Dollars to Donuts

Other than the people (of course) probably the thing I miss the most about New England is the donut shops. They were everywhere. In the town I lived in then there were approximately 10 donut shops. New Orleans is a great food city but it aint a donut city. I have found a couple of okay donut shops but how I long for an old fashioned.

I woke up this morning, got the girls situated (#1 had a friend over), grabbed my sermon, and went off to the coffee shop. I sat down to go over my sermon only discover I had brought Justice Souter's Harvard Commencement Speech rather than my sermon. So I took a sip of french roast and drove over my new favorite donut shop.

This is the oddest donut shop I have ever been to. The donuts are okay, the kids are not crazy about them but the place is so bizarre I keep going back; for the record the VOR will no longer go there, but that is another story. How is it bizarre? The window faces the rising sun! It is a donut shop - a morning food! So every time you go in the woman behind the counter is always squinting and seems grumpy (I have yet to fully ascertain if she is a full-time grumpy or just grumpy due to the headache from squinting for hours). Next the place is barely 15ft sq but there is always two or three people working. (Last time the woman behind the counter shouted my order of two chocolate milks to the man at the cooler, which is right behind her). Next, they placed a table right in the middle of the room so to place an order you have to squeeze by the table and dont even think about bending over to look at the donut selection - there is no room to. Finally, "they" the workers and now the owner(s) are not ambivalent about their lack of sales. The other day I was told how the Lord sent them a table full of women for breakfast who "made their morning." They people are also completely disinterested in your donut order, they do not want you to mix and match, even though they have a selection of 10 different varieties. Oh yeah, and don't even think of just walking in and ordering a dozen or god forbid two dozen donuts; trust me you will hear about it, thus the VOR's reason for not going back.

Today I noticed a two paragraph narrative/statement explaining how the establishment would no longer be selling breakfast due to the rising cost of food and the low breakfast sales. The last sentence was in red, bold and in all caps informing the reader that being a donut shop they would continue to sale HOT GLAZED DONUTS. Whether or not they will they continue to sell cream filled, chocolate topped, powered sugar donuts is anybodies guess. Whereas the days of the hot breakfast bar are waning I stared at the selection of eggs, grits, biscuits, and sausage patties. The gentleman behind the hot breakfast area asked if he could help me. Innocently I asked for a sausage biscuit. Sure thing he said and then asked, 'do you want butter on your biscuit too?' What kind of question is that? of course i want butter on it. The gentleman informed the woman behind the donut counter (roughly a distance of two and one half feet) what I ordered. My order set off a chain of events that I have yet to decipher. It began with hushed tones, then a slight raise of voices about 60lbs of sausage, a trip to the freezer whence a box of patties was produced, followed by laughter, and the announcement to me that they would no longer be selling breakfast.