How Sweet it Was

There was a time, o’ best beloved, when a nine year old could buy cigarettes.

No, an eight year old couldn't- don't be silly. Everyone knows that an eight year old isn't strong enough to pull the lever on the cigarette machine. You need to be in 4th grade to do that!

The corner store in my neighborhood was the place to go for lunch meat,

(in Pittsburgh that meant chipped ham. You don't know chipped ham?

Its technical name is chipped chopped ham. Slivers of hamishness pressed together with ~what?~ Gelatin? and formed into a loaf shape.

Then sliced Verrrrrry thin, that's the chipped part, and used on sandwiches. Or the base for ham barbecue.

Ham barbeque? That's chipped ham, Heinz ketchup, a little Heinz yellow mustard, and whatever your mom used as a secret ingredient. Heated. On a bun.)

ahem- lunch meat, batteries, toilet paper, potato chips, bread, milk, comic books. Penny candy.

Cigarettes. Most of our parents smoked. (my dad brand was Marlboro. Mom smoked Virginia Slims. Menthol.)

One good reason to HAVE five children: usually at least one was available to run to the other end of the corner and buy you cigarettes. Feeding the coins into the machines and being careful to pull the correct knob so that the right pack kerchunked into the machine's tray. One of the ladies would peep at us casually and would be available to exchange the packs if we got it wrong.

When we were flush, and the nicotine need not at a critical level necessitating that we run back home RIGHT AWAY!, there would be a coin or two for candy.

Penny candy. A quarter would fill the little paper bag to the top. Candy was 1-2-3-or even four pieces for a penny. It took strategy to fill the bag. Well, strategy on our part and extreme forbearance on Helen's part.

(Helen owned the store. Usually buying cigarette would mean being 'sent to Helen's’)

It was a delicate situation. You needed to get maximum sugar while at the same time minimum items that your siblings enjoyed. That would cut down on the sharing.

Mary Janes were good for that. The molasses peanut taffy concoction could chip a tooth. I love it to this day. No one else would eat it and I could get several for a nickel.

The odd Flying Saucer. Two pieces of dried Styrofoam-like sugar paper glued together and filled with teeny sugar balls. We blasphemed and dared each other to bite down on them. (They reminded us of communion wafers and we weren't allowed to chew those!) We'd nibble off the edges anyways.

Caramel buckeyes. GoldRush gum in the real fabric sacks. Bazooka gum with their collectible wrappers.

Weird candy dots on paper strips. Swedish fish that stttrrreeaaatttccchhhed when you pulled on a fin. Lik-M-aid, a packet full of flavored sugar and a ‘vanilla’ hard sugar stick to dip into the package and lick clean. Does this sound messy? It was!

Hideous Necco wafers. They were cool, though. The color got darker when you licked them. (What? Cut me a break. There was no cable and internet back then.)

Mallo-Cups with the disks imprinted with coins values. We'd save and save... and I have no idea whatever we'd do if we thought we had enough. Send it in for a refund? (Just checked. Boyer still redeems their Coin Cards for cold hard cash.)

Astro-Pops, hard sugar spearheads on sticks. Gradient jewel toned hard candy that made for good jousting with your siblings. Dangerous, of course. They were sweet sugar Lawn Jarts just looking to jab the top of your mouth if you ran with it.

And the licorice! So many types and flavors. A favorite were Broadway Rolls- thin threads of strawberry licorice coiled and coiled around into disks. Sold several to a package. When Fruit by the Foot came out several years later they borrowed heavily from these yummy candies.

The eternal conundrum: is it a candy or is it a gum? Razzles were proudly both- a disk that was a candy but also chewed like a gum. Not to be confused with Bottle caps; also candy made in soda flavors, shaped like a bottle cap, and with a hard candy shell. Not to be confused with Spree- small candies with hard shells.

Sugar cigarettes in skinny boxes that we'd bring home along with the real ones. Thin thin thin brittle chalky sticks of hard sugar, tipped in red coloring for that ‘just lit’ look. Sometimes individual gum cigarettes wrapped in paper. You'd hold them between your lips and blow; out would come sugar-dust 'smoke'.

Then you'd feel a grown-up. Puffing them along with your folks.

I never thought about really smoking. Never liked the smell. Buying them, though. It was an important job. And that sack full of sugar made the chore something special.

If this walk to the corner store made you hungry for those remembered treats you might want to visit Candy by the Decade. They specialize in that sweet taste of your childhood.