Donuts and Cars

Donuts and Cars by Martin Franks 

Whether you lean towards a corporate outfit, like Dunkin’ or Winchells, or one of the millions of mom  & pop shops, there will always be something to satisfy, ready and waiting. Flour and sugar, and then other stuff with lots of sugar in it, on top. There are over a million combinations. I’ve never met a donut I wouldn’t devour with joy, even a maple bun which, like the platypus, is an anomaly. 

My love of the doughy delight, like most things, started early. Every Saturday me and my crew, Burt Fontian, Larry Durbin, Lamont Washington, and Steve Albert, would ride our bikes two and a half miles to the greatest donut shop in the world: Jolly Donuts. We had to cross a major street, which we weren’t allowed to, then go through a neighborhood that we were absolutely, positively, never ever supposed to go through. Pretty adventurous for seven year-olds. You couldn’t blame the parents for not allowing us to cross Bradly Street, there were no crosswalks or stop lights and kids were always getting run over. We all knew someone or knew someone that knew someone that got smacked by a speeding car or bus and went to an early grave. And it wasn’t just kids, a whole lot of grownups got whacked on Bradly too. 

Jolly Donuts was owned by the Mannos family. Mrs. Mannos was the nicest, sweetest lady there ever was. Mr. Mannos was the biggest prick we ever came across. We understood when teachers acted like dicks, we figured that’s part of their job, but Mr. Mannos didn’t have to make us line up or pay attention or learn anything. His job was to take our money and give us donuts. He was surrounded by delicious donuts, you’d think he’d be as nice as his wife was.Jolly Donuts? My introduction to donuts as well as irony.

The scary neighborhood we had to go through saved us about ten minutes. Ten minutes might not seem like a lot, but to a seven year old on a mission to get donuts, it was a lifetime.Most trips through the three blocks, known as “death row”, were not a problem. We would ride really fast and just avoid the junkies and crazy people that would pop out and yell at you. It was kind of like going through one of those fake haunted houses they do for Halloween. Normally we made it through just fine, but every third Saturday or so we’d get caught by this twelve year-old gang kid. We didn’t know his name, but we called him “Ear”, because his left ear was all chewed up as if a dog got to it when he was a baby and no one bothered to fix it. He probably couldn’t hear too good, but we weren’t asking. He’d holler at us to stop and us being dumb and seven,would, and then he would take our money. We caught on quick to have some money in our pockets for him and then some other money hidden for our donuts, but still it sucked having him take any of our money. The confrontation always ended with him punching one of us in the arm for good measure.

It was the fall, right before we were going into first grade. There was a chill in the air and an anticipation of what real school would be like. We knew it would be the last donut run of the summer. We mounted our bikes and headed to Jolly’s. We got a late start and all prayed they wouldn’t be sold out of glazed, our number one favorite. We crossed Bradly with only the slightest brush with death. A 1968 Mustang fastback was racing a 1968 Camaro SS, a classic match-up. 

Neither car saw us kids and the Camaro ever so slightly clipped Larry. His rear tire got a little bent, but the donut gods were good that day and we made it across. Breathing easy, we headed into “death row”. We were all still excited about Larry not getting hit, because it would have seriously put a cramp in the donut run, when we heard, “Freeze turd balls.” Well, us being dumb and seven, we did as told.  

We figured we’d just get the whole thing over with as fast as possible and be on our way,but as we were digging out the money to give him and deciding which one of us would get punched, his whole gang rolled up on us. There were about ten of them in total and they looked to be at least in high school, if they went to school at all. Of course all of them wanted to know what was going on. Ear said he was just stopping some assholes that were on their turf, that he was protecting the territory like he should. I don’t now what possessed Larry to speak up—maybe it was his brush with death moments ago—but he blurts out that the little gang member was also taking our donut money. The leader laughed and said that the little gang guy better share the money with the whole gang like he was supposed to. Larry spoke right up again and said that he hoped that Ear gave them some of that fifty dollars he took from us last week. First off, everyone started laughing that Larry called him “Ear”. It’s like it hadn’t occurred to them. Ear turned really red and started saying it was the first time he’d ever seen us. Larry kept on with his story, saying that he knew for sure because it was his birthday money from his dying grandma. Well, the donut gods must have really loved Larry because the gang guys believed him and started kicking the shit out of Ear for keeping back all the money. In the confusion we just peddled away with all our donut money safe and no one getting punched.

 

Jolly donuts did indeed have some glazed left when the five of us pulled up. Mr. Mannos yelled at us, Mrs. Mannos smiled. We started first grade on Monday and all was right with the world. Although Burt did get run over and died on Bradly, just a few years later.