Text 10293, 95 rader
Skriven 2007-01-09 22:46:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: Verna's 857
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Got a little pang reaing the headline, not that I went
there more than once or twice in my life -

--- begin fwd ---

A hole in the heart

With demise of doughnut shop, Cambridge mourns a bite of past
By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff  |  December 2, 2006

Even the name, Verna's, seems plucked from a bygone era.
Tucked in a corner of North Cambridge, it is a holdover from 
another time, a one-room doughnut shop where the owner, Andy 
Stasiak, still makes every cruller, coffee roll, and lemon
stick by hand, just the way he learned from his mother,
Verna, who opened the shop in 1941.

Verna's used to share the block with a cobbler, barber shop,
and movie house. Increasingly encroached upon by faster-paced, 
focus-group-tested businesses, those old establishments have 
gone, one by one. Now, it's Verna's turn. Unable to cope with an 
influx of young, health-conscious residents in North Cambridge 
and a proliferation of Dunkin' Donuts in the area, the venerable 
shop will sell its last dozen honey-dipped doughnuts Dec. 30.
The demise has severed one of the city's most beloved links to 
its working-class past.

For years Verna's has drawn plumbers, police officers, and
laborers who liked being greeted by name. One of the
neighborhood's heroes, the late US House speaker Thomas P.
"Tip" O'Neill Jr., who lived nearby, stopped in religiously.
Legend has it he mused about Verna's honey-dipped doughnuts
on his deathbed. More recently, it was one of the last places
where old-timers could walk in the door and expect to find
someone they knew.

Yesterday, four regulars, lifelong North Cambridge residents who
have been coming every day at 11:30 a.m. for the last 10 years, 
encamped at a table in the corner. Over coffee and scratch 
tickets, they mourned the loss of their meeting place with its
pink wallpaper, coffee-mug-shaped clock, and brass bell on the 
counter to ring for service.

Where else, some wondered, will people meet? Where else can
they get a free doughnut every afternoon (with the purchase of
a cup of coffee, hon)? No one had good answers. Nothing could 
replace Verna's, all agreed.

Perhaps the manager, Patricia Joyce, put it best. "It's a sad
day in doughnut land," she said.

O'Neill's son, Thomas P. III, said Verna's started out in the
1940s as a favorite meeting place for parishioners leaving
Sunday Mass. No one thought much about the calories, and
Verna's quickly became a place where young and old could
meet. He said he started going in the 1960s, when the shop
was a reliable hangout for teenagers sipping Cokes after
stickball games. "You hear these stories about Krispy Kreme,
but you can't touch Verna's doughnuts," he said yesterday.
"They were just wonderful."

When the retired speaker died in 1994, his son delivered a
eulogy in which he recalled his father's fondness for Verna's 
doughnuts.

" 'Jesus, Tommy,' he said -- and these were among his last
words -- 'do you remember how good those honey-dipped 
doughnuts were?' " the son said, according to a CNN transcript. " 
'God, those honey-dipped doughnuts.' "

Over the years, however, the neighborhood, between Porter
Square and Arlington, underwent a slow, sweeping 
transformation. Rents soared. Developers turned a bus depot 
into a condominium complex. Dunkin' Donuts moved in. Many 
longtime residents moved out.

Over the last two years, Verna's lost 25 percent of its business,
Joyce said. But the shop stuck stubbornly to tradition. That 
meant no gingerbread lattes, no low-fat muffins.

"It's a neighborhood hangout," Joyce said. "Where else can you
get a dozen doughnuts for $4.99, hand-cut?"

Joyce said she doesn't know what will occupy the doughnut
shop's space on Massachusetts Avenue. An adjoining cake shop 
owned by Stasiak's brother, John Jr., closed a few months ago.
Yesterday, Mark Yeskutis, 65, a retired trash collector who has 
been coming to Verna's for years, savored a jelly doughnut and 
a cup of coffee. "Much better than Dunkin' Donuts," he said.
He said Verna's demise seemed all but inevitable in a city that 
has been swept up in so much change. "That's Cambridge for 
you," Yeskutis said. "Everything's shutting down." ...

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