DATE: Friday, July 4, 1997                  TAG: 9707040383

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: WINSTON-SALEM                     LENGTH:   58 lines

KRISPY KREME MAKES IT TO THE SMITHSONIAN

The Ring King Jr. soon will be part of American history.

The tool, once used by doughnut makers at Krispy Kreme, was one of many items picked up Wednesday by representatives of the Smithsonian Insitution.

They plan to keep the items at the National Museum of American History. There, they will be stored in the museum's archives and occasionally displayed as part of the nation's most prestigious collection of items from the past.

John Fleckner, chief archivist for the National Museum of American History, is collecting items from businesses that came of age during the 20th century. Krispy Kreme is an ideal example from the South, he said.

The Winston-Salem company has flourished since it began 50 years ago, and has about 130 stores in 17 states. But it's more than that, Fleckner said.

``With something like Krispy Kreme, there's a hook - a nostalgia hook, a familiarity hook,'' he said.

There was a time when Krispy Kreme workers - and doughnut-makers around the world, for that matter - had to drop dough rings into a kettle of boiling oil and fish them out with a pole. Then came the Ring King, a metal appliance about the size of a washing machine. It dips and fries the doughnuts on one side, flips them over to cook the other side and then slides them to safety, where they cool off.

The Ring King has since passed its prime. Only one of the chain's store, in Akron, Ohio, uses it; and that's for nostalgia.

Fleckner said the Ring King will fit in perfectly at the Smithsonian.

``We want stories about inventing, stories about improving, stories about innovating,'' he said. ``And that's what this is. And it's all about doughnuts.''

Last month Fleckner gathered items for the museum from Eskimo Pie Corp. in Richmond, Va. He has also collected pieces from Stags Leap winery in Napa Valley, Calif.

``At the Smithsonian, these become part of the historical collection, used by all of the country to learn,'' Fleckner said.

The notion of serving a greater good makes it more bearable for Jack McAleer, Krispy Kreme's executive vice president, to part with the pastry paraphernalia.

``We did a lot of digging to come up with this stuff,'' he said.

Some of the items are small. There's a wooden rolling pin that some of the earliest Krispy Kreme employees used to flatten dough more than 50 years ago. Also leaving Winston-Salem will be an aluminum rolling pin and several tools used to cut the dough.

As long-time Krispy Kreme employee Garcie McCall stood in the large Krispy Kreme warehouse near tens of thousands of bags of doughnut mix, he looked at the Ring King and then at the newer doughnut-making models that workers now use. ``That's still a good machine,'' he said with a nod to the Ring King. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Jack McAleer, a Krispy Kreme executive, demonstrates an old ``Ring

King'' for John Fleckner, of the National Museum of American

History.

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