As summer memories fade, my morning as a boardwalk Donut Boy lives on

The Donut Boys of Brown’s Restaurant abide by Belshaw’s Law.

No matter how long the line of hungry customers winding down the Ocean City boardwalk, where the morning faithful have been known to wait for more than an hour for the best honey-dipped, vanilla-glazed, and cinnamon-sugared cake doughnuts on the planet, the vintage Belshaw Mark V Donut Robot rules all.

“You can only go as fast as the machine goes!” says Melissa Brown, who, with husband Jim Brown, owns this classic beach grill now in its 48th year. The trusty old robot can crank out 500-plus doughnuts per hour.

Whir…splat! Whir…splat! Whir…splat!

That’s the hum of the Belshaw’s hopper steadily dropping rings of batter into a long channel of bubbling hot oil. They bob along in pairs until a paddle wheel flips them for even browning. After just under two minutes in the fryer, they emerge tawny and crisp, then ride a conveyor belt up and over into a hopper to cool. I foolishly grab one immediately and promptly burn my fingertips.

“Careful! The fresh ones are really hot!” said Alex Brown, 24, Melissa and Jim’s nephew, a decade-long Brown’s veteran who showed me the ropes as a Donut Boy one morning this summer. “Me and this machine go way back as friends. The Belshaw does all the heavy lifting. We just come in and dip and dunk them.”

Of course, there’s more to it than that.

A box of fresh doughnuts at the Jersey Shore is not just breakfast: It’s a tradition for thousands who, like my family, view it as a mile-marker in the year every bit as much as Thanksgiving turkey, with that first box around Memorial Day launching the sweet indulgence of warm vacation days to come.

There is nothing trendy or innovative about a Brown’s doughnut: The batter is continuously made fresh, and it comes in six basic flavors — chocolate, plain, vanilla-glazed, honey, powdered sugar, or cinnamon sugar, plus an off-menu special known as “beach sand” (vanilla glaze dusted with cinnamon sugar). But when it’s just fried, there is such a delicate crisp to its crinkled inner ring and smooth exterior that it crackles beneath the toppings. That first bite, paired with a whiff of ocean air, is nothing short of magic. (The closer you eat them to the boardwalk, the better.)

“The simplicity of it is what everyone loves,” says Alex Brown.

The doughnut traffic is brisk from the opening of the season “until the first [big] hurricane rolls in,” says Jim Brown, usually around September.

For the Ocean City-area youth who staff the window at Brown’s and umpteen other businesses up and down the Jersey Shore, a stint as a Donut Boy on the boardwalk is its own rite of summer. “When it’s hot in the middle of July and you’re working next to a vat of boiling oil in the doughnut machine, it can be brutal,” concedes Alex. “But then you catch a sea breeze, work through it, and keep going. This is the best job on the boardwalk. It’s good times, good money, and everyone is so friendly.”

Whir…splat! Whir…splat! Whir…splat!

The job isn’t limited by gender, says manager Kelsey Ladd, 31, who’s worked at Brown’s since she was 16 and has done the occasional turn as a Donut Girl: “Anyone can do anything here. But those mixing bowls are heavy!” she says, referring to the 50-pound batches of batter that are mixed throughout the morning to keep the hot doughnuts coming.

And on the busiest days, like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, the churn is relentless from 7 a.m. until well past the doughnut window’s usual closing, just before noon, give or take.

“I always say, ‘Don’t look up boys, because you cannot get frazzled!’” Melissa says. “On Memorial Day weekend we had two veterans and one green guy — Jake Messina — and he looked at me around 11:30 when there was still a long line and he’s like, ‘Is this normal?’ He couldn’t believe it. But the next day, I saw him and said, ‘Jake, you came back?’ And he said, ‘I did! I actually enjoyed it.’”

By the time of his final shift on Labor Day weekend, Messina, 20, a local who had just completed his first summer at Brown’s, was brimming with Donut Boy swagger as he returned to Rowan College to study finance.

“I wear the title with pride,” says Messina. “When you run into somebody from Ocean City and they say, ‘Oh, you were a Donut Boy at Brown’s?’ That’s so awesome.”

Whir…splat! Whir…splat! Whir…splat!

As a Brown’s customer for 25 years, I got Jim and Melissa to let me hang out behind their legendary doughnut window to feel the Belshaw’s heat and glean some Donut Boy wisdom. I was definitely feeling some “green guy” jitters when I arrived. There was already a line. But the customers’ good spirits instantly put me at ease with the knowledge that the promise of fresh doughnuts is the ultimate pacifier. Instances of Doughnut Rage are rare. Appreciation is high.

“These are my favorite doughnuts between Atlantic and Cape May Counties,” says Tony Depietro, 43, a 20-year regular still in his wet suit who was grabbing a dozen honey-glazed rounds for colleagues on his way from his morning surf to work in Egg Harbor Township.

Ocean City native Meryl Hrabski, 38, loves Brown’s doughnuts so much that she came here with her two young children from the airport when they arrived from Germany, where her husband is stationed with the military. “This is our first stop — aside from seeing our mother,” said Meryl’s sister, Jamie Sauer, 40, also an Ocean City High School grad.

Whir…splat! Whir…splat! Whir…splat!

“You get to the front of the line and, well, it’s just a doughnut, but we’ve been doing it so long and that’s the secret to our success,” says Jim Brown. His parents, former schoolteachers Marjorie and Harlan Brown, launched the first incarnation of Brown’s on the boardwalk’s northern end in 1976 before it moved in 1994 to its current, larger building, on the boardwalk between St. Charles Place and First Street.

The same fresh-made simple approach accounts for the continued draw of the classic beach grill fare that Brown’s also serves inside a breezy, screened-in dining room behind the doughnut window. The burgers are turned into patties in-house from locally sourced fresh meat; the sloppy joe has an elusive balance of sweetness and tang (the recipe is secret); and kids devour pancakes shaped like animals decorated by Jim himself with bacon smiles and strawberry noses.

There are some secrets to the batter, and Jim Brown isn’t divulging them, but he does note that their toppings are all made daily from quality ingredients, like the house-melted chocolate (not prefab sauce) and deep amber Bucks County honey.

“It’s a lot of mixing for those toppings — especially melting that chocolate — and it can be hard on your shoulders,” says Liam Cupit of Woodbine, 20, who’s worked at Brown’s for three summers.

Once the robot’s hopper is brimming with batter and the toppings are ready, the Brown’s magic sparks to life at the open doughnut window, where the sweet smell of frying dough mingles with suntan lotion and the salt air of waves pulsing nearby as the Donut Boys greet their eager audience.

Whir…splat! Whir…splat! Whir…splat!

Cupit’s biggest concern was “not messing up their orders. We don’t write stuff down. Who got what? Getting coffees. Ringing people up. That’s a skill in itself.”

There is also a fine art to the showmanship of flinging the doughnuts like Frisbees into the bowls holding the various toppings — “Four vanilla! Four chocolate! Four cinnamon sugar!” — landing bull’s-eyes from far enough away to earn “oohs” from customers peering in through the service window. Not surprisingly, I bricked my first throws, clipping the rim and flipping the rounds onto their wrong sides.

Landing those doughnuts with their smooth, soft topsides down is only half the challenge. Giving them a sweeping twist and roll to coat them evenly without cracking the delicately fried exteriors is also tricky.

“It’s just muscle memory,” says Cupit. “But there’s a big learning curve for new employees before they can really get down making a dozen — especially when we’re busy.”

Whir…splat! Whir…splat! Whir…splat!

Brown’s sold over 1,000 doughnuts on Labor Day, when the line was still in mid-season form, stretching nearly back to the Ocean City Beach Patrol’s lifeguard station. But there’s an unmistakable shift in the air after the long holiday weekend that signals the end of summer. A rare special flavor — pumpkin spice — makes its appearance for the home stretch as Brown’s shifts into five-day weeks through September and then weekends only until its closure for the season on Oct. 13.

No one feels the bittersweet taste of that fall transition quite like the Donut Boys, many of whom have already returned to their other lives. Messina is back in Glassboro living with some pals from Rowan, but always ready to drive to the Shore to fill in on weekends, if needed.

Cupit is back at the University of Miami studying corporate taxes and prepping for an accounting internship next summer. He misses the routine of waking up for work at 6 a.m. and “smelling like one big doughnut” at the end of his shift. As the stress of class deadlines picks up, he misses the boardwalk’s breezy vibe and the satisfaction of “working with my hands and interacting with customers. ... I am nostalgic for it.”

Whir…splat! Whir…splat! Whir…splat!

I bragged to Kelsey Ladd, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically, that I had gotten the hang of the toss-and-dip rhythm. With so many Donut Boys back at college, she threatened to hire me for a fall shift.

Alex Brown says she isn’t kidding. He’s moving to Scotland soon to be with his girlfriend, but has vowed to return next summer, if needed. Belshaw’s Law, and the optimistic thrum of the robot’s conveyor belt rolling hot doughnuts into the hopper until the season’s end, is deeply ingrained in his DNA.

“We have a saying here,” he said. “You never have your last shift at Brown’s.”