Credit snowbird John Frye as the inspiration for the latest Three-Minute Maine video, "Tony's Donuts," published on downeast.com. Whenever Frye returns to Maine he visits Tony's Donuts in Portland to purchase dozens of molasses doughnuts.

I - and my co-workers - first became the beneficiary of Frye's fry-o-later largesse nearly a decade ago, when he landed at my office door at The Camden Herald, doughnuts in hand. "Any Maine girl should know about molasses donuts," he said by way of thanks for keeping the pages of the Herald filled with hometown news for his Florida-bound heart. Long since absent from the Herald's editorial page, I can say a bag of fresh doughnuts - along with a prodding note to tell the story of Maine, molasses, and doughnuts - found me at Down East a year ago.

According to Frye, seafaring folks - and their families - found new uses for the molasses they transported from Barbados to Boston and Maine. The doughnut was an extension, along with the molasses-drenched baked beans, Indian pudding, and, eventually, molasses doughnut holes that were the staple of many a Maine meal.

A Maine native I of course had my own doughnut memories, buried deep in my underpinnings, as it were. There was buying the still-warm plain doughnuts from the now long-defunct Camden Home Bakery, there was sitting at the counter of Dunkin Donuts - back in the days when people actually sat at the counter long before the drive-thru aisle- dunking a chocolate cruller into chocolate milk as my grandfather slurped DD coffee during the mid-morning break. The day our family learned Willow Street doughnuts could be bought from a store shelf closer to home than driving to the Rockland-based bakery. Happy memories, all.

Truth be told, until Mr. Frye began his single-man doughnut crusade I had never thought about Maine's cultural connections to the fatty pastry. The days of casual doughnut break, I thought, would become a thing of the past, lost to the convenience of franchise-induced speed of service and transplants - bagels! As it turns out, my childhood routine of dipping and slurping doughnuts in a local bakery lives on daily at Tony's. Die-hard doughnut enthusiasts don't end their fascination there, either. There's a monument to the creator of the doughnut hole a mere mile from the Rockport offices of Down East. Doughnut-themed blogs pepper the Internet, celebrating regional doughnut lore instead of making it the forbidden fruit of calorie-conscious consumers.

Yes, Mr. Frye, there is likely a research paper - or cookbook - that tells the full story of Maine molasses doughnuts and maybe such a missive will be published. Until then, we offer the Three-Minute Maine video, "Tony's Donuts," as a testament to what Tony's owner Rick Fournier calls Maine's "natural" food.

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