By Jim Hagarty
1992
Taped to my computer keyboard here at the office is a small, inspiring cartoon of TV’s lovable, stumbly-bum dad, Homer Simpson, holding a nice, big, round, chocolate-covered doughnut and declaring that, “Doughnuts are a man’s best friend.”
Some writers might opt for a little more lofty saying to tape to their computers – something from Shakespeare, perhaps. Or a few lines from a Robbie Burns poem.
But these days, for me, Homer Simpson and his love of doughnuts suit my mood perfectly. He’s an ordinary guy with ordinary tastes. Maybe he can’t afford a villa on the Riviera for the winter but he can afford a doughnut. The simple pleasures, after all, are still the best.
And yet, while Homer Simpson’s idea of man’s best friend and mine are similar, I am a little more expansive in my assessment of what constitutes the closest pal a human can have. To me, doughnut SHOPS are a man’s best friend.
Next to my own home which, thankfully, is the one place on earth I usually want to be most of all, doughnut shops have for years been my favourite places to hang out. It is not that I am addicted so much to coffee and doughnuts – at home, I rarely have either. It’s just that doughnut shops take care of so many needs, other than hunger and thirst, and they do it without emptying my bank account.
A favourite topic of conversation these days for people who live, work and do business in the city of Stratford is how on earth all the doughnut shops now located here will ever survive. At last count, there are nine operating and soon to be operating in the city, a veritable explosion in a place which, until just a few years ago, made do with only two. And it’s possible one or two more may locate here in the near future. As well, 24-hour coffee shops are springing up in the small towns in the area and even right out in the country.
I listen to and take part in these discussions – after all, this is one of my favourite subjects – and I’ve noticed that many people use the wrong approach to solving the question of whether or not these businesses can survive the competition. Many of them ask, “How much coffee can a city of 27,000 people drink?”, before they conclude we can’t drink all the coffee that nine coffee shops can brew. While they could well be right and only time will tell, I think the current sprouting of doughnut shops in this area doesn’t have as much to do with our need for coffee as our need for companionship and comfort.
To me, today’s doughnut shops are yesterday’s pubs. Where hotels once dotted the city and country landscapes – the town of Mitchell, for example, had as many as nine hotels at one time and now has only one – their fortunes have been in decline for years as people have turned away from drinking and driving and even from drinking itself.
But people still need places where they can gather – like they do in pubs – to shoot the breeze, wait for their car to be repaired, console a friend, take a first date after a movie, sort out their troubles, escape from their wife/husband/kids, stop for a stretch part way through a trip, wait out a recession or a snowstorm and read the Sunday paper when it’s raining outside.
Unless the people of Stratford suddenly don’t need to do these things any more, I think most of our doughnut shops will hang in there for a while. Besides, there’s more than a bit of Homer Simpson in most of us. We have to take our comfort where we can find it.
And as for the coffee shops being man’s best friend, I think sometimes they’re even better than a best friend. How many best friends would be glad to see you show up at 4 o’clock in the morning?
