sunday will never be the same

My dad liked things a certain way.

Just add sugar

He liked dinner as soon as he came home from work. (It had better be some kind of meat.) He liked a cigarette as soon as he got out of bed in the morning — even before be brushed his teeth or changed out of his pajamas. He liked to watch certain TV shows on certain nights. The FBI was a Sunday night staple. All in the Family (a show that my father viewed as a documentary) and Kojak were loyally tracked down and viewed on the various nights and timeslots in which they were broadcast throughout the lengths of their respective runs. In the morning, my dad liked a bowl of Kellogg's Corn Flakes with the sugar equivalent of six Hershey bars sprinkled liberally on top before the milk was added. (Why didn't he just eat Frosted Flakes? Two reasons. 1. My mom ate Frosted Flakes, therefore — in the mindset of Harold Pincus — it was a woman's cereal. 2. Those pre-sweetened flakes didn't have nearly enough sugar for his liking.) 

My dad was, by no means, an example of physical fitness. As far back as I can remember, his physique was that of someone smuggling a wok under his shirt. He got little to no exercise and smoked like a chimney. Despite this, before bed each and every evening, my dad would sit down at our kitchen table with a giant glass of chocolate milk and a Tastykake Chocolate Junior (two layers of golden cake cemented together with a rich helping of chocolate frosting and blanketed on top with more of the same) from a renowned local commercial bakery and — until recently — only available in the greater Philadelphia area. And he capped this pre-bedtime snack off with a couple more cigarettes to end his day.

Sunday mornings were something special, though. On Sunday mornings, instead of breakfast cereal poured from a box, my mom would cook breakfast. She'd fire up the stove and prepare scrambled eggs or pancakes or — if she was feeling particularly ambitious — French toast. But before my mom would pull a frying pan out of a cabinet, my dad would have to run his little Sunday morning ritual errand. He had to get donuts.

You know. Donuts.

? ? ? ? ?

See that picture at the very top of this blog post? Those — as far as I knew — were "donuts." If you went to the store to get eggs, you came home with a dozen little white things in a molded cardboard container formed to protect their fragile shells. Those were eggs. They could not be mistaken for anything else and they fit into  no other category. If you were tasked to go out and return with a baseball, you better come back bearing a nine-inch round, leather-clad sphere reinforced with 108 red stitches. Anything else would not be a baseball and you would have failed your mission. For young Josh Pincus, "donuts" were a specific thing. They were round, airy cake-like pockets stuffed with an overflowing abundance of viscous sugary jelly (Maybe grape, maybe raspberry. There was no real discernable fruit flavor.) and covered in a dense coating of clumpy powdered sugar, opaque enough to obscure any hint of yellow-gold pastry beneath. The jelly would seep out of a tiny hole at one end. To avoid getting squirted with jelly, you had to strategically place your first bite where that little "fill hole" was. That, my friend — and only that — was a donut. Those round things with a hole in the middle and covered with frosting and sprinkles? I didn't know what those were, but they sure weren't donuts. 

Free,
if you look like a girl.

On Sunday mornings, my dad would venture out to a nearby bakery to buy "donuts" and he would return with a plain white box sealed with several tight wrappings of twine. Once the twine was cut and the lid lifted, there were a dozen of those things I just described and they were donuts. On rare occasions, I would go with my dad to the bakery, where one of the stout Teutonic frauen would smile at me and offer a free cookie from their stock. "Isn't she cute?!?," they'd announce with an inflection reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich. That's right! "She!" My mid-1960s locks often led to being mistaken for a girl. But, I didn't correct them, fearing it would jeopardize this and any future free cookies. Munching my justifiably earned treat, I'd watch my dad point to the donuts in the case and instruct the Germanic abeiterin to fill a box with a dozen of them. I gazed at the other baked goods on display behind the glass-paneled cases. There were strudels, cupcakes and the giant tray of cookies from which my free one was chosen, along with other sugary bounty. Of course, there were those round things with frosting and sprinkles... but I didn't know what they were. I only knew we never brought them home. We came to get "donuts" and they — most definitely — were not donuts.

Admittedly, I was sheltered as a young child. The most influential people I came in contact with were my parents. But, as I got older, I began to notice things. Things I never really noticed before. I noticed that other kids' dads ate pizza. (My dad did not.) I noticed that other kids' dads drank Coca-Cola. (My dad did not.) I noticed that other kids' dads never used the same words my dad used for Asian people and Hispanic people and even that one he regularly used for black people. I eventually learned that those round things with the hole in the middle and covered with frosting and sprinkles were also donuts... just another variety. But they were donuts, just the same.

I learned a lot from my father. Most of what I learned, he didn't teach me.

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