I have always loved hole foods.

Hold on. Before you become one more of my self-appointed proofreaders/critics like my pal Danny Spada, let me say “hole foods” was not a mistake. Instead, it revers to literal hole foods, namely bagels and doughnuts.

When I think of those two, I think of that Oscar Wilde quote about the U.S. and Great Britain, when he said, “… we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.” Yeah, sure, bagels and doughnuts (or if you prefer, as I do — donuts) are each a circular food with a hole in the middle. But that’s where the resemblance ends.

If you’re a fan of taxonomy, you could look at it this way: They’re both in the same Domain (Snackis Circumferus) and the same Kingdom (Apaturus). But then they start to separate, bagels being in Phylum Bake-ian; donuts in Phylum Fritas Fatus. From there, they separate within each class, one being Bagel Bagelis; the other being Bagel Bialy. Donuts separate into Donut Donut (plain donuts to you) and Donut Sucre (donuts with all sorts of sweet stuff adorning them).

I won’t state the further divisions, Order, Family, Genus and Species because, while I think you might be fascinated to know them, all this classification reminds me of my two disastrous semesters of freshman biology, a trauma from which I’ve yet to recover. Just suffice it to say, when it comes to varieties of the bagels and donuts, they’re seemingly endless.

Bialys, I think, have a lot fewer varieties than bagels.

Oh yeah, if you never heard of bialys, they’re like bagels, but not as thick or as doughy, so the MF (Mastication Factor) is greatly reduced. Also, strictly speaking, the bialy hole is more of a deep indentation than, as they merrily say in the cop shows, “a through-and-through.” The bialy got its name from the Polish city of Bialystok, where it was originally baked in the early 19th century. The bagel, also from Poland, is the bialy’s ancestor, having first appeared in the 13th century.

Donuts are apparently Dutch in origin, having come to New York (or if you prefer, New Amsterdam) in the 17th century. Originally, they didn’t have the hole; that honor was claimed by an American sailor named Hanson Gregory, who said ’twas he who came up with that innovation, because it made them less greasy.” Due to his profession, invention, and its impact, he could, if you’ll excuse me, be dubbed, “The Holey Roamin’ Emperor.” And where did the “nut” in its name come from? It isn’t definitely known, but it’s thought it came from “nut” being a small round cake.

There, lesson over.

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On doughnuts … and dough

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While I love both bagels and donuts, I eat a lot more donuts because they’re more readily available. While both are in stores all over, it seems that really good donuts can found more often. And lucky for me, my rave-faves are a mere 20 miles away, in downtown Tupper Lake at The Washboard. If you think The Washboard is an odd name for a donut shop, I can assure you it isn’t — at least in this case — because the donuts are made in a small section of a laundromat. If I did my laundry there, I’d consider that a perfect combination: I could get my skivs washed and dried, whilst washing down their sinkers with their coffee. Let’s fact it: Most people don’t like doing laundry, but with those extra perks, while it might still be a pain in the prat, it would be far less a pain than in other laundromats.

I go to Tupper about once a week, to see friends and take and/or bring back stuff to Thrifty and Nifty. And while there, of course, I cop a bunch of donuts for pals in My Home Town. The Washboard has lots of different toppings for the donuts, something I find more confusing than enticing. The fact is when it comes to donuts, both my sense or adventure and breadth of knowledge are sadly lacking. While my politics have always been liberal, my taste in donuts is the exact opposite: I’m strictly a plain donut kinda guy. OK, on rare occasion I’ll have a sugar donut, but that’s about it.

Do I feel bad I miss out on the wide array of donuts? Not at all. I think one of today’s great evils is the almost infinite variety of every damned thing. I mean, are there really significant differences between soaps or laundry detergents or sour creams or bottled waters and the rest? There might be some, I’ll grant you, but how significant could they be?

And likewise with donuts. I don’t mind clogging my arteries with those yummies, but I am NOT gonna clog my mind trying this one, that one and the other one. Or even trying donuts from other places. I’m indecisive enough as I am; I have no desire to add to my confusion. But that’s just me. I have friends who are the Richard Halliburtons of the Donut World.

One is Brother Clark. A self-admitted donut-a-holic, he’ll try anything twice, or even three times — at least when it comes to donuts. When he visits, he brings a bunch of them. And while his intentions are noble, I’m afraid the same can’t be said for the wares. Last week he gifted me with a bunch of whole wheat donuts.

Whole wheat donuts? When I told my brother about it, he said only one word — “Why?” And I concur. I can see whole wheat bread — healthy, ya know, which is important, since bread is a food. Donuts, on the other hand, are not food, but fun. And when it comes to fun, I don’t need anything like whole wheat donuts or gluten-free dinner rolls or kale anything messin’ with my good times. The only way I can describe the whole wheat donut was like eating slightly sweetened particle board. Not quite as rough on the gums, but just about as tasty.

My other donut maven pal is Jim McCormick. I never knew that about him till this week, when I ran into him at Nori’s. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t at Nori’s, but outside, in his truck’s passenger seat, waiting for his daughter, Cameron, who was inside. Whenever I see Jimmy, we always have an extended chat. And somehow in the course of this one, I mentioned donuts. And once I did, Jimmy came alive. In fact, he was off the hook!

“Donuts?” he said. Then he all but yelled, “DONUTS?”

He took a breath, and then went on.

“Listen, I’ve sampled every donut in every town between North Bangor and Albany. I go into a town and ya know what the first thing I say to the first person I meet?”

“Uh, no.” I said. “What?”

“Who sells the best donuts in town?” he said. Then, for extra though needless emphasis, he added, “That’s what I say.”

“And where, might I ask, are the best donuts?” I said.

“That all depends,” he said.

“On what?” I said.

“On lots of things,” he said.

Which was world-class understatement on his behalf. The lad isn’t just a donut aficionado — he’s a frappin’ maniac. The Duke of Donuts. The King of Crullers. The Sultan of Sinkers. Within but a minute or so, I could no longer follow him, as he spoke glowingly and nonstop on every donut bakery in what seemed like the Lower 48. And he didn’t just mention the bakery; he went into infinite detail about them. Bakery A had the crispest outsides; Bakery B had the chewiest insides, Bakery C had the best combination of outsides and insides.

I was lost, my head spinning round and round — an appropriate metaphor. I could no more track Jimmy’s donut diatribe than I can a conspiracist’s rant. I smiled, nodded my head, and made eye contact, but caught only a word here and there.

Finally, Cameron came out of the store, to drive him home … and to set me free.

But for length, breadth and depth of Jimmy’s experience as the Ne Plus Ultra of Donutology, guess what? Like me, he eats only plain ones.

A final note to round off this column: Though I haven’t heard it in years, from my childhood and into my adulthood, a common phrase was, “I’d bet dollars to donuts …” It was a statement of utter certainty because donuts cost around a dime. Now they cost at least a buck. So if you bet dollars to donuts today, it’d be a bet you’d want to lose.

People complain constantly about how inflation is ruining the quality of our lives, which seems obvious. But what isn’t obvious — at least in the case of donuts — it’s also ruining our hyperbole.