What busy lives we lead. We work until our backs throb and our feet swell with pain. When the working day ends, we sleep and rise again on the next day to continue the struggle for sustenance. Some of us forget that we have a life to sustain. In doing so, we forget the very reason that we work, and our work loses all of its meaning. We lose sight of dreams, aspirations, and ambitions, and if one is lucky to awaken from this freakish nightmare, he may find himself clinging to some object, some experience, or some daily ritual to remind him that he is alive. The donut reminds me that I am alive.

My love for the donut began as a child’s love. Some of my earliest recollections are of the trips that my father and I would make to Dunkin Donuts in Topeka, where we would buy a box of “Munchkins” for the family. The images of small men hard at work baking, frying, and frosting donuts that donned the box would captivate my imagination during the entire ride home. I found these illustrations far more interesting and pleasing than the donuts themselves.

Stephen King was a favorite author of mine during my formative years. One day I was reading some of his work (either It or Firestarter), and happened upon the line, “Tell him he can take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.” This conjured up some of the most powerful images that my young fancy had ever entertained, and the line struck me as one of the most profound that I had ever read. This very line later inspired me to write a short narrative entitled “The Rolling Donut,” which I submitted to Topeka High School’s annual literary magazine. In this story, I baked myself into an enormous donut and rolled through the Halls of Troy.

My love for the donut continued to grow throughout adolescence and took its present form when I was a young man of about twenty years. At the age of seventeen, I started to work in the bakery of a local grocery store. My tenure there saw me assuming responsibility in gradations until I could practically run the place on my own. I would work twenty hours a week when school was in session and forty during the various breaks. I continued in this fashion until I came to Lawrence to attend that university of great renown and had to take my leave of them. Even then, however, the kind folks at this bakery would welcome me back during the several intermissions that occurred during the academic year, as these breaks usually coincided with the busy holiday seasons. At some stage during the summer that followed my sophomore year, the manager asked me if I could work overnight frying the donuts. I seized this opportunity with much enthusiasm.

That summer changed me in remarkable ways. Things that I had read years before suddenly had new meanings. The fragmented mess that comprised everything that I knew was unified. I had several revelations that I will not trouble the reader with here. Above all, however, I gave life to flour, sugar, eggs, yeast, and water in a form that in its turn would give life to the people of Topeka. The experience inspired me to write another short story, in which I am visited by James Brown, Satan, a Mexican, and eventually eaten by a lion during the course of one night of frying donuts. I do not know of any surviving copies of this piece. Whether all of this was the result of isolation, sleep deprivation, or a long period of abstinence from that intoxicating liquor that for so long hindered me on the path to truth, I know not. I would like to think that the donuts acted as a sort of burning bush that laid bare my mind to some benevolent force with the power to impart peace and wisdom in their superlative forms.

I can remember that one Sunday when I was a child, my mother took my sister and I to Dunkin Donuts between catechism and mass. It was a busy time of the morning, and the woman ahead of us in line apologized to the man behind the counter for taking so long in deciding which donuts she wished to purchase. With a smile indicative of the purest bliss and contentment with his life and the world, the man behind the counter replied in his strange accent, “Take as long as you want; we are open twenty-four hours a day!” What better proof could exist of the remarkable power over us that the donut possesses?

In Lawrence, there are several places where one can buy donuts. I will describe these places here.

Dunkin Donuts

Dunkin Donuts is located at 521 West 23rd street. Other places that I know of where one can buy Dunkin Donuts are The Market, located on Level 3 of the Kansas Union, Wescoe Terrace behind Wescoe Hall on campus, and the JRP Hawk Shop, located in JRP Hall on campus. Donuts cost 59 cents apiece at the 23rd street store, 80 cents at The Market, and 75 cents at Wescoe Terrace. I forget how much they cost at the JRP Hawk Shop, but I can recollect being there once of an afternoon and the price had been reduced to 35 cents. I found the selection quite limited at this time of day, however. My favorite varieties of these donuts are the Boston Creme and Strawberry Frosted. Strawberry frosted donuts are easy to find on campus, but the Boston Creme is very rare, and I often have to buy a chocolate sprinkled donut in its stead. Dunkin Donuts consistently provides a quality donut with a porous, almost bread-like texture, and the frosting rarely makes much of a mess. If you attend the drive thru at the 23rd street outlet of a morning, you will be served by a man who is in all likelihood the proprietor. I have found him very friendly, and our dealings with each other have taken on a remarkable degree of familiarity, as we will often briefly discuss the weather and the type of day that it will be: busy, slow, etc.

Kwik Shop

At the Kwik Shop located at 1714 West 23rd street, one will find Krispy Kreme Donuts. I heard of these donuts in passing once before my initial Krispy Kreme experience, and wondered where I could find them for quite some time. Investigation invariably follows curiosity, and whitepages.com indicated that there are Krispy Kreme stores in Merriam, Shawnee, Overland Park, and Wichita, but none in Lawrence. I gave up the chase, thinking that these makers of donuts must have commenced trading during my recent time abroad and had not yet broken into the Lawrence market. My recent discovery of their presence at the 23rd street Kwik Shop excited me quite a bit. I can only assume that these donuts are imported from either Shawnee or Overland Park, which makes their freshness all the more surprising. I pondered this for a while, and put it down to the fact that these donuts are glazed before they are frosted! The thin layer of glaze upon these donuts at once provides protection from the damaging elements and retains grease, making for a moist, uncommonly refreshing donut experience every time. It also pleases me that this coupling of glaze and frosting does not cause the donut to be over-sweet. These donuts cost 69 cents. I recommend the creme filled variety.

Dillons

Dillons’ donuts are my least favorite of those to be found in Lawrence. I recall one instance in which I purchased there three glazed donuts that were dry, bland, and generally vile. Even so, I often return to Dillons as a matter of convenience when the hankering for something sweet overcomes me, and have found the quality of their donuts at best tolerable ever since. I would describe Dillons’ donuts as unpleasant for the eye to behold and possessing a stickiness of the glaze or frosting that makes a mess of the bakery tissue, the inside of the bag, the sleeve of one’s shirt, the car, in short, everything within a 3 foot radius. Although they are crunchy, they are not completely hostile to the palate. The best feature of these donuts is the price; three glazed or frosted donuts cost $1.19. I would advise anyone endeavoring to purchase these donuts to be wary of anything with creme, as this particular variety is sometimes filled with “sour cream” as opposed to the “Boston” type. Patrons of a morning at the Massachusetts street store will be met at the checkout counter by a sweet, amiable, and kind older lady, for whom courtesy and all of the best practices of customer service seem second nature.

Joe’s Bakery

Some among you, I am sure, hold the opinion that it is utterly reprehensible to patronize businesses that are not locally owned. In addition to this, any review of the divers places where donuts are to be found in Lawrence would be incomplete if some mention were not made of Joe’s Bakery. Joe’s Bakery is located at 616 West 9th street. It took me about 10 minutes to drive there, and I was able to buy three donuts for $1.80. The young gentleman behind the counter was quite direct and answered all of my questions very matter-of-factly. He did not mind my paying for the donuts entirely with dimes. These donuts are soft and chewy, which is against my preference, but I understand the appeal of donuts of this type. I partook of one glazed, one chocolate covered yeast donut, and one chocolate long john. Of the three, I enjoyed the glazed donut the most, as it did not seem so soft or chewy as the others. Joe’s Bakery has been described as a Lawrence “tradition,” which as far as I can surmise, means that it’s been around for a while.

Such are my thoughts on donuts.