My granddaughter and her mother went on an adventure with me not so long ago and we had a marvellous time. Nothing too exotic, merely a stay in a hotel with a swimming pool. You can’t have an adventure, not really, without supplies – aka candy. I was remembering Abby and I picking out our favourites and … it got me thinking.
Candy was a big deal when I was a kid. It was a now and then sort of prize, and the infrequency almost always created a list of favourites and an eyes-squeezed shut sort of hopefulness. I’m not sure candy holds the same status among children of Abby’s generation, mostly because it is readily available. Growing up a farm kid meant trips to town were a big deal. Playing with town kids often meant a visit to the candy store. The Metro on Scott Street was a regular for my friend Kathy and me. I couldn’t remember the name of that wee store with the red brick siding and a long candy aisle and the little brown paper bags to put our selection of penny candy in. I had to go to my expert resource who came up with the name. She’s wise like that.
My brother remembers the wee store by Robert Moore that he frequented. Maddy’s Little Store, I think it was called. My brother was a regular while in elementary school and he still has a sweet tooth. We had our favourites growing up, but they weren’t constant – changes happened. Crispy Crunch was always a big hit, and my mother often brought us one to share after she had finished her week’s grocery shopping, or a white bag from the Electric Bakery filled with warm honey-dip donuts. My brother loved Eat-More chocolate bars that tended to hurt my teeth. My sister adored her sponge toffee, and I was ever so fond of Giant Sweet Tarts, that almost always left me with a sore tongue – the price to pay for pleasure. I also loved the hard Mackintosh Toffee, Canada’s version being a single rectangular bar in the red tartan box. John Mackintosh opened his sweet shop in Halifax (England, not Nova Scotia) in 1890 and the “not too hard and not too soft” toffee was soon on the shelf.
Summer was the best time for candy, for lollipop suckers, for lik-a-maid the candy that pours, for licorice, for Lucky Elephant popcorn with the prize at the bottom, for candy corn in the little cloth sack with a drawstring, Fruit Stripe gum, and Astro Pops. Going to the store independently, without adults calling the shots was the highest kind of joy, that feeling of I have arrived. Filling mini-sized paper bags with tiny wax pop bottles filled with less than a teaspoon of coloured sugar water, with candy cigarettes with dust that imitated smoke, with candy necklaces or bracelets that meant you could multi-task – eat and ride a bike, with pipe-shaped licorice though I wasn’t a fan, Blackballs jawbreakers that changed colour, spearmint leaves. We could choose our own candy from the boxes of penny candy options, not worrying about germs and packaging. I’m sure we are better off with the rules of public hygiene now, but the freedom of admiring every candy before making a choice was the height of childhood delight.
My love for candy probably explains the multitude of fillings in my mouth, though I prefer to blame it on well water and the lack of fluoride. I’m not as big a candy eater now, though that doesn’t mean I don’t battle the desire for sugar, just in different forms. I think I was lucky to grow up in a time when small things like candy or a fifteen-cent cone from the Dairy Queen created such special moments that we felt giddy, where an ordinary day was transformed into something quite fabulous.
wendistewart@live.ca
