I love candy. If you've been following these lame ramblings from the beginning, you already know that.
I love candy more than I love golf. I love candy more than I love fishing. I love Twix bars and Skittles and Nestle's Crunch and the entire Hershey family of treats and the remarkable Reese's cartel. Let's just say there are very few edible things that I love more than candy.
I really love candy.
Naturally, Halloween is the "holiday" I look forward to the most. Sure the warmth and glow of a lovely home cooked dinner on Thanksgiving is wonderful and traditional. The joyous squeals of children on Christmas morning are worth all the ensuing credit card agida. Even the underrated Arbor Day has a certain early American Johnny Appleseed charm. But none of these holidays comes close to engendering the feeling I get when I see a pillowcase filled with miniature Baby Ruths, Milk Duds, and bushels of candy corn.
I hope these revelations don't make me a bad person.
I love candy today as much as I did 60 years ago, when I was just entering the candy procuring years. Since I had no source of income then, I had to be creative in the ways I satisfied my candy Jones. I attended the children's Saturday morning service at the Beth El Hebrew School for the sole purpose of being rewarded with a Charleston Chew candy bar at the service's completion. God, Moses, even The Torah itself, had little or nothing to do with my desire to attend. It was all about the Charleston Chews. I was even willing to get in the candy line twice and con sweet old Mr. Cohen out of a second candy bar.
I was a five-year-old junkie, the youngest on record.
We had credit at the local grocery store on Dorchester's Blue Hill Avenue. The proprietor would simply keep track of our current obligation in a spiral notebook and my mother would pay him every couple of weeks. I ran up quite a confectionery tab in that sad little store. I vaguely remember Teddi chastising me for blithely assuming that any candy I desired was fine with her.
Of course there was a price to pay for this addiction. I was voted "Most Buoyant Boy" in my fourth grade class at the Sarah Greenwood School and my childhood dentist, Dr. Harvey Jacobs, became wealthy enough to purchase Colorado.
I may have mentioned I love candy. I once even managed to blend a belief in God with a box of Raisinets. I was about 10 years old, sitting in the Franklin Park Theater attending a Saturday matinee. I had used my cash allotment to buy the 25 cent ticket and a lovely box of Raisinets. I was polishing off the last of the Raisinets before the previews of coming attractions were over. I realized that this level of piggishness would leave me with about four hours of painful, candy-free movie watching. I decided to see if this whole praying thing I'd heard about in Hebrew School actually worked. I closed my eyes and sent a whopper of a prayer up to the heavens. It probably went something like this: "Excuse me up there; lately, I've been hearing about all kinds of your cool miracles like parting the Red Sea, raining toads, and turning people to salt. Very impressive, I must say. I was wondering if you might simply add a few more Raisinets to this empty box so that I can at least get through the previews. If you do, I promise never to sneak back into the candy line at the end of Saturday services."
I waited a few minutes for the prayer to "get through" and shook the box. Lo and behold, I heard the sweet sound of several Raisinets clicking around the heretofore empty box. Yikes, I thought, He really exists and He wants me to eat more candy! Who am I to refuse? I gobbled up those few extra Raisinets and tried for a few more. Sadly, that was the end of this particular miracle, but it was more than enough to put me on my best behavior for about the next five or six years.
It took me that long to figure out that a few Raisinets had partially melted and stuck themselves temporarily to the inside of the box.
One of the saddest nights of my life was the Halloween on which I had reluctantly agreed to forgo candy and replace it with cash donations for UNICEF. No amount of praise from the delighted "customers" could make up for the loss of an entire Halloween's worth of candy. I may have single-handedly fed a starving sub-Saharan village that night, but it was of little consolation to this chubby candy-corn craving candyphile.
I'm quite sure that most people felt as I did during their childhoods; however, they manage to move away from a love of candy as they mature. I mean it happens with comic books and breakfast cereal so why shouldn't it happen with candy?
Well, all I can say is I've never been able to divorce myself from this infatuation. When my own guys, Josh and Matt, were in their prime Trick or Treating years, I would always look forward to their return. "How did you do?" I would innocently ask. The boys would proudly display their haul. Little did they know that I was already planning to stealthily liberate just enough of their candy to satisfy my craving without arousing their suspicions. Matthew, being a heavier sleeper than Josh, lost the most product. Some years I went through his pillow case like a pack of locusts and all he was left with were Sweet Tarts and Jolly Ranchers. Uggh!
Now here I am almost 65-years-old and the old Halloween excitement is just as strong as ever. I have been trying to convince Kate that we will be inundated with youngsters at our new place and that we should really stock up lest we suffer any "tricks." Unfortunately, she checked with the old owner before he left. "We haven't had a kid show up here since before 2000," he informed her.
When Kate told me this I told her that kids around here tend to gather at a central location and have a more supervised Halloween than we had. So we'll be attending the tailgating "Trunk or Treat" at the Methodist Church on the 31st. I'll be handing out the Jolly Ranchers and trying to hold back on the Twix bars.
As a closing, please take this chubby walk with me down candy's memory lane:
Nestle Triple Decker, Waleeco, Bonomo Turkish Taffy, Fifth Avenue Bar, Carmallow Bar, Necco Wafers (the chocolate flavor), Sky Bar, Squirrel Nuts Zippers, Bit-o'Honey, Mary Jane, Atomic Fireballs, Charms, Root Beer Barrels, Ice Cube Chocolates, Pez, Nonpareils, Jujube's, Jujyfruits...
Ain't cavities grand?
J
