In 1962, my father sells the milk route (no more work days starting at 2 a.m.) and looks for a business to get into with Bill, from Shelly and Bill’s candy store in Brooklyn. They decide on donuts, and scout locations in Brooklyn and Queens, settling on a storefront in Bensonhurst. After much discussion, they name the place “P & S Donuts”—the first initials of the wives, Pearl and Shelly. My mother comes home on opening day, and says with her face aglow: “We sold two hundred dozen.”
All goes well for a couple of years, until a donut chain opens a branch a block away and undercuts their prices. “They’re gonna drive us out,” my father explains, “then raise their prices.”
Not enough money is coming in, and my father wants to expand into a luncheonette, but Bill won’t allow it—he doesn’t have children to support and likes the slow pace. Finally, Bill agrees to a hot dog grill, and I go in occasionally on the weekend to turn the hot dogs. I love watching the hot dogs and my father schmoozing with customers.
The donut business continues to be siphoned off, and my father suggests opening on Sundays, when the chain store is closed. Bill says fine as long as he doesn’t have to be there. To maximize profit, my father will make the donuts on the extra day. He apprentices with the cook.
After just a few nights training, the cook declares my father ready to solo. He gives my father a congratulatory handshake and one of his aprons. He never returns.
Throughout my high school years, my father bakes seven nights a week, and works the first shift on the counter. He brings home donuts each day, and they are wonderful—the cook taught him well, the old-fashioned way, with yeast.
My father is back to leaving the house at 2 a.m., with less income than the milk route. He never complains about the work—at least not in front of the kids—but we hear plenty about Bill.
Still, they can’t keep pace with the corporate competition. During my first semester in college, my father and Bill walk away from the store with nothing.
There will be no donuts in the house for many years, which is fine with me because none come close to my father’s.
Comments