Sharing Sweet Memories with a Child

When I left you last week, my youngest son and I were in the midst of a conversation about the good ole’ days. You may remember that just after we flagged down the traveling ice cream man, the child made some wisecrack about my age. But he then begged me to tell him more stories from when I was a little boy a hundred years ago. So I agreed. The ice cream had me thinking a lot about the treats we were afforded during my formative years. Specifically, the treats inhabited primarily by sugar. (Very little sugar free stuff in my day.) They don’t have little family candy stores these days like our old neighborhood did. And our little sandlot gang invaded Randall’s Store often. It stood on a lot by itself between the Dora Mill and West Elementary School, neither of which exist today. Mrs. Randall was a sweet lady and a perfect match for a kid with a sweet tooth. If your parents had given you a quarter, you were excited. If they had been gracious enough to entrust you with a whole dollar, you had died and departed toward the heavenly realm. My friends and I made our candy decisions in Mrs. Randall’s store as meticulously as a bride picking out her wedding dress. My personal favorites were Mallo Cups, Mary Janes, BB Bats, and, forgive me please, candy cigarettes. A special treat was a stick of Bazooka bubble gum with a couple baseball cards included in the pack. Other kids preferred licorice (yuck!), Atomic fireballs, Pixy Stix, Wax Lips, Goo Goo Clusters, Almond Joys and Mounds bars. (Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.) But in every case, you left Mrs. Randall’s store having received a small brown paper bag full of goodies and a heartwarming smile. Mrs. Randall’s store isn’t there anymore. I don’t know when it disappeared, but one day I glanced over on my way to visit my parent’s house and the lot was empty. No more Lik-M-Aid or black licorice. Modern kids are exposed to candies with obnoxious and unflattering sounding names like Skittles, Airheads, Dum Dums, Goobers, and Lemonheads. And few Mrs. Randalls. Don’t get me wrong, there are still candy stores with nice people. But Randall’s Store had a Mayberry feel to it that I think is tough to duplicate these days. As I traveled down memory lane that day, a nine-year-old JT could tell that my gaze was fixed on a distant time and place, never to be physically revisited. “It’s okay, Dad,” he said, “I love those Mallo Cups you told me about.” He truly does. I could hardly believe my eyes in a convenience store recently, but they’re still around. My son gets excited the same way I used to about the little point values on the piece of cardboard that come inside the plastic brown and yellow wrappings of a Mallo Cup. And on a recent trip to the convenience store, the kid’s little sugar treats and their drinks, which included a nostalgic Yoo-Hoo, were all carefully placed in a little brown bag by the smiling girl behind the counter. Like the Candy Man and Mrs. Randall, she mixes it with love and makes the world taste good. Alas, hope for a sweet future.