One day when schmaltzy jazz pianist Vince Guiraldi was feeling particularly down on his luck, he decided to sink all his money into frying the largest donut ever. At least, he figured, it would get him into the Guinness Book of World Records. So he called a couple of people in the business, who laughed at the idea but were willing to give him some tentative estimates as to how much it would cost to construct and supply a deep-fryer big enough to produce a donut of the size required. The current record holder was a whopper at 30 yards in diameter. There being no law of physics preventing a donut from attaining such a size or larger, it was merely a matter of outbidding the previous record-holder. Looking into discount wholesale warehouses on the West coast, Vince made some deals, albeit deals which required his trio (the other two members of which had begun to eye Vince nervously at rehearsals) to play for free at some pretty chintzy weddings between members of extended families in the industrial food service equipment business. A blow to his stature as a jazz pianist, maybe: but a stepping stone towards a record few, and hopefully none, would be crazy enough to attempt to break.

He was going to have to sell his Steinway. It was purchased by Igor Stravinsky's second cousin Vinny Stravinsky who had moved to Palo Alto in 1943 and attempted to mooch off his famous relative; but to no avail, because Vinny was a composer who had failed miserably with such pieces as "Symphony in 13 Movements in honor of Mussolini" and "Concerto for Hawaiian Guitar in C flat minor". Yet somehow he had managed to scrape together enough earnings from gigs accompanying stand-up comedians at Bar Mitzvahs and composing music for local radio commercials that he could finally afford a grand piano. The cool ten grand Vince got from this deal was enough to put a down payment on the cooking oil. He didn't have time to practice anymore anyway.

Through a combination of suave negotiation and fortuitous connections (his Aunt knew a member of the National Association of Fast Food Connoisseurs who recommended him for a grant) Vince was beginning to be able to afford the construction of the 100-yard-in-diameter deep fryer. Just renting the land was costing him a pretty penny, and arranging the making of the dough, which required that the ten thousand tons of ingredients wouldn't spoil, was a task that required that Vince hire at least one full-time accountant for three months. Guiraldi was on the phone constantly. The fryer was to be heated by calrod units from electrical stoves, which Vince had purchased about ten thousand of from a huge junkyard in Orlando at an amazingly low cost. The enormous vat was then fitted with a network of three thousand thermometers which were connected by thirty miles of cables to a vast control panel which was to be monitored by a small army of consultants from the local electrical utility. And finally, twenty helicopters were to lower the dough into the giant cooker once the oil reached the appropriate temperature, and hover with tanks full of glaze which they would apply as soon as the donut was cooked. This whole operation was scheduled to occur on the fourth of July and was to be attended by a huge crowd, who would pay $3.50 apiece for the honor of attending this historic event and, of course, sampling some of the football-field-sized pastry once it was cooked. Around June he began to have horrible nightmares. The cooker would develop cracks and hot oil would spill onto the crowd. A helicopter would explode sending tons of raw dough showering onto the onlookers. Short-circuits would plague the thermometer system. Mostly, he worried that he would overcook the damn thing. Problem was, he couldn't sleep. He became suspicious that all of the food-service professionals he had begun to develop close working relationships with were divulging his secrets to more moneyed rivals in places like Switzerland and Australia; experts who could easily and with little personal investment produce a donut just a couple of yards wider than his, edging him out of the record-holding spot. His suspicion rose to paranoid proportions and he began accusing his co-workers of collaborating with rivals he could only imagine. At one point this behavior of his came awfully close to losing him his contract with the helicopter pilot's union, who he said had been photographing his installation during "practice maneuvers" and selling the photographs to rivals in Japan.

But in spite of all his suspicions the thing went off without a hitch. The weather was sunny and only slightly breezy on July 4th as the enormous torus of dough, held together by seventy thousand yards of cheesecloth, was lowered into the cooker. And the donut came out perfect. The thirty thousand spectators barely made a dent in it, even though their $3.50 admission paid for an all-you-can-eat-and-take-home privilege. And all this is why we primarily know Vince Guiraldi as the creator of the 100-yard wide donut and certainly not as the ivory-tickler on the Peanuts Xmas album or a tiny angry sea urchin named after Disney's adorable animated fawn.