Lloyd Squires, Vermont's "best" bagel maker, talks about his day.

Lloyd Squires, 54, wakes up in his South Burlington home as he does every day: without an alarm. He puts on a layer of Under Armour, a Montreal Canadiens T-shirt and a matching Canadiens hat. He likes hockey. He'd fallen asleep around 9:30 the night before, watching his team lose to the Sabres.

In Burlington, Kountry Kart Deli is busy making sandwiches for a less-than-sober crowd. It is late for them, early for Lloyd.

He turns off Pine Street and arrives at Myer's, backing into a spot that directly faces the shop. I tell him I think that says something about him, that most people would pull straight in. He says he likes to shine his headlights on the bakery because it's been broken into three times this year. If there's ever danger, he says later, there's a machete hidden inside.

Myer Lewkowicz, the namesake for the shop, was a survivor of Buchenwald concentration camp. He moved to Mile End, Montreal's historically Jewish neighborhood, in 1953 and co-founded the famous St-Viateur Bagel in 1957.

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