Ted's Donuts

They were only donuts.

Flour, sugar, shortening, and whatever other alchemy turned them into what looked like small edible tires off a questionable Chevy.

Not steak au poivre, Waldorf salad, or crème brûlée.

Donuts.

But people would almost sell their souls if they could get their hands on Ted’s Donuts again.

Homemade, fresh, local, cheap.

Ten cents each—about 30 cents in today’s money.

That was what made Ted’s donuts special.

Plain, cinnamon, sugar and jelly, according to documentation, but I seem to remember powdered—nothing exotic, but done right.

Some would say perfectly.

Now, I need donuts like an arsonist needs matches, but if I had to choose a “cheat” food, Ted’s would be a strong candidate.

The Bouchards—Winnie and Hank—made them for decades in a small bakery at the corner of Ford and North Rosseel streets in Ogdensburg. At its height, Ted’s was sending donuts all over the North Country: Ogdensburg, Canton, Potsdam, Waddington, Madrid and Raymondville, with another run through Hammond toward Black Lake.

Henry started at four in the morning to fry them. Winnie joined him at five and began wrapping.

At its peak, Ted’s turned out 300 dozen a day. By 1986, production had been cut to 150 dozen a day, four days a week—still 7,200 individual donuts every week. Over Henry’s 41 years in the bakery, he estimated that he had made roughly four million sensational sinkers.

In winter, Ted sometimes hauled freshly baked donuts from stop to stop on the back of a sled.

People were said to wait in the stores for the delivery truck some mornings. Presumably, the truck was punctual. Otherwise, riots might have broken out.

Ashley’s Motel, where I grew up, served them as part of the continental breakfast we offered our guests.

Theodore “Ted” Shollette opened the bakery in January 1946. Henry, Ted’s son-in-law, joined him in March after returning from military service. Sugar and shortening were difficult to obtain after the war, but Henry’s status as a returning GI helped him secure an allotment of the scarce ingredients.

Henry and Winnie took over the bakery in 1957 and ran it for the next 30 years.

In 1987, they retired and sold Ted’s to George and Dottie Hill. The sale included the building, the equipment and, most importantly, the Bouchards’ special recipe. George planned to retain the Ted’s Bakery name, revive the old delivery routes and add cookies and possibly the newly acclaimed New York State apple muffin. His daughter, Kathy Sansoucy, would help make and bake the donuts.

After that, the trail runs cold.

Ted’s isn’t around anymore, and that’s a loss.

Sure, you can get things that technically pass as donuts at major markets—pale, chemically preserved descendants of what had once been a doughnut.

Ogdensburg lost bigger things—the downtown, Diamond National, the Shade Roller, Newell’s and the old State Hospital as we knew it.

But towns are not remembered only by their factories, institutions and brick buildings. Sometimes they are remembered by what came through the door in a white paper box and what was waiting on the breakfast table when you were young.

They were only donuts.

But they were

donuts.