Outage pulls plug on doughnut makers
- Font Size:
- Default font size
- Larger font size
By Bill Wundram | Wednesday, July 23, 2008 |
Good grief, we’re suffering a doughnut shortage.
You may be hard-pressed to find a real doughnut — unless it’s been made another city — in the Quads.
Our two major doughnut factories are in Moline and they’ve been without power since Monday morning. There is little immediate hope for a morning dipper with your java.
Those two big sinker producers, Donut Delite and Donuts & More, are in the dark.
At Donuts & More, a standby for the sinker crowd at 1717 Brady St., Davenport, the racks were empty of doughnuts by early Tuesday. Donuts & More had less than 600 doughnuts to sell, and they had been made the night before under the most unlikely of circumstances at the Moline store’s bakery, which is closed.
Bill Amyette, a Donuts & More employee, worked by emergency lighting and candlelight to hand-make doughuts and get them into the gas-fired fryers. He made a few batches for a good customer, the Isle of Capri in Bettendorf, and the rest for the Davenport store.
Bill’s mother, Jan Amyette, was working behind the counter Tuesday at the Davenport store.
“All we have is cookies, muffins and bagels,” she said, with a sad echo in her voice. Bagels do not go well when dipped in coffee. The Brady Street doughnut store closed early, at 4 p.m. Tuesday, a logical move because it had no doughnuts to sell.
At Donut Delight, on Moline’s Avenue of the Cities, all was quiet. The five bakers were off duty because of the power outage and the only person working was Sharon Wainwright, the assistant manager. Daily, the bakers begin turning out 5,000 or 6,000 doughnuts in the middle of the night for Mother Hubbard’s, Qwik Shops and Quick Marts, service stations and Trinity Medical Centers in the Quad-Cities.
And the band played on …
All of Orion, Ill., was blacked out Monday by power failure. The only bright spot was Central Park. It was lit up like New Year’s Eve in Times Square because this was the annual visit of Bill Allred — the local boy who made good — who was back in town for a concert.
The village provided a giant generator to light up the park and bandstand for Allred’s band to play. Each year, he fulfills a promise to bring his band to Orion, be it from New York City or LA or New Orleans, to play a concert in Orion. Orion is his hometown, the springboard that sent him on his way to become one of the jazz world’s most noted trombonists.
On a sadder note
Rich Johnson of Moline, patriarch of the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society, has been in ill health, fighting cancer for more than a year. Now, he is in the hospice wing of Trinity at Terrace Park, Bettendorf.
He mentioned to a good friend that he would like to hang on until Aug. 6, the anniversary of Bix’s death. He often said he wanted to be with Bix on that date.
“This morning, at 10, we’ll bring Bix to him,” says Josh Duffee, good friend and fellow musician. Josh will be with the English band, Spats Langham and his Rhythm Boys, when they set up in Rich’s room and play for about 30 minutes for Rich, relatives and special friends. They’re in town for the Bix Jazz Festival.
“We’ll play Bix music, the grand tunes that he loves,” says Josh. “I don’t think that others in the hospice unit will object to that happy music.”
Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.
del.icio.us
Digg
NewsVine
Fark
reddit» More Bill Wundram Stories
Highest Rated Articles from the last 7 Days
- Technology News Articles
- Computers, MP3, Phones & More. See Product Pics, Specs & Reviews.
- www.NexTag.com
- 2008 Diet Of The Year:
- Finally, A Diet That Really Works! Seen On CNN, NBC, CBS & Fox News.
- www.Wu-YiSource.com
- Cheap Airfare
- Compare multiple travel sites. Discount web fares made easy.
- www.LowFares.com
- Ads by Yahoo!
