A note before we begin:
I’m sharing this story again because it still matters to me — maybe more now than when I first wrote it. It’s about my grandpa, a pair of old donut machines, and a family tradition that has carried memory forward for decades.
This year, we didn’t make the donuts.
We planned to. Brad, Katrina, and Jeremy offered to help. The intention was there. But the holidays arrived with their usual swirl of schedules, obligations, emotions — and, honestly, fatigue. Carmen and I just didn’t have it in us. Not yet.
And I’m learning that sometimes honoring a tradition doesn’t mean forcing the ritual. Sometimes it means holding the story with care and trusting that the right moment will come — maybe in January, or February — when the kitchen is quieter, and the heart is ready.
So for now, I’m sharing the story itself. Because even when the machine stays unplugged, and the flour remains in the cupboard, the meaning hasn’t gone anywhere.
Grandpa’s Donuts
Some of my fondest memories of my Grandpa Williams revolve around his two magnificent donut machines.
Every time — without fail — when he came to visit, all four of us kids would run out to meet him as he got out of the car. We’d jump up and down with excitement, all asking the same question:
“Did you bring the donut machines?”
Every time — without fail — Grandpa would look at us, scratch his head, and say,
“Oh my… I think I forgot those back in Milwaukee.”
Then he’d begin digging around in the trunk of his car. And sure enough, tucked way back behind all the luggage, there they were.
The machines.
They were actually called Brown Bobbies — old donut makers from another era. My great-grandmother had given them to Grandpa in the late 1920s.
During the Great Depression, Grandpa made donuts in those machines and sold them at the Post Office where he worked. Five cents for two donuts. He needed the extra nickels to help support his growing family.
As kids, we didn’t know any of that history. We just knew the donuts were magical.
On one of his trips to visit us in Evansville, Grandpa wrote the recipe in the front of my mom’s cookbook. He must have known that trip would be his last.
When Grandpa passed away in 1971, my mother inherited one of the Brown Bobby machines.
For years, it came out only occasionally — maybe for a church bake sale, maybe just to prove it still worked — but over time it fell into disuse. Eventually, it ended up tucked away in the back of a closet.
Then, in the mid-1990s, something unexpected happened.
I was a new manager and wanted to do something special for my team at work during the holidays. I asked my mom if she still had Grandpa’s donut machine.
She rummaged through the closet, pushing aside boxes and coats and forgotten things — and there it was. The Brown Bobby. Waiting.
We plugged it in, fingers crossed it would still heat up.
It did.
I donned Grandpa’s old apron — handmade by my Grandma, with stitching across the front that proudly proclaimed the wearer to be “The Doughnut Man.” As Christmas carols played softly in the background, Mom mixed the batter the way Grandpa had taught her, and we started making donuts.
And something magical happened.
As the donuts baked and the kitchen filled with that familiar smell, Mom began to tell stories about Grandpa. Stories we hadn’t talked about in years. Stories that brought smiles, laughter, and tears.
Gone for nearly twenty-five years, Grandpa was suddenly right there with us — remembered not with silence, but with warmth.
A new tradition was born.
Since then, the Brown Bobby has come out many Decembers. Some years for big batches. Some years for small ones. Sometimes with family gathered close, sometimes with just Carmen and me in the kitchen — moving more slowly now, taking our time, letting the
smell do the remembering for us. After my mom passed, and then a few years later, my dad, the ritual changed shape again. What had once been something handed down became something we were now responsible for carrying forward. Carmen has been at the center of that — steady, patient, and quietly determined that the tradition not be lost, even when the pace softened, and the batches grew smaller.
And this year?
This year, we paused.
Not because the tradition no longer matters — but because life asked us to move at a different pace. Because honoring memory also means honoring where you are.
The donuts will be made again. I know that. Maybe when the calendar turns quiet, and winter settles in for real. Maybe when the kitchen feels ready.
Until then, the story still holds.
Because traditions aren’t just what we do on a certain day.
They’re what we carry forward — gently, honestly, and in our own time.
And sometimes, the most faithful thing you can do…
… is wait until love has the energy to rise again.
the back behind all the luggage would be THE MACHINES! (The machines were actually called “Brown Bobbies”) (
Grandpa. At some point, it occurred to me, I was truly making Grandpa’s donuts for the first time. Our first grandson, Braxton, was born in September, making me an “official” Grandpa!