A crowd gathers at the stroke of 11, an hour before midnight, andthey are waiting single file for Little Rita.
It's an eclectic bunch, comprising people not normally assembledin the same place - an elderly woman with bouffant hair, a policeofficer, a family of five, a nurse, a muscle-bound man wearing moretattoos than shirt.
During the day, Gibson's Donuts, 760 Mt. Moriah, is like mostothers, save perhaps for the sponge-painted orange interior and thewinged pig hanging nonchalantly from the ceiling. But long aftereven the bars have closed, the donuts keep on coming and so do thepeople.
Little Rita is the night manager, and the waist-high donut caserises nearly to her shoulders. At 11, the donuts go on sale, 6 for$1.40.
For more than 10 years, she has watched Memphians while away thepredawn hours. Sometimes they stumble in after the bars have closed,sometimes they grab a few to go, sometimes they bring a computer andwork or thumb through the newspaper.
"It's a safe place where you don't have to worry about someonestealing your car, or saying something rude to your girlfriend,"says current owner Don DeWeese. "And it's comfortable. When my wiferemodeled the bathrooms, she said 'I want people to feel ascomfortable in that bathroom as they do in their own bathroom athome.'"
Steve Hubbard, a self-professed starving student without Internethappens to be hunched over a computer at 11:51, furiously trying tofinish a paper by midnight.
Across the way, a group of 20-year-olds comforts a recentlydumped friend over glazed old-fashioneds, not yet old enough toengage in more robust post-break-up traditions . Marvin Oliver liftsup his sleeve, boasting that he came straight from the tattoo parlorto get a donut, the ink on his bicep still wet .
Even Gibson himself has spent a few nights there.
The shop's original owner, Lowell Gibson, now retired at 82, saidhe used to sleep on the 100-pound bags of sugar during 24-hourshifts in the shop's early years.
In fact, Gibson worked so hard, and the business became sosuccessful, that he was approached by countless buyers, the mostnotable of whom came into the shop one morning with a briefcase fullof cash, gold and silver. He briefly entertained the offer, but whenthe man let it slip that he planned to replace all of the employees,Gibson turned him down flat.
"I couldn't let that happen. My employees were loyal. They werelike family," Gibson says.
Little Rita feels the same way about her customers, many of whomshe greets by name. During the night, she'll see at least a half-dozen cops and not one of them waits in line or places an order.They're already boxed, bagged and waiting.
Gibson's is the largest independent donut store east of theMississippi, according to Delta Sky Magazine, but as 3 a.mapproaches recently, an old episode of "Cheers" plays to a thinningcrowd.
A freight train conductor stops in at 3:30 before going to work,and a couple of grocers swing by after their shift, but soon it'sjust the white-haired man everyone calls Lindsey sitting in a cornerbooth.
He spends more time at Gibson's in the middle of the night thananyone, Little Rita says, "and he helps me. He sometimes asks if hecan sweep the floor, or will throw away trash on the tables."
Lindsey sips from a bottle of apple juice and leans over ahardbound collection of Ronald Reagan's personal correspondence. Hedoes a few crossword puzzles and keeps mostly to himself, though heis happy to tell stories to a willing set of ears about his youngerdays traveling the country.
A few hours before dawn Lindsey sets up a chess board, arrangesthe pieces and then goes back to his book. Just in case anyone elsein Memphis is hankering for a game of chess in the middle of night,Lindsey will be ready and waiting while he snacks on a chocolatecruller.
- Samantha Bryson: (901) 529-2339
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"It's a safe place where you don't have to worry about someonestealing your car, or saying something rude to your girlfriend."
Don DeWeese, owner of Gibson's Donuts
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