And on the eighth day there was Dunkin’ Donuts, and it was good

To stop those monsters, 1-2-3 / Here's a fresh new way that's trouble-free / It's got Paul Anka's guaranteeeeeee

Island Packet — So they opened a Dunkin’ Donuts in Beaufort. I know they opened a Dunkin’ Donuts in Beaufort because I have been pleading for it, because I have bothered the business reporter about it for months with the fierce relentlessness of the tiger, because I lived for a short while at the work site, having built a lean-to out of whatever discarded items I could scrounge up — tires, playground equipment, THANK YOU VERIZON FOR YOUR ROCK-SOLID SPONSORSHIP signs —  and waited patiently, living there for months, like the “Into The Wild” guy except less in search of pure personal revelation and more of things filled with jelly that leave your face a swamp of icing.

I did this not necessarily just for the donuts, but also for the majestic moment when I could walk through that door, into that breathtaking wonderland of dough and sprinkles and future heart concerns, and order a Large Coffee With Cream And Sugar, which represents the pinnacle of human achievement as it pertains to coffee and, as a bonus, arrives in a cup the approximate size of a container ship (with a Large Coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts, one could, very easily, caffeinate a horse).

Now, I understand that some of you may be wondering what could possibly be worth getting this worked up about, but you are wondering this only if you’re the type for whom coffee is a fleeting pleasure, rather than something required by your addicted, shattered DNA if you hope to consider getting out of the bed in the morning. If this is the case, we have little in common.

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• Ella Fitzgerald – Black Coffee

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Anyway, you can imagine my wonder at how, for years, there had no been available Dunkin’ Donuts in our entire coastal region. None. Zero. Sure, we have 300 Wendy’s restaurants, a multitude of CVS pharmacies helpfully situated every 24 feet along the big roads, a major national golf tournament, an international film festival, two separate IHOPs, one giant empty proto-development, two inexplicable guard towers standing sentry before a giant empty proto-development and even a 3-D theater now, but no place to snag cheap donuts on a Sunday morning.

Being from the Midwest, I find this sort of omission inexplicable. To give you some illustration of the raucous, thrill-a-minute state of my mid-1990s social situation, friends and I would often drive 20 miles to neighboring Valparaiso, Ind., to obtain donuts and cigarettes in both mornings and evenings and lament the raucous, thrill-a-minute state of our social situation. Do you know how summer seems in Springsteen’s “4th Of July Asbury Park (Sandy),” all shot through with the idealistic nostalgia of teenage summer love? OK, imagine that, but take out the boardwalk, the sea, the waves, the girls and the shimmering sense of a world of discovery and replace it with a highway full of strip malls and furniture shops, a couple of dubbed Tesla cassettes and it’s basically like looking in a mirror. (Anyway, to this day I’ll plan my trips home to Indiana entirely around donut locations. If you are related to me and wondering why I never visit, it is because your house is not situated close enough to a Dunkin’ Donuts. See if you can’t fix that before the holidays, Grandma.)

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RELATED, SORT OF

• Coffee makes you immortal, or Last Night A Decaf Saved My Life

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So when the news broke that Dunkin’ had opened in Beaufort — announced, if I remember correctly, by Gazette reporter Juliann Vachon, who brought in a box of Munchkins for the newsroom and barely survived the ensuing riot, which grew so chaotic that I’m pretty sure I accidentally ate a reporter’s notebook — there was great joy, and by “joy” I mean “three hours of happy crying on the floor next to my desk.” I have spent most of my days since trying to invent reasons why I would need to be in Beaufort daily to obtain a large coffee and a chocolate frosted (“I told you, I’m doing a daily video diary with Pat Conroy and HE’S WAITING FOR ME”) but have so far failed. So if someone out there could please call daily with,  I don’t know, concert announcements, I’ll buy you a coffee.