Old-Fashioned Pumpkin Spice Donuts & Minuteman Missile NHS

Today is National Coffee Day, or so the Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts commercials tell me. National Coffee Day is sandwiched between yesterday’s World Rabies Day and National Drink Beer Day, and tomorrow’s International Podcast Day. We’re also quickly reaching the end of National Chicken, Honey and Papaya month. (I wish I was making this stuff up, but someone else did!) This random recent assortment of celebrated themes seems fitting for the way 2020 has rolled out. But nonetheless, today is Coffee Day!

I have questions though… Why? Why is today National Coffee Day? And who? Who was sitting around one day and came up with the idea, “hey, September 29th sounds like a great coffee day! Write it on the calendar.”

There’s no exact sunrise for Coffee Day or National Coffee Day, but it was first documented in 1983 by the All Japan Coffee Association (全日本コーヒー協会). Americans didn’t completely get on board the beany-band wagon until 2009, when the Southern Food and Beverage Museum kicked off their first New Orleans Coffee Festival. In 2015, International Coffee Day became globally official. The International Coffee Organization decreed October 1 as such, with the main goal of bringing awareness to fair trade coffee and the coffee growers around the world. I’ll drink a cup of Joe to that!

Coincidentally, today is also Superhero-Sidekick Day for Son B’s homecoming festivities. Mornings in our house are definitely saved by coffee’s caffeinated strengths! Every superhero needs a sidekick though. Enter the donut! (Especially if they’re Old-Fashioned Pumpkin Spice Donuts.) There’s one place I definitely know where to find this dynamic duo–South Dakota!

South Dakota has endless miles of prairie plains capped by magnificent skies. But the most unexpected things show up out of the blue here. The Badlands, for example, appear like a jagged earth mirage at the edge of a grassy sea.

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Travelers headed in Badlands National Park‘s direction will undoubtably notice eclectic signs randomly popping up for a drug store. Since 1936, roadside signs have advertised Wall Drug‘s free ice water, 5-cent coffee, arcade games and Levi jeans among other things. There’s no rhyme or reason where the signs are located. But their numbers definitely go up, as the distance to Wall goes down. Folks stop in just to see what the fuss is all about. Wall Drug signs are also posted in places as far away as Kenya!

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Over the years, the Hustead Family’s original pharmacy has evolved from being an actual pharmacy into a tourist attraction. Visitors can pose for old-time photos, take aim in a shooting gallery, sit atop a gigantic jackalope, pick up a free Wall Drug bumper sticker, buy cowboy boots, and eat donuts. Mmmm…the donuts! Back in the day as a Wall High School student, a plain cake donut was my lunch.

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Wall Drug is world-famous for their pillowy, frosted cake donuts. They popped up on their menu in the mid-1950’s. On average, their donut shop fries up about 348,000 donuts a year. Military veterans and active duty members are treated to a free coffee and donut—plain, chocolate or vanilla frosted. (There’s a road sign advertising this.) On a recent road trip through South Dakota, Sons A and B and I ate our fair share of these heavenly fried halos!

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But in the surrounding grasslands, all is not as obvious as all of those Wall Drug signs. In 1957, Russian successfully popped Sputnik into space and fear into the American people. Russian nuclear warheads catapulting towards the U.S. was a scary possibility. With names like Titan, Atlas and Minuteman, the U.S. Air Force began installing underground Intercontinental Ballistic Missile silo sites across the Great Plains in 1959. Named for Revolutionary War Minutemen, the Minuteman Missile could be instantly launched and deliver its payload to a target within 30 minutes. Into the early 1990’s, 1,000 Minuteman silos were controlled by 100 Launch Control Facilities dotted across Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Missouri. Western South Dakota, alone, housed 150 Minuteman II missiles.

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A majority of these sites are now deactivated, due to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed in 1993 by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin. At Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, visitors can learn about the Cold War arms race, as well as what it was like for Air Force crews to live and work around a missile. The Visitor Center is approximately 22 miles from Wall and 4 miles from Badlands National Park, off Exit 131 on I-90.

Out of the fifteen former Launch Control Facility (LCF) sites in South Dakota, LCF Delta-01 is the only site preserved. It was chosen because it retains much of it’s original technology, dating back to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. From the outside, the buildings and ground still looks the same as they did in the ’80s when I lived nearby at Badlands NP. This site always appeared to be a big ranch house from the highway. Up close, it was definitely a military facility. We always knew the Air Force was up to something out there, but didn’t know exactly what. Pop would always say, “there goes the Air Force boys” when they’d drive by in their generic blue suburbans.

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It’s pretty obvious why South Dakota was chosen to house Cold War missile silos. It’s sparsely populated, with considerable distance between communities. But for the 44th Missile Wing “missileers” stationed at LCF Delta-01, this meant a heck of a commute. They drove about 70 miles from Ellsworth Air Force Base, near Rapid City for their duty tours. Some remote LCF sites were over 100 miles away from base. Definitely not a fun drive in a blowing South Dakota blizzard! Fortunately, Wall Drug offered the crews a free donut and coffee every morning. Talk about unseen heroes on multiple levels!

In non-COVID times, visitors can tour the LCF Delta-01 location in small guided groups. Thanks to the ‘Rona our visitation plans were hindered. Fortunately, the Library of Congress has photos of this LCF at the end of its hey day. You can also view color ones here.

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So what exactly was going on out there at this seemingly innocent ranch house? A lot! After undergoing extensive technical and psychological training, two missileers served 24-hour long tours, 8 times a month, in the Launch Control Center (LCC) capsule–31 feet below ground in a 54-foot long, 29-foot diameter tube. Before 1977, duty crews also worked in 36 and 40-hour shifts. Yowsers! I can see why they underwent intense psych training.

At changeover each morning, oncoming crews descended into the LCC to begin the relief process. The crew inside the sealed capsule would shout “clear” to open the 8-ton blast door. After a short briefing on weather conditions, call signs, and the day’s war plans, crews would exchange three items to one another: a plastic encased card containing a daily top secret decipher code, a launch key for the control console and a .38-caliber revolver to be worn at all times. The off-going team exited. The blast door sealed again. Another 24-hour watch started.

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According to former Missileer Andy Knight,

“Ninety percent or ninety-five percent of the time, usually we’d just sit there. We would read magazines. Study for the professional military programs, or some people would work on their master’s degree. It was a great time, at that time. And at that time they didn’t allow any kind of t.v. sets or anything like that down there. It was just the crew. And, as I said before, there was one cot there and one crew member could go to sleep. And usually the person who had the graveyard shift–the midnight to six o’clock in the morning shift–usually that person would crawl into the cot right after dinner. Usually we’d have dinner right around five o’clock, so that person’d get in the cot and go to sleep from five, and then from five until about midnight. And then the deputy, at midnight then we’d swap off. And, you’d get into, it was like a hot bunk and you’d sleep until about six o’clock in the morning. That was generally what took our tour.”

While the duty team was below in the “no lone zone,” topside crews were busy as well. Flight security controllers and security alert teams inspected and monitored the LCF grounds and the off-site missile silos. Maintenance crews performed routine inspections, upgrades and repairs to the sites. The facility manager oversaw the LCF, acting as a “jack-of-all-trades” to ensure all operations ran smoothly. And in the kitchen, the missile rations cook heated up three square meals a day for the crews.

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Starting in 1955, the U.S. Air Force used a “foil packed meal system” to feed its members. The Delta-01 crews’ meals were prepped, frozen and flown in from Warren AFB–300 miles away in southeastern Wyoming. The cook simply heated and served them up. Choices included items like braised spareribs with sauerkraut, tuna pot pie, PB & J sandwiches, and doughnuts. From a 1979 survey, it’s pretty clear how the LCF crews felt about these foil pack meals:

• …foil pack foods are: unappealing in appearance, bland or tasteless (underseasoned), underspiced, tough and gristly (meat items), and mushy in texture.
• …consumers estimated they ate 50% of their authorized meals…1.7 meals per day consisting wholly or partly of foil packs;
• …more than half the consumers reported substituting food they brought with them for Launch Control Facility meals…
• …cooked breakfast items in foils was totally rejected because the crews preferred a cooked from scratch breakfast. (I agree too!)

While LCF Delta-01 crews were training, monitoring and avoiding the monotony, ten Minuteman II missiles waited in off-site silos, like Delta-09 below (colored photos). Standing 57-feet, 7-inches tall, the Minuteman II missile was stored in an unmanned 80-foot deep, 12-foot wide underground launch tube. Silos were required to be no closer than 3-1/2 miles away from one another. In the unforeseen event Minuteman II was needed, the two missileers at the LCC would insert and turn their keys in the launch control console. A signal through underground cables would trigger the 90-ton cover to slide back on its rails and the missile would be sent on its way. As a backup, flight crews on airborne EC135 Looking Glass planes could also launch missiles.

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On today’s National Coffee Day, I raise a cup of java to salute active-duty members and veterans in all of the United States military branches. At some point, every service member stands duty. Fresh donuts and hot coffee definitely help morale then! In thinking about the recipe to accompany this post, I tried tracking down the recipe for Wall Drug’s donuts. No-go. The original recipe came from a bakery in San Bernadino, California. Its ingredients have evolved from cinnamon to now including lemon and Sprite. In all honesty, trying to imitate the original Wall Drug donut might result in my tastebuds screaming mutiny.

Donut making can be daunting. But here are a few suggestions for a successful fry:

• Room-Temp Ingredients: Eggs and sour cream at room temperature blend more evenly in the batter.
• Chill Out: Chilling this sticky dough for a minimum of 1-2 hours makes rolling out and cutting easier. An overnight chill is perfectly acceptable too.
• Stay Neutral: Use a neutral frying oil, like canola or vegetable. Your finished product will taste like it’s supposed to be, not the oil you cooked it in.
• Goldilocks Temperature: Between 350 and 360 degrees F is just right. Some sites suggest 380 degrees F, but this is just too hot. You’ll end up with a crisp outside and uncooked center. Ick!
• Use a Thermometer: A thermometer (digital or traditional) helps ensures the oil is at the correct cooking temp.

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