Object Memories: Candy
Monday, October 11th, 2004 07:40 pmHershey bar, plain: S'mores, of course. Sitting with my parents and some family friends at the campsite my grandparents owned, toasting a marshmallow till it was just brown enough, putting it on top of a milk chocolate square on top of half a Graham cracker, then smushing the chocolate and marshmallow with the other cracker half. In between marshmallows, I'd put the tip of a stick into the fire and let a tiny flame grow at the end. After convincing myself the stick wouldn't burn up in my hand, I'd wave it around in the air, drawing pictures for the sole purpose of dazzling my own eyes.
Smarties (American candy, pressed sugar with artificial colorings and nominally fruitlike flavorings): The only time of year I ever had Smarties as a child was at Halloween. The next-door neighbors, an older couple who'd babysat me whenever my mother was in the hospital, always bought bunches & bunches of Smarties and I could take as many as I wanted.
In 1980, the couple's kitchen table was covered in bowls of any kind of candy a little kid could think of ; and as soon as they ran out of a kind you liked, they'd fill the bowl with more. Naturally, this was the house every kid in the neighborhood wanted to visit at Halloween. When we'd come to the door, the man would ask us, "Who are your parents voting for this year?" We'd shout, "Ronald Reagan!" and he'd let us in to the land of plenty. While I was there, a trio of high-school girls came to the door. Not being from our street, they weren't sure at first if it was safe to come in. When they decided that a horde of little ones couldn't be wrong, the man asked them, not who their parents were voting for, but who they would vote for that year. Two girls said "Ronald Reagan" and came right in. The other girl said, "I can't vote yet, but if I could, I'd vote for John Anderson!" The man told her she couldn't come in. She protested; he was adamant. She said it was a free country; he said he was free not to let her into his home. She stared longingly at the table full of candy, at her two friends laughing at her stubbornness, and finally said, "Okay, okay! I'd vote for Reagan too!" So she too got to enjoy the sweetness of the impending Morning in America.
(This wasn't my earliest political activity. Apparently in the early '70s I went around the house chanting "Nixon is a dummy! Nixon is a dummy!")
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Smarties (American candy, pressed sugar with artificial colorings and nominally fruitlike flavorings): The only time of year I ever had Smarties as a child was at Halloween. The next-door neighbors, an older couple who'd babysat me whenever my mother was in the hospital, always bought bunches & bunches of Smarties and I could take as many as I wanted.
In 1980, the couple's kitchen table was covered in bowls of any kind of candy a little kid could think of ; and as soon as they ran out of a kind you liked, they'd fill the bowl with more. Naturally, this was the house every kid in the neighborhood wanted to visit at Halloween. When we'd come to the door, the man would ask us, "Who are your parents voting for this year?" We'd shout, "Ronald Reagan!" and he'd let us in to the land of plenty. While I was there, a trio of high-school girls came to the door. Not being from our street, they weren't sure at first if it was safe to come in. When they decided that a horde of little ones couldn't be wrong, the man asked them, not who their parents were voting for, but who they would vote for that year. Two girls said "Ronald Reagan" and came right in. The other girl said, "I can't vote yet, but if I could, I'd vote for John Anderson!" The man told her she couldn't come in. She protested; he was adamant. She said it was a free country; he said he was free not to let her into his home. She stared longingly at the table full of candy, at her two friends laughing at her stubbornness, and finally said, "Okay, okay! I'd vote for Reagan too!" So she too got to enjoy the sweetness of the impending Morning in America.
(This wasn't my earliest political activity. Apparently in the early '70s I went around the house chanting "Nixon is a dummy! Nixon is a dummy!")
( Read more... )
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