough--WHY I can't imagine); I think it
>>was a chain. But I'm guessing that doughnut traditions flourished in the
>>Northeast before they reached the South.
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org