June 16, 2023 | Story by Elise Plunk | Graphics by Matthew Cupelli | Photos by Andrea Plunk
Most days, getting out of bed before 8 a.m. is completely out of the question, but I made an exception for Kim’s Donut and Deli. The sun had just begun to peek over the horizon. It crept into the sky and cast an orange and gray hue over Titusville, Florida. Slowly, its heat replaced the cool damp of nighttime, the palmettos casting soft shadows onto the ground. I was in Central Florida that weekend with my boyfriend, Bryan, visiting his family in the town he’d called home for the first 18 years of his life.
“There’s really not much to do, but I can guarantee you the best donuts you’ve ever had,” he’d said on the ride over.
I’d sat in the passenger seat looking at my phone and made a face, scrunching my nose in disinterest. “Eh, I don’t really like any donuts except for the blueberry cake ones,” I’d said.
He smiled. “They have the best blueberry cake donuts in the world.”
I looked up from my phone. Anything involving blueberry with a crisp, glazed crust and sugar-soft sponge immediately got my attention. We agreed to wake up at 6 a.m. that Sunday and get to Kim’s early, before the post-church rush, for the freshest selection of blueberry cake, chocolate glazed and lemon curd donuts they had to offer.
Kim’s was only a five-minute drive from Bryan’s childhood home. It sits right across the road from the shore of the St. Johns River, directly in front of Titusville High School. It’s an old, sun-bleached, diner-style building that looks like it belongs in the 1950s. The faded lettering on the sign accompanied a barely visible picture of donuts and sub sandwiches. At least seven cars piled up behind one another in the drive-through line.
The scent of caramelized sugar and coffee filled the air inside. We walked up to the counter and ordered a dozen mixed donuts (making sure there were at least two blueberry cakes included), two drip coffees with cream and a jalapeno-and-cheese sausage kolache. We chose a booth in front of the window and sat for a moment, sipping the steaming cups nestled snugly in our hands.
“Are you ready to try it?” said Bryan. He opened the plain white pastry box and pulled out the blueberry donuts, still warm.
“I’m dying to,” I said, taking one from his hand. We bumped our donuts together in a “cheers” and took a bite.
My eyes widened. The crust gave way to a soft, steaming cake stained slightly purple from the berries. Whole pieces of fruit filled the donut, baked into the dough. The berries burst open with warm, sweet juice when I took a bite.
Bryan smiled when he saw my expression. “Good, right?”
“Mmhmm,” I mumbled, my mouth full of cake.
He sighed and looked outside. Dawn had passed since we’d arrived, and blue began to seep into the landscape. The sun reflected off of the waves lapping at the shore, shifting from soft pink to bright, hot white as morning arrived. He looked so sad, coffee in hand, as he stared out at the water.
“You know,” he said, “there’s a lot wrong with Titusville. It’s small, far from perfect.”
He took a long sip of his coffee. “But these donuts and that view don’t happen in many other places.”
Down the street from Elise’s grandfather’s house is a dock facing Choctawhatchee Bay. “The smell of the brackish water brings back memories of fishing and reading on the dock.”
He was right. Sitting there, donut and kolache in hand, I realized there are so many things to love about Florida, about the South. The cicadas scream in rhythm to the heat in the summertime. The beach is surreal when it storms, the tide getting sucked back into the gulf only to swell back against the dunes in righteous fury. The breeze blows by on a hot summer day, gently swishing the Spanish moss that trails off of oak trees older than our great-grandparents five generations back. Tiny, home-grown donut shops open at 6 o’clock in the morning. The cashiers know customers by name. Their kids go to your school and sit next to you in band class.
I am in love with the cicadas, Kim’s Donut and Deli, the way the air smells before it storms in the afternoon, but Florida’s breaking my heart. I don’t feel safe here anymore; Florida House Bill 999, House Bill 1557 and Senate Bill 300 scare me enough to chase me away from the place I call home. People don’t understand what else there is to love. People from somewhere else see abortion bans, censorship of books in schools. They see politicians deciding when and where you can say the word “gay.” They see our government deciding that menstruation is too mature a topic for 5th graders but recommending bullet-proof backpacks over gun control laws is perfectly age appropriate. Equality Florida, the Human Rights Campaign, NAACP and other civil rights organizations have issued travel advisories for Florida, warning LGBTQ+ and minority travelers of new dangers posed by the legislative onslaught.
Elise walks through the Longleaf pine trees near Choctawhatchee Bay in her hometown of Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.
I find myself frantically searching through Zillow on Friday nights, searching for a place that reminds me of home, because I can’t stay. I can’t condone the chilling effect the Parental Rights in Education Act has on LGBTQ+ voices. I can’t live in a place that erases a person’s right to choose whether or not they want to carry a pregnancy. I can’t someday raise kids in a place that banned the books that I grew up loving, books that helped me see the world through new eyes and taught me to think on my own.
I want to believe that the Florida government will hear my concerns, that political polarization won’t prevent legislators from seeing me as a fellow human being who is hurting. But holding out hope isn’t enough anymore. I plan to leave the palmettos and orange groves behind me and search for somewhere kinder. Maybe I can’t find that in America. Maybe I’ll have to find it elsewhere. But it breaks my heart that I might never find somewhere akin to the Florida I remember.
Wherever I go, I’m taking with me all those memories —–of beautiful sunsets, summer storms and delicious donuts.