Featured Story

week of November 2, 2019

A Feast of Doughnuts

by Jonathan Butler

We wanted to do something crazy on Saturday night. We were a living room full of people tired of Scrabble and Carroms and television.

About 10 of us, under 30 and over—brothers, a sister, a friend, in-laws, and parents—thought of singing Christmas carols door- to-door in June, or pasting a sign on the city water tower, or going to a restaurant to order only Alka-Seltzer.

Then we struck on the idea. We would infiltrate a little café in twos and threes, at odd times, until we were all seated around the counter. We would be arranged as a couple chatting, an old man sitting alone, or three friends in a row. Then our plan was to interrelate—to “get acquainted” as though we were total strangers getting to know one another. We would then see how others in the place reacted.

We chose a Dunkin’ Donuts café with a truck-stop atmosphere of glaring neon and bustling service and shirt- sleeved customers, without promise socially. Socially, rather antiseptic. Gradually, over 10 to 20 minutes, we arrived in three cars and filtered into the little snack shop.

We made up about a third of the clientele sitting at the horseshoe-shaped linoleum counter. We waited for our orders, talking quietly, staring at price lists or servers. I spoke softly to the “stranger” sitting next to me (an in-law).

Then one of us ventured a question to the cashier. “Say, do you use bleached flour in these doughnuts?”

The woman looked startled by the break in the usual silence. The manager behind her flinched (we think) and came forward.

“Yes,” he said warily, and offered an explanation.

Another of ours from across the counter called out, feigning confusion, “What did you say is in your doughnut? Is there something wrong with it?”

“No,” someone else replied, “they were talking about the kind of flour in these doughnuts. You know, you can’t worry too much about health these days.”

The café was stirring, smiling, tittering with laughter. Two platinum blondes tensed up and tried to ignore the lack of sophistication.

“Of course, no food is really safe these days,” said one of us. “Meat is diseased and vegetables are polluted.”

“Come on! Things aren’t that bad.” The manager had relaxed with amusement.

An old woman far down the counter was heard saying, “They must be a college crowd. Do you get such a friendly bunch all the time?“

“No,” said the manager, “and it beats calling the police.”

Humorously, a boy suggested that we meet here again next Saturday night. We’d be the board of directors for a new health food restaurant.

“With lots of prune juice,” someone said.

“And lots of restrooms,” countered another.

Others were joining in. The conversation ranged from food to politics to music (there was a juke box) to how strangers never talk in strange places like a café.

We actually reflected on it then, and laughed about how this improbable conglomerate of people formed some kind of fellowship.

“What do you think about their building a new sports stadium?” said a young latecomer, and his father nudged him to keep quiet.

“No!” he said, “I want to know. I may never get another chance at a group like this.”

Comments came from here and there, some pro and some con and some only funny. Even the reluctant blondes, whom we never prodded, finally came in, timidly and then less timidly.

We were all only too ready to listen, to laugh, to respond, as the social crescendo continued to build until no one, absolutely no one, was left out. Over Dunkin’ Donuts and hot drinks we witnessed some sort of common spirit surfacing. The snack had become a feast.

In time, we began to leave as we had come in, at intervals. It would have been criminal, and perhaps sacrilegious, to reveal the “practical joke” that undergirded the evening. By this time, it was more important than a joke.

“I’m tired and I ought to go home,” mused one young woman, her chin on her hands. “But I don’t want to. It’s too good here.”

We arrived home, refilling our living room, dazed by the experience. How thin the walls that divide us from one another at ball parks and discount stores and restaurants! How paper thin.

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