Doughnut Machine

Mail call is always interesting. Sometimes there are lots of junk mails, Facebook updates, and the like, but today there was a really exciting email about the doughnut machine (on the left) that my parents used in their doughnut shop.

If you have been following the blog, you know that my parents had a little restaurant in Hoopeston, IL called simply,

The Donut Shop.

It was a small mom and pop place which was opened from 5:30 in the morning to 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon. They served donuts and coffee at breakfast, sandwiches at lunch, then closed in mid afternoon. Sometimes they would stay open for the guys that got off around four, so they could grab a snack before heading home.

The doughnut machine they used was a stainless steel, 900 pound monster that stood in the corner near the window so people could watch it work. It was a Lincoln Model "D" machine made sometime in the late 1930s to early 1940s by the Doughnut Corporation of America. It had been used by the Red Cross to make doughnuts for soldiers who were coming back from the front and needed something to tide them over until they got back to base.

Dad had bought the machine for Mom in about 1948 when her asthma got the best of her and they had to close down their feed mill grinding business because the dust was making her sick. She had always wanted to own a sandwich shop, and they turned their front store into a restaurant. Dad bought the machine to augment the idea of breakfast. During the 30 odd years that the machine was in use in the shop, it made approximately one million doughnuts. Mom sat at the machine as the "doorknobs" as she called them, came out. She took each one and dropped it into either a bowl of homemade vanilla icing, or chocolate icing. She also made stacks of plain doughnuts which were later turned into sugared ones.

After Dad died in 1968, Mom kept the shop open for a little over 10 more years, doing the work herself of mixing the dough and running the machine. She had to hire others to watch the counter for her. When she retired in 1978 at the age of 67, I took the machine and put it into my garage.

During the next few years, the Paxton High School FFA used it for making doughnuts for fundraisers, but eventually the machine found its way back into the corner of my garage.

Luckily, I found a man by the name of Walt Pittack who works for Moline Manufacturing in Duluth, MN. He had worked for DCA and continued on with Moline once the DCA had been sold to them. He had the original plans and some spare parts. My brother and I decided to give the machine back to its original manufacturer who refurbished the machine into working order.

That was a long way to tell you this... The machine now looks new and is part of the diplay at the trade shows Moline Manufacturing goes to. It still makes those delicious globulars of dough. The picture above was taken just recently as they prepared it for crating and shipment.

And, in spirit, my parents get to see the world and have a vacation. Something they never did get to have when they were alive.

Keep your eye upon the doughnut, and not upon the hole.


Doughnut