At Britt's Donuts in Carolina Beach, he perfected the simple taste of summer

By many people's reckoning, Bobby Nivens made the greatest doughnut in North Carolina, a deep-fried, sugar-glazed marvel worth a two-hour drive and a long wait in line - a token of summer, youth and traditions that do not vanish.

For 51 years, he and his wife, Maxine, opened Britt's Donuts on the last weekend of March, raising the shop's twin garage doors on the Carolina Beach Boardwalk and signaling that spring had triumphantly arrived with sandy toes, suntans and weeklong vacations close behind.

Britt's Donut Shop owner Bobby Nivens, photographed at the shop on June 5, 2010, in Carolina Beach, N.C.

He made one doughnut: glazed and light enough to melt in the mouth without chewing - a formula so time-honored and unchanging that Nivens never bought a new rolling pin after half a century.

Opening a white paper bag and pulling out a warm Britt's doughnut offered the rare chance to relive pleasures from the past without thinking time had stolen everything that used to be good.

"Seeing him make these was a work of art to a young little redhead who never tanned but was always pink," wrote local Steve Barber in a Facebook tribute. "My grandma would give me a dollar at the bingo hall and I'd cut through the cigarette smoke like a jackhammer and get her a doughnut and a Pepsi. I'd watch him in the back surrounded by bags of flour and powdered sugar. I'd gaze and watch and wanted so bad to jump the counter and do what he was doing... Another piece of my childhood is gone, but I will never forget those summer nights on the boardwalk. I truly miss it. What a time it was."

It Never Seemed Like Work

Born in Gastonia, Nivens migrated to Carolina Beach with his family and worked for the original owner H.L. Britt, earning 50 cents an hour. He met his lifelong love, Maxine, while they were teenagers there, starting their doughnut-filled partnership after Nivens' stint in the Air Force.

"There was a big plate window behind which Mr. Britt stood, turning donuts in a huge vat of hot oil with a hand-held stick," recalled Anne Welsh, columnist for the Asheville Citizen-Times in 2007. When Nivens took over in 1974, she added, Britt passed over his vat and stick with this piece of advice: "Keep it simple. Stay with one doughnut."

Several generations of many families have worked at the historic Britt's Donut Shop since it opened on the Boardwalk at Carolina Beach in 1939. A small bulletin board acts as a family album for owner Bobby Nivens' collection of photographs.

Britt's brought pilgrims flooding onto the Boardwalk until the summer faded into September and the Ferris wheel stopped turning. Generations of teenage "donut shop kids" would cut their teeth there, taking summer jobs in their paper hats. One of them, Lynn Barbee, grew up to be Carolina Beach mayor.

"Do you have someone in your life that are like second parents to you?" he asked on Facebook last week. "Someone who molds you at the most impressionable time in your life. Those awkward teen years, when typically your parents just want to kill you. Imagine a couple who pours their soul into those kids. Handles them with respect, teaches them the meaning of work, heaps responsibility on them and embraces them when they fail. During those times when you were so lost, so timid, so wanting to fit in, they were there for you, not as an adult figure but as a friend and a guide.

"That is Bobby and Maxine Nivens," Barbee wrote. "I don't think they ever worked a day in their lives, because to them it never seemed like work." Both Maxine and daughter Lynn survive, along with two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Britt's only makes glazed doughnuts because there isn't time to do other flavors when it gets busy.

As a younger man, Nivens reportedly dreamed of spreading the Britt's operation into a chain, spreading the doughnut magic over the state like another Krispy Kreme.

But he knew he had something special: available in only one place, and only at certain times. He knew not to mess with something just right - reliably where it should be, perfect every time.