A hole in the heart

Even the name, Verna's, seems plucked from a bygone era.

Tucked in a corner of North Cambridge, it is a holdover from another time, a one-room doughnut shop where the owner, Andy Stasiak, still makes every cruller, coffee roll, and lemon stick by hand, just the way he learned from his mother, Verna, who opened the shop in 1941.

Verna's used to share the block with a cobbler, barber shop, and movie house. Increasingly encroached upon by faster-paced, focus-group-tested businesses, those old establishments have gone, one by one. Now, it's Verna's turn. Unable to cope with an influx of young, health-conscious residents in North Cambridge and a proliferation of Dunkin' Donuts in the area, the venerable shop will sell its last dozen honey-dipped doughnuts Dec. 30.

The demise has severed one of the city's most beloved links to its working-class past.

For years Verna's has drawn plumbers, police officers, and laborers who liked being greeted by name. One of the neighborhood's heroes, the late US House speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr., who lived nearby, stopped in religiously. Legend has it he mused about Verna's honey-dipped doughnuts on his deathbed. More recently, it was one of the last places where old-timers could walk in the door and expect to find someone they knew.

Yesterday, four regulars, lifelong North Cambridge residents who have been coming every day at 11:30 a.m. for the last 10 years, encamped at a table in the corner. Over coffee and scratch tickets, they mourned the loss of their meeting place with its pink wallpaper, coffee-mug-shaped clock, and brass bell on the counter to ring for service.

Where else, some wondered, will people meet? Where else can they get a free doughnut every afternoon (with the purchase of a cup of coffee, hon)? No one had good answers. Nothing could replace Verna's, all agreed.

Perhaps the manager, Patricia Joyce, put it best. "It's a sad day in doughnut land," she said.

O'Neill's son, Thomas P. III, said Verna's started out in the 1940s as a favorite meeting place for parishioners leaving Sunday Mass. No one thought much about the calories, and Verna's quickly became a place where young and old could meet. He said he started going in the 1960s, when the shop was a reliable hangout for teenagers sipping Cokes after stickball games.

"You hear these stories about Krispy Kreme, but you can't touch Verna's doughnuts," he said yesterday. "They were just wonderful."

When the retired speaker died in 1994, his son delivered a eulogy in which he recalled his father's fondness for Verna's doughnuts.

" 'Jesus, Tommy,' he said -- and these were among his last words -- 'do you remember how good those honey-dipped doughnuts were?' " the son said, according to a CNN transcript. " 'God, those honey-dipped doughnuts.' "

Over the years, however, the neighborhood, between Porter Square and Arlington, underwent a slow, sweeping transformation. Rents soared. Developers turned a bus depot into a condominium complex. Dunkin' Donuts moved in. Many longtime residents moved out.

Over the last two years, Verna's lost 25 percent of its business, Joyce said. But the shop stuck stubbornly to tradition. That meant no gingerbread lattes, no low-fat muffins.

"It's a neighborhood hangout," Joyce said. "Where else can you get a dozen doughnuts for $4.99, hand-cut?"

Joyce said she doesn't know what will occupy the doughnut shop's space on Massachusetts Avenue. An adjoining cake shop owned by Stasiak's brother, John Jr., closed a few months ago.

Yesterday, Mark Yeskutis, 65, a retired trash collector who has been coming to Verna's for years, savored a jelly doughnut and a cup of coffee. "Much better than Dunkin' Donuts," he said.

He said Verna's demise seemed all but inevitable in a city that has been swept up in so much change. "That's Cambridge for you," Yeskutis said. "Everything's shutting down."

Richard Powers, 59, a mover and lifelong resident who has been meeting the same four friends at Verna's nearly every day for a decade, said "the loudmouths," as they call themselves, would probably meet up at the Meadow Glen Mall in Medford after Verna's closes. At least they let customers sit for hours in the food court, he said.

But he will still pine for his old haunt.

"You'll never find another place like this," he said. "It's the people; that's what it is. We're all friends."

Most of those friends nowadays are old, said Joe Cyr, 78, a retired plumber who has been coming to Verna's since he got out of the Navy in 1947.

"This is the senior center of North Cambridge," he said, biting into a cruller. "I don't know where they're all going to go now."

His wife, Pat, 72, worried, as well. "Most of the people here don't have family, so they come here and find friends," she said. "That's what's going to hurt."

Joyce said nothing would ever measure up to Verna's. "It's a landmark," she said.

And then she picked up a honey-dipped doughnut in a sheet of wax paper.

"This is the best doughnut you will ever have," she said.