It seems you just can’t find a good doughnut anymore! Sure, there’s the chain coffee and doughnut places, Dunkin’ Doughnuts and such. Got me to thinking about an Ironton doughnut joint from my youth.

That local place was “Mays’ Doughnuts.” It was located on Third Street, not far from “Fannons,” but on the other side of the street.

It was mixed in with a couple of other businesses in a building, sort of an early strip mall.

We lived a few blocks from there as kids. On Sunday morning you could step out your front door and smell the doughnuts. What a smell!

Us kids would rush back inside to ask for money to go to “Mays.’” Daddy would give us a few dollars to go, with instructions that he was to get some doughnuts and change back.

We usually rode our bikes over to Mays’.

The smell grew stronger and better the closer we got to Mays.’ We (the kids) always purchased doughnut holes (two dozen), while purchasing my daddy a “mixed dozen.”

Those were the best treats a kid could get, wash a dozen creamy doughnut holes down with lots of cold milk. A perfect start to any Sunday. “Mays’ Doughnuts,” is today’s “Place of the Past.”

Michael Campbell

Statesville, N.C.