June 19, 2018--Donuts On My Chest All Day

Whenever I write about donuts I always get a big response. One email after my posting last week about the Nobleboro Village Store just said, "Yum."

One can't have enough good sources for donuts and so I am pleased to receive suggestions for other places to try. Like, from one friend, the Willow Bake Shoppe in Rockport, Maine, though I am skeptical about the authenticity of any place that spells shop shoppe.

From all these responses it must be true, as I claimed, that donuts are one of the five essential food groups. Pizza being another.

And thus I was happy to receive a note from a dear friend who is a long-time resident of this area, the Pemaquid Peninsular. Her family owned much of the land near the lighthouse and Jill Davenport comes from a long line of storytellers. She also has a wonderful sense of local history. Including about donuts.

Her Uncle Basil was a scholar, anthologist, and weaver of gothic tales. He also was a sort of pied piper to the local children of Pemiquid who loved to huddle with him as he regailed them with shimmering stories. Acting all the parts.

Her mother, Gwen Davenport was a very widely-read novelist. She was the author in 1947 of Belvedere, which formed the basis for a series of movies, including, my favorite, Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell, and a successful TV series.

And her father, John Davenport, in 1949, in The New Yorker, published an amusing piece, "Slurvian Self-Taught.

He is an excerpt--

Listening to a Hollywood radio commentator the writer heard her say that she had just returned from a Yerpeen trip and had had a lovely time nittly. He readily understood that she had just returned from a European trip and had had a lovely time in Italy. Speaking in this manner is Slurvian. 

The writer has made a study of it and includes a number of examples, including words that when spelled as pronounced make good English words other than the ones they are supposed to be such as bean for human being, form for forum, and lore for lower. 

Then, from Jill Davenport, here is what she wrote about the local donut situation--

The great and worthy donut finds life in small New England kitchens and only faintly resembles its more modern counterpart, the puffy and overly sweet confection found in all its manifestations at Dunkin Donuts.

When I was a small child, my grandmother would sometimes take me to what is now the Seagull Shop, adjacent to the Pemiquid lighthouse, for a breakfast treat. We would sit at the counter and we had donuts. These were small, brown, modest and they ran rings around any donut I've tasted since. 

The old donut was unglazed, looked overdone and its appearance hardly generated the swiftly indrawn breath of anxious expectation which a more spectacular donut might have done. But sink your teeth into its unprepossessing surface and bear witness to a rather juicy crunch imparted by its trip through the hot grease, and to a cinnamonish flavor unequaled in today's world of fat donuts so devoid of character.  

I miss those sturdy New England donuts. 

My father once managed to charm his way onto a lobster boat for a day's fishing. He got up early and had a substantial breakfast before setting out on his adventure. He and the lobsterman spent the morning hauling pots and by noon my father was starving, but the lobsterman seemed unfazed by his long separation from nourishment. 

So my father asked him what he had eaten for breakfast. The lobsterman said, "Two donuts. They sit on my chest and nourish me all day."